I can’t
really put a finger on it, but, for whatever reason
my brain this week has been nearly inactive.
By week’s end I’m usually bristling at the chance to
sit down at the old keyboard and pound out a few
quick thoughts for your reading pleasure.
This week though, I sat down, put on my aluminum
thinking device, and waited for the ideas to start
crackling from fingers to keyboard to screen...
And waited...
And waited...
Who knows what it is - a weeklong drinking binge, a
years of music and photography lost to a faulty hard
drive (back it up children!), a nauseating glumness
- but the juices just weren’t pumping.
Until I headed over to Pitchfork for daily dose of
indie "credibility." And then it struck me
like a lightning bolt: I’ll voice some of my many
beefs with the state of indie criticism and its
effect on my writing and my thought process.
Phew, for a second there I thought I was going to
blank page you guys, and try to pull it off as
"art."
Enjoy!
How We Listen
Not to toot my
own horn or anything, but working as PR bitch at a small
record label has given me a certain amount of knowledge
about the way the music industry works. It has
certainly been a love-hate relationship, but if anything its
exposed me to what I like to think of as the "Pitchfork
Generation," a way of thinking about music that is both
extremely exciting and somewhat damaging to the fate of both
new and old artists.
Sadly, it almost starts and ends with the concept of the
blogosphere. With the ability to post whenever and
without worries about publication costs, we, as a society,
music or otherwise, have created the much discussed concept
of the 24 hour news cycle. Everything can be covered
all the time. Anyone can have any opinion anytime they
want, and with a click of a button, the entire world is
privy to it.
The effect on the world of news has been dramatic, what with
the tabloid news becoming a multimedia fascination, but I
believe the blogosphere has had the greatest effect on
music. There’s a million bands in the world, but never
before in the history of music have so many gotten so much
press.
Why?
Because of all sudden the legions of diehard music fans
bursting with opinion have been given a worldwide megaphone
and the semblance of a fanbase. Suddenly there are a
lot more critics and a lot more varying tastes, thus a lot
more bands are getting noticed. Which is a great thing
for ardent music fans...to a degree.
It’s amazing to be swamped with choice, to have so many folk
with good (alright, decent) taste sifting through the shit,
so we don’t have to. There’s a ridiculous amount of
bands that I, nor anyone else wouldn’t have ever heard a
lick of, if not for the rampant music world we live in.
Everyone wants to find a new band and help them blow up -
it’s just the way it is. I want to spread the love of
a good band, and if that love is enough to get someone else
talking about it, then hell, I’m even happier.
The problem begins when everyone starts thinking this way,
when every music writer is plowing along seeking out what’s
hot and what’s new. Sure, a lot of amazing bands get a
little face time they might not have seen without the
blogosphere, but the issue is how long that face time lasts.
With an entire generation of music critics searching for
what’s new, most acts can only get so much of a push.
All of sudden, bands are faced with one glaring fact: if
you’re not producing music near constantly, you’re chances
of a continued existence at the forefront of the new music
world is slim. It’s why remixes have become so
popular, instead of spending time making new music that you
could be spending touring in support of the album, you drop
your song in to the lap of some hot new producer, and voila,
you just kicked up your fame moment a minute longer.
I, as much as anyone, am entirely guilty of searching for
that new thing. I don’t want to be repetitive, I don’t
want to hype the same bands every other site is hyping.
I want to bring new, fresh original content to the masses
and this unfortunate way of thinking affects the way I
listen to music. I dig less these days, older music
falls to the wayside, because I’m going to have less to say.
I want music with a news story attached, something relevant
that will give me reason to want to hype it up. If
band is pre-exploded, I’ll be honest, it’ll probably fall to
the bottom of my CD stack. Sure, it’ll get a listen in
due time, but I’m less excited, merely because it’s already
been heard.
It’s a terrible way of listening to music, and I feel guilty
every time I realize what I’m doing. It’s an amazing
and a difficult time to be a musician. Your chances of
being heard, by someone, are much bigger, but your
competition is absolutely massive. And even if you
ascend past the other million bands scrabbling to reach the
top, you’re put in to a position where you have to keep
yourself fresh or people are going to forget, and fast.
I’m not arguing that this occurs with every band.
There a plenty of bands who strike it big on the internet,
get signed to a label, and succeed beautifully, no matter
what they do. I’m just saying that the culture of
music criticism that has risen in the past ten years is not
the easiest one to succeed in.
Short,
and somewhat bitter this week.
I’ve got a second part to this that I’ll probably
attack next week.
Thanks for reading.
Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light
In The Attic and a contributor over at Sound On The Sound. If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to
his writings here at Side One: Track One then please do so
here.
- Noah Sanders -
Unless
otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any
related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by
John Laird under a
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