Who are the best music journalists currently/ever?

luka

Well-known member
it's precisely because you are so far from being that person, urbane, in control, suave, that the Craner writing persona is such an act of genius.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
No! I didn't! Is this about the time thirdform was chasing you round the room and crackling?

No it goes back to the time I read a 30-something male interviewing the Sugababes for the Observer Music Monthly and detected an existential crisis. Don't you remember? I said it was the dead end of music journalism, inevitable if you carried on in that career beyond the age of 24?
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I can't stand that post-Brooker style of hyperbole you get in a lot of modern writing where people mistake personality for rants. All that "this is so bad it makes me want to chop off my balls" Or "this is so good I feel like I'm on air and gas" - totally devoid of personality and nuance, and really easy to produce once you've conjured up a few graphic similes.

My ideal critic is someone who has taste, but also linguistic flair and the ability to place things in a broader context of scenes and perspective.

Good point about Brooker - as far as I know he got his chops from Steven Wells and David Quantick. I think all three of them were around Chris Morris too (writing credits). All quite talented but as a style I think it has run its course now.

You can even see with Frankie Boyle he is balancing the occasional rant with some proper out there weird stuff like the asides on his BBC TV show about Baudrillard and Debord, which were wild.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The older I get the less vital music becomes for me. When you're a teenager and in your 20s you get that intense connection with music where it really feels like the most important thing in the world. Especially (for me) in clubs, on drugs, feeling more intensely alive than you ever could in your humdrum day to day life. And then increasingly the humdrum becomes all encompassing. Is that door closed now, forever?
 

luka

Well-known member
The older I get the less vital music becomes for me. When you're a teenager and in your 20s you get that intense connection with music where it really feels like the most important thing in the world. Especially (for me) in clubs, on drugs, feeling more intensely alive than you ever could in your humdrum day to day life. And then increasingly the humdrum becomes all encompassing. Is that door closed now, forever?

It's cos you're dying inside. Fading out, going grey and ghostly.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I remember feeling like this at a festival last year though, on occasion. When some old skool hardcore or jungle tune got dropped and the whole crowd is synergised by it, and it's calling out across a historical gap of decades now, that still feels special and miraculous under the right circumstances.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It's cos you're dying inside. Fading, going grey and ghostly.

It's the same thing when I see kids running around for the sheet pleasure of running around. And you wonder is it just cos I'm an adult and that's not the done thing that I don't do that or have I simply lost the capacity for taking joy in running around?
 

john eden

male pale and stale
No it goes back to the time I read a 30-something male interviewing the Sugababes for the Observer Music Monthly and detected an existential crisis. Don't you remember? I said it was the dead end of music journalism, inevitable if you carried on in that career beyond the age of 24?

Penny Reel introduced me to Nick Kimberley at reggae do about 10 years ago. He was one of my sorta heroes because the pair of them edited Pressure Drop in the 1970s which was the UK's first reggae fanzine.

I asked him what he was doing now and he told me that he was reviewing classical music for the Evening Standard. And I looked confused and asked him how he ended up doing that.

And basically he really loved music and followed a trail of progressively interesting material and that's where it lead him. He was probably in his 60s or something at the time.

I thought that was quite dignified.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yes, you've lost your capacity for joy, the bandwidth of your soul is stuck on radio 2
 

luka

Well-known member
you don't want the fairground ride anymore. You don't need the same flashing lights, being spun round and round. You stop chasing the old intensities. Move on. Grow up. Become A Man. Embrace Oto, the middle class man cave as barty put it.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
There's something in this. You are allowed to grow up. It's not a bad thing.

Yeah I keep having this conversation with Paul Meme who remains happy as a pig in shit making 2 step tracks. I mean fair play to him, he is completely genuine about it. Just seems a bit narrow to me...
 

luka

Well-known member
Yeah I keep having this conversation with Paul Meme who remains happy as a pig in shit making 2 step tracks. I mean fair play to him, he is completely genuine about it. Just seems a bit narrow to me...

I've had bitter fallings out with people about this probably because I have a tendency to inflate it into a moral crusade
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I was thinking yesterday how I've lost connection to the young (meaning people in their early 20s, not kids, I'M NOT A PAEDO) - which is "appropriate", of course, but it's also perhaps sad and unwise.
 
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