There’s a first and last time for everything.

This will be my first and last SXSW Music Fes­ti­val. I was ini­tial­ly very excit­ed to cov­er the event for my day job, only to be denied press cre­den­tials. Our pitch was to cov­er the fes­ti­val as a trav­el­ogue with a cranky crit­ic — think Three Sheets with a some­what more sober Zane Lam­prey — but now we’re free to be much cranki­er since we won’t be able to access events that make this par­tic­u­lar pro­mo­tion­al orgy so spe­cial. Hav­ing said that, I’m still look­ing for­ward to doing stuff with lots of music crit­ic friends, whether it’s cov­er­ing one of Stere­ogum’s day par­ties or kvetch­ing on cam­era with Mau­ra and Jess from Idol­a­tor. This should be a very fun and fun­ny expe­ri­ence and I’ll be sure to let you know when and where you can see it!

Then again, should I have just lis­tened to Bob Lef­setz? When an orga­ni­za­tion like SXSW can’t work with one of the biggest por­tals on the inter­net, some­thing’s real­ly gone haywire.

Best music writing.

I just sub­mit­ted this for con­sid­er­a­tion. If you haven’t already read the Deci­blog’s scathing, suc­cinct take­down of the mar­ket­ing plan for the Mars Volta’s new album, you should. The usb stick gim­mick gives the mid­dle fin­ger to the envi­ron­ment in ways I can­not com­pre­hend. Has the record indus­try not heard of email? Try meet­ing the con­sumer where they live. It’s cheaper!

A farewell to blogs.

If you’re into read­ing brainy music blogs that don’t get mired in jar­gon, you already miss Woe­bot tremen­dous­ly. I’m one of those people.

The past year saw the dis­ap­pear­ance of Sty­lus Mag­a­zine too, a webzine that got me back on my music-writer­ly feet after a mis­er­able audi­tion at Pitch­fork. Sty­lus was the Mon­tre­al Expos of music crit­i­cism; writ­ing there meant that your record reviews would be noticed by peo­ple who could pay and edi­tor Todd Burns did an amaz­ing job re-invent­ing the mag­a­zine as writ­ers came and went. A tremen­dous labor of love, Sty­lus pre­sent­ed an alter­na­tive to Pitch­fork when it mat­tered most, earn­ing a read­er­ship as can­tan­ker­ous as its con­trib­u­tors, and a lega­cy that lives on in the suc­cess of those who wrote there.

Thanks.

Still under construction, still listening.

I’m find­ing that one of my excus­es for not writ­ing here more reg­u­lar­ly is that I’m real­ly tired of look­ing at the cur­rent incar­na­tion of Black­mail Is My Life. I’m real­ly psy­ched to update the links to all the new blogs I’m read­ing now that I’ve been intro­duced to a num­ber of great local food blogs via the Pover­ty Jet Set.

What I’m lis­ten­ing to right now:

  • Bon Iver — For Emma, For­ev­er Ago. Com­plete­ly blown away by this album after being prac­ti­cal­ly choked to death on hype. It’s worth it.
  • Black Moun­tain — In the Future. I reg­is­tered my ini­tial reac­tion over at the Scowl, and after lis­ten­ing again this morn­ing, still feel like Black Moun­tain squan­dered their chance to expand the Stones-meet-Krautrock vibe into some­thing excit­ing if not inter­est­ing, instead of min­ing this half-baked ‘met­al’ trope.

That’s the update for now. I should know more about the sta­tus of nu-BMIML this week. Thanks for stick­ing with me in the meantime!

Looking ahead.

So far this has been an incred­i­ble year. After get­ting my full-time gig at Com­cast, I’ve been very excit­ed and ambi­tious about what my job can mean to me. In just a few short months I’ve been able to do things I nev­er thought I’d be doing as a job, like cov­er­ing SXSW for work [wait ’til you seen me On Demand] and get­ting things like Radio­head­’s New Year’s Eve con­cert for the site. It’s hard to know what’s next, but in a way I nev­er have before, I’m real­ly think­ing about how to make my job inter­est­ing to my audi­ence and myself.

Shock­ing­ly, this was all brought about by work­ing with Chris Wein­garten and Bran­don Sto­suy on Paper Thin Walls in its for­ma­tive stages about a year ago. It all began when I first learned about the site, and like a lot of strug­gling crit­ics, con­tact­ed Chris about con­tribut­ing. Before I knew it, I was fact-check­ing sub­mis­sions for ’06’s year-end mix­tape and sub­mit­ting bull­horns for their hilar­i­ous news­feed. I did a lit­tle research for a PLUG Awards sketch and sud­den­ly found myself being pulled into Comcast.net for my work at PTW.

2007 was pret­ty great too, con­sid­er­ing I got hired in April as a free­lancer and start­ed full­time in Sep­tem­ber. On the oth­er hand, 2007 brought trag­ic news, as my father broke his hip in a fall and was lat­er diag­nosed with late stage Parkin­son’s dis­ease. This has been a learn­ing expe­ri­ence for me, and has for­tu­nate­ly helped me have a clos­er rela­tion­ship with my dad, some­thing I nev­er expect­ed would hap­pen after suf­fer­ing some pret­ty seri­ous set­backs ear­li­er in the year.

But this is a new year, and I’m look­ing for­ward to Black­mail Is My Life being an out­let for me, free of the pulpy, blur­by copy I write day in and day out. That’s fun, but not quite as reward­ing as chew­ing up cul­tur­al arti­facts and digest­ing them in longer form. I’m real­iz­ing now how self-indul­gent this is; as blogs declared their mas­tery over web mag­a­zines, there was a fun­da­men­tal shift in the way read­ers snuck a lit­tle time to ‘dis­cov­er’ music, movies, books or any­thing on the web. In spite of that, I’m going to be bet­ter about writ­ing here this year and real­ly try to com­mit. I’m not alone in mak­ing these res­o­lu­tions, and it’ll be tough to keep, but I’m going to give it a shot.