A Benediction for Music Criticism

Today’s my last day as music edi­tor at comcast.net. It’s a weird feel­ing to be wrap­ping up what has been a pret­ty amaz­ing 10-year jour­ney at the periph­ery of the music industry.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was nev­er a great music critic.When I first start­ed scrib­bling about songs back in ’99, I strove hard to con­nect the music I heard into some social phe­nom­e­na. Square peg meet round hole. I now real­ize that most of the music I wrote about nev­er attempt­ed to con­nect in any way to the events of the last ten years, save for a track or two about New York post‑9/11 or New Orleans post-Kat­ri­na. When I look back on the ear­li­est writ­ing I did for Pitch­fork and Sty­lus, I’m tor­tured by my prose and lack of style.

It was­n’t until I start­ed work­ing with the now infa­mous Chris Wein­garten that I real­ly blos­somed as a crit­ic. Chris picked me up off the music crit­ic scrap heap, hav­ing been fresh­ly fired from Deci­bel Mag­a­zine, to work on this new site called Paper Thin Walls. There I final­ly con­nect­ed with the crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty in the way I’d always hoped: a snarky out­sider who sim­ply did­n’t under­stand why so many crit­ics and blog­gers all fawned over the same bands at once. Chris helped me dis­cov­er my voice and he did some­thing no edi­tor I’d worked with before him had done: he would edit my pieces with my input, often in real-time. It was amaz­ing to work with him on that project, doomed though it was. Most of my best work was lost when the Paper Thin Walls servers crashed. Shame, really.

While work­ing there I met my friend Tom Mal­lon, a for­mer CMJ col­league of Chris’ and the music edi­tor at comcast.net. He and I often chipped in on the blur­by, Twit­ter-on-steroids news items for Paper Thin Walls. It was a lot of fun. Lit­tle did I know it was also an audi­tion for my cur­rent job, iden­ti­fy­ing news­wor­thy items and then find­ing the right hook to get peo­ple to check them out. I have no idea how many peo­ple fol­lowed our links, but it sure as hell was a lot of fun.

Then the unex­pect­ed hap­pened. While I was apply­ing for a job on craigslist, Tom reached out to ask if I was still look­ing for work. I was. He told me to get him my resume. The rest is his­to­ry. I start­ed here at Com­cast in April 2007, came on full-time in Sep­tem­ber of that year and have been run­ning things ever since.

Here’s a quick run­down of some of the things I was able to do here that I prob­a­bly couldn’t–or wouldn’t–have done any­where else:

• Met Mari­ah Carey for a com­mer­cial shoot on Leap Day 2008.
• Bust­ed my butt work­ing SXSW Music 2008 with my crack team of Derek, Mar­quise and Scott.
• Got the Ther­mals to stop by the Com­cast Cen­ter for an inter­view and to play a few songs.
• Inter­viewed met­al leg­ends-in-the-mak­ing Mastodon in CIM City.

The list isn’t as long as I’d like it to be, but some­thing I learned dur­ing my tenure here was that the pas­sion I had for music keeps shrink­ing to ever-more insu­lar com­mu­ni­ties. It may be hard to believe now, but there once was a world out­side of Tum­blr where peo­ple dis­cussed the music they liked and shared it with each oth­er. It’s sad to see that go, but I feel like it slipped through our fin­gers, at least for those of us old enough to remem­ber the music indus­try at it’s peak.

I know far too many crit­ics who watched help­less­ly as our sto­ries about bands were replaced by sto­ries about the devices that played their music and then just the apps on those devices. The point at which every inno­va­tion was hailed as the next great thing was the moment I grew tired of writ­ing about music. I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

Which brings me back to Wein­garten. I’ve been promis­ing to inter­view him for far too long and I hope that hap­pens soon­er rather than lat­er. It may be impolitic to say it, but peo­ple get far too caught up in his per­sona to real­ize that his schtick isn’t sim­ply “per­son­al brand­ing.” He’s been an inspi­ra­tion to me as he’s carved out a niche for him­self, say­ing unpop­u­lar things at a time when peo­ple tune crit­i­cism out alto­geth­er. If he’s real­ly the last rock crit­ic stand­ing, we should be grate­ful. It could be a lot worse.

Will I com­plete­ly dis­en­gage from music now that I’m mov­ing on? Prob­a­bly not, but I will say that unsub­scrib­ing from the PR cir­cuit, as well as the music blogs that keep them alive has been very free­ing. In the past week I’ve found myself trawl­ing YouTube for stuff I’ve been curi­ous about. I’m think­ing about wip­ing my iPhone, too, and just load­ing it with Echo and the Bun­ny­men and Mar­ble Sheep bootlegs. It’s real­ly refresh­ing. Take my word for it.

I’m for­ev­er grate­ful to Bryan Mick­le’s dis­cern­ing taste for rein­tro­duc­ing me to The The.