July 2012
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Highlights from Freelancing: Year 1
Places I wrote for: GQ, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, Out magazine, LA Weekly, MTV Buzzworthy, Billboard, Drowned in Sound, Vulture, eMusic, the Hollywood Reporter, the A.V. Club, the Los Angeles Times and very nearly a prominent New York publication you may have heard of that’s been sitting on a charming essay I wrote for six months.
Work-related joys: Finding a literary agent,...
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It's been five years since I lived in New York
Five years ago this month since I broke up with my college girlfriend. Five years, give or take the college paper, since I started get paid to do this for a living. Five years since the first time I went to a hipster party and felt too old for this shit and realized everything had changed. Five years since I wasn’t Hannah-from-Girls overweight. Five years since I wrote a whole album of...
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Ryan II
Goes without saying that despite the repetition, the performances on the Ryan box are revelatory. The best part of this set — and of his tour — is the re-contextualization of his work, free of individual album reception or critic/fan politics, as the songbook of one of our finest composers. “Stop,” “I See Monsters,” “Jacksonville Skyline,”...
June 2012
Customer Service
I’m moving next weekend. A couple weeks ago, I went online and transferred my various services: electricity, gas and Internet. Time Warner actually makes you call to talk to a person and won’t give you an online form, which would at least leave you a paper trail to refer to. But maybe the service would be better. I talked to a human, asked to transfer service on July 8, set up a time...
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The Reasonable Person's Guide to Supporting...
In the wake of Emily White-gate, everyone has an opinion about money and music. Let’s turn those into an actual set of ethical, practical guidelines that reasonable music fans can turn to, rub their 8” beards and say, “Why yes, I do really love this band and I would like them to be able to make more music! I guess I should give them some money.” I’m just a journalist...
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Average Man Style: Summer Suggestions
I’m a man in my late 20s. I make a middle-class salary, depending on how I squint at my bank account. I don’t work in an office, or anywhere that requires me to wear a suit every day. I wouldn’t want to do that anyway. I love clothes and just want to look clean, classic and somewhere between memorable and boring. In other words: I want to stand out without having to show off or...
thepoetryofnospaces asked: Kitty Pryde is selling a physical copy of her EP on etsy. Are you going to grab it?
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High School Radio-Taped Mixtapes Vol. 1
There are more. Anything from Y107 was taped between 1998-2000.
Tape One Side A 1. Luscious Jackson “Devotion” Y107 2. Luscious Jackson “Nervous Breakthrough” Y107 3. Luscious Jackson “Sexy Hypnotist” Y107 4. XTC, “Green Man” Y107 5. G Love and Special Sauce “Rodeo Clowns” Y107 6. Dave Matthews Band “Crash into Me” 95.1 KBBY 7. Fatboy Slim “The Rockefeller Skank” Y107 8. Fleming and...
IS STEALING MUSIC REALLY THE PROBLEM? →
Long story short: for the industry as a whole, nah.
We can thank piracy for bringing us into the YouTube/Spotify/music-is-free era, definitely, but its menace has largely passed. (The flip side is the story of my friend the label runner, who had a band get more torrent downloads than sales last year — that band is also an Internet fad that makes murky, belligerently unlikable music, not...
“You have to know the rules of good taste to have bad taste. With good good...”
– John Waters in Rookie Mag.
Incidentally, people’s failure to understand this is why so many of you are awful. Please do not write me on Twitter.
(via jakefogelnest)
John Waters forever
Rookie for President
"I’m aware as I type this that I’m falling into... →
Good point.
Piracy isn’t the problem. Piracy as a 100% replacement for spending money on music is the problem.
The biggest struggle for independent artists now is finding true fans who are willing to financially support them. The tools are there for this on a global level — it’s just a matter of using them. And having jams. And keeping your fingers crossed.
Complaining about...
NewProf: Emily Moore, David Lowery, and Putting... →
newprofessor:
For two days now, people have been posting about this dumb NPR Intern thing. It is so dumb. But I think it’s a teachable moment, and should maybe serve as a reality check.
A couple days ago, one of NPR Music’s interns, Emily Moore, put an innocuous blog post on NPR Music’s blog about being so…
Greg should be interning at NPR Music (and/or running it)
Where piracy/not paying (not the same things)...
For indie bands, navigating from EP1 parents’ basements status to LP4 Black Keys at MSG is where they need the support system of being able to sell records and build a long-haul fanbase — when quitting your third day job and playing to 20 people in Ohio to promote an album you self-released, again, just doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore. This is where I see a lot of great...
NPR intern III
Greg raises a good point, which is: most Kids Today are listening to music on YouTube, with the top songs earning hundreds of millions of plays. The numbers probably dwarf Spotify. This is the most convenient option and it is in fact monetized, though at a lesser rate than Spotify.
I would guess that being an indie rock fan who 1) doesn’t buy vinyl, or anything and 2) obtains music through...
ponny replied to your post: ponny replied to your link: Details, guesses and a…
From the manufacturer. They also tweeted this photo: twitter.com/furnace…
Rad. Thanks for sharing! Updated my post.
The NPR intern essay →
This is really depressing and — no offense to her — very uninformed.
As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to realize the gravity of what file-sharing means to the musicians I love. I can’t support them with concert tickets and t-shirts alone. But I honestly don’t think my peers and I will ever pay for albums. I do think we will pay for convenience.
What I want is one...
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"Jones tore a hole in the small venue, showing the... →
1) I feel this way about Iron & Wine. 2) Norah’s new album is very good, possibly her best. 3) But still not as good as Leona Naess’ Thirteens.
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Hannah and I are both 13 pounds overweight
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LIVE-BLOGGING THE "GIRLS" FINALE
Spoilers ahead. Do what you have to. Here we go…
1) Moving in New York looks like the worst thing ever. Wait, is this turning into a backdoor pilot for Bored To Death?
2) What happened to Adam? How did he go from disgusting sex maniac to militant self-help guru/DIY torch-bearer? Given his AA membership, he almost ought to be straight-edge and the owner of more tattoos.
3) “Three...
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