Is the internet really good enough?

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
I think CoM worked better for two reasons:

1. It had a clearly defined concept, which was narrow enough to give it consistency, but broad enough not to be constricting. (By contrast, the 1974 thing, while interesting, is perhaps too narrow and too mechanically programmatic, especially for the internet: if it were in a book form, the reader could jump back and forth at will, whereas now both writer and reader are subject to the tyranny of the alphabet, lol).

2. It was published weekly, which meant there was a definite sense of event (i.e. what is he going to be writing about this week?)

I'd say I was a cured romantic about print, in that I was the world's biggest print devotee (I still have most of the key issues of NME from when I started reading it from 83 onwards until it got shit, i.e. when Collins and Maconie arrived). I thought the internet could never match up to the NME at its peak, or MM when Simon, Stubbs, Oldfield were on it.

Now, though, I would take the opposite view. If the internet isn't good enough, it's down to the readers and writers: who else can be blamed?

There is no equivalent in print media of any kind of the type of exchange that is happening on the web, between intellectuals and pop fans, between theory and popular culture. Once, print media may have had visionary editors (like Mark S on the Wire) who were capable of making their publications more than the sum of their parts: now, they are grub street PR hacks, subservient to big business and demographics, who do the opposite. For example: does anyone seriously think that the pieces Marcello is allowed to write for Uncut etc are BETTER than the ones he produces on the internet? The print world looks pathetically cramped compared to the internet. I haven't bought a pop magazine in years. Even when there's one good article from Simon in them, it's better to read them in the shops, because you then don't have to clutter up the house with boring drivel on the Band and Bob Dylan etc etc.

With the web, you get to edit together your own mag.

So no need to have to put up with Paolo Hewitt and Stuart Cosgrove, let alone the dullard time-server press-release re-writers of the print press now.

(I'm going to write a post on this on k-p when I get home).
 

Elan

Blackbird
As a North American I used to read <I>MM</I> and the <I>NME</I> in the late 80s (MM more, I'll admit) and I was alternately amazed and amused a lot of the time by what I read - the complete intensity of some of the authors, the sincere hyperbole (if that's not an oxymoron) - so different from <i>RS</i> or <i>Creem</i>! From what I've gathered here that has been totally lost & Nick Hornby-ized, save for the occasional writer. That all may be obvious, but how on earth did it happen? Why is nostalgia so prevalent?

In any case, writing on the internet is more than good enough and at times it is the best writing I have ever come across about music. I've printed out a few pages of CoM myself - not just because I love it, but because it is great writing and I am inspired by it - both to listen to things in a new way and from the writing itself.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
bloggentropy

the blog world -- well this corner of it -- is going through a definite lull at the moment and the reasons, as far as i can see, are threefold and simple

-- a lot of the don dadas on the scene have retired (woebot, luka, Koons, blackie lawless--those last two being arch-recidivists are getting like the bloody Who endlessly reforming!), some of the others have been forced into hibernation by other duties (silverdollar) or just gone real sporadic (jon dale, skykicking, many others not springing to mind just this sec'). the ones that remain that i check regular and that output stuff regular, they tend to be quite specific subject-fixated (either grimecrentic, or pursuing their own fairly defined aesthetic -- gutterbreakz). that leaves kpunk who is still churning out quality stuff, i don't always agree with him mind, but that's the point it's all thought-provoking innit

-- the mp3 blogs are almost universally a waste of space AFAIC, i don't turn to the web for music (can't think of a single revelatory track i've downloaded to be honest, the bits of pirate grimage are nice and the dj mixes too but mp3s sound so shit, and perhaps i have a different perspective on it, being so inundated with music professionally). no i want opinions and analysis and mockery (and merkery). shoving music up there preserves the more irritating show-off side of bloggery ("i know about obscure music me") without the good stuff (insight, incitement, theory, speculation). it's sort of evangelism without content, innit? if you're going to evangelise about music then at least do the decent thing and come up with a gospel, a credo!

-- the other factor, let's be honest, is that Music isn't really coming up with the goods, the food for fervour, at the moment. yeah yeah yeah the usual disparate nicenesses abounds, it'll be no problem pulling together a chunky end of year list, but the kind of major new development that would warrant a convulsion of discourse has not shown up. (i reckon that's why MIA got way more discourse swirling around her than was strictly warranted, cos it was a bone of contention, something to argue about). the last big thing discourse-activating thing was of course grime but three years down the line that topic's been well-masticated and feels a bit spent.

writing about old music is always fun of course and i think when i resume blissbloggin in fuller force when duties subside that's what i'll probably mostly write about , but it lacks the urgency of when you're writing about stuff that is happening now. that's what the music press, when it was "on", had -- it was dealing with now-stuff that had to be shouted loud about that very week.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Yes, I think the failure of the music is a big part of it; quite honestly, I for one would be delighted if Simon started writing about old music; the new stuff isn't worthy of his attention in the main. 'Boycott mediocrity' Luka said a couple of years ago... that's right... There's no need for blogs to tolerate let alone celebrate the mediocrity which meatworld press is forced to deal with....

That's why Poptimism is wrong not only empirically - the absurd claim that there is always an equal amount of good music waiting out there at any given period of history - but ethically: it contributes to a situation of continued tedium.... I think the more that blogs completely deviate from the timetable laid down by the industry and PR, much better to use the greatness of the past as a stick to beat the trash of the present with... the first step would be to admit that things are crap...

One thing that's abundantly clear from Rip It Up is the productive power of FACTIONS and FRICTIONS - the most damaging and enervating cultural attitude is that contemporary student- Last Man thing, yeh, I like Futureheads and Razorlight but I like Hey Yaaaaaaaaaah too, like a bit of everything really .... if Pop isn't the carrier of a dissident and inconsemsurate reality what is it? Ppl ruthlessly differentiating themselves from others (and from themselves... how they were a few months ago), imposing some conceptual consistency on themselves (I can't wear that any more)....


(btw I think some people have given up on (their) blogs too quickly... if you want things to happen, you have to be patient and build them up, wait for the mainstream to catch up... )
 

nomos

Administrator
blissblogger said:
(can't think of a single revelatory track i've downloaded to be honest, the bits of pirate grimage are nice and the dj mixes too but mp3s sound so shit, and perhaps i have a different perspective on it, being so inundated with music professionally).

I think it's a matter of geography and access. The net is about the only place I've had revelations in the last few years. Not just new just new stuff either. More often it's things i missed the first time 'round living in the wrong place, not having money, or being unaware/interested in something else.
 

turtles

in the sea
autonomicforthepeople said:
I think it's a matter of geography and access. The net is about the only place I've had revelations in the last few years. Not just new just new stuff either. More often it's things i missed the first time 'round living in the wrong place, not having money, or being unaware/interested in something else.
Seconded, thirded and fourthed. The internet is THE source of music for me, both in terms of reading about and hearing. I really can't stress how massively important the internet has been to my development as a music listener. ALL (and i do mean all) the artists & musical styles that i have discovered and gotten into since about '01 have been through the internet one way or another (blogs, zines, p2p etc). I own maybe 3 copies of the wire, and that's about it as far as print-media goes (and i only bought those for the wire tapper cds!).

Considering I only really started to get heavily into music around '99-'00, its hard for me to even imagine what it would be like to be seriously into music without the internet. P2P is a godsend, and honestly mp3 blogs are even better because I keep getting turned on to new artists and genres that I had never been exposed to before.

from the music-fan perspective, the internet is entirely crucial and necessary.
 

Backjob

Well-known member
Well this is all very well, but the naysayers (Dave, Matt) are basically establishment figures awash with cultural capital and sitting right on the geographical nexus (London-NYC) of the things they are interested in. From that privileged position maybe the internet is a waste of time.

But the fact that I can walk into a cafe in Cebu, Philippines, and hear Dizzee Rascal playing or that I can have a conversation about current US TV shows with Japanese people is entirely due to the internet and the attendant globalisation of cultural discourse.

And I think it matters that we can see Toronto emerging as a regional grime centre, not entirely unconnected to the fact that this forum exists.

So purely in terms of access, it's a great thing that there is accessible writing on the net about all sorts of topics (and that's not even getting into the importance of people in places like Baghdad or China or Myanmar being able to read it).

The nature of the discourse has changed, sure, but for all the reasons everybody listed above its hard to see how that change constitutes any kind of definitive downward shift in quality. It's just more dispersed now. Perhaps the 30 minute read that MM used to represent is now a 30 minute read smeared out over a dozen blogs globally (and a different dozen each week, I might add).

From a consumer point of view, of course no single blog is the equal of an old-style print magazine. But blogs in general piss on any magazine in history from a great height. The money cost of purchasing print has been converted to a time cost in finding the good stuff but the relative weight of the transaction in terms of cost versus benefit hasn't markedly changed.

(in fact there is probably a huge opportunity for someone to search out the good bits and charge a fee for a monthly email listing them, ethics of this aside)
 

Rachel Verinder

Well-known member
I think CoM worked better for two reasons:

1. It had a clearly defined concept, which was narrow enough to give it consistency, but broad enough not to be constricting. (By contrast, the 1974 thing, while interesting, is perhaps too narrow and too mechanically programmatic, especially for the internet: if it were in a book form, the reader could jump back and forth at will, whereas now both writer and reader are subject to the tyranny of the alphabet, lol).

2. It was published weekly, which meant there was a definite sense of event (i.e. what is he going to be writing about this week?)


This is fair comment. Admittedly the 1974 thing was commenced with the vague idea of a book in mind - a bit like David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film crossed with Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch (in other words, a childhood memoir disguised as a year in music) - but I was getting bogged down in it and logistically it was proving a headache; for every "Beach Baby" there are a dozen mediocre chart fillers to trudge through. The difference with the 69/82/85 lists is that these were done spontaneously, in one sitting, one-liners, bang bang bang, so duff records could get away with a few curt words of dismissal; but '74 I think was a wee bit over-ambitious - ending up a chore to write and, consequently, a chore to read. The good "future entries" which I've already written, e.g. Suzi Quatro, Alan Price, Wombles/Mike Batt etc., might appear as stand-alone articles on a future blog. At the moment though, outside of message boards I don't feel like writing about music at all - and Simon is right that the comparative paucity of interesting current music to write about is a major factor in my reluctance to do so (2002 was an unbelievably fecund year musically; 2004 considerably less so).

For example: does anyone seriously think that the pieces Marcello is allowed to write for Uncut etc are BETTER than the ones he produces on the internet?

I'd be extremely suspicious of anyone who seriously thought that! In any case, the management at Uncut seem to have come to the same conclusion, viz. I am not cut out for the 80-word capsule review world.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
Backjob said:
Well this is all very well, but the naysayers (Dave, Matt) are basically establishment figures awash with cultural capital and sitting right on the geographical nexus (London-NYC) of the things they are interested in. From that privileged position maybe the internet is a waste of time.

But the fact that I can walk into a cafe in Cebu, Philippines, and hear Dizzee Rascal playing or that I can have a conversation about current US TV shows with Japanese people is entirely due to the internet and the attendant globalisation of cultural discourse.

Love the idea of being an establishment figure! Ha ha ha. Me and my scrawny ass.

I don't think I'm really a naysayer. I think I've tried to argue that (in contrast to the bloke at the RIUASA panel, sorry if I wrongly ascribed it to Tom, was facing forward at the time) I dont think the net is necessarily the cradle of Music Journalism in its classical sense. Like Dave says of Breaking Ranks, he feels that site works better in different ways. Naturally a lot of this has to do with feeling that my "blog voice" was played out. The analogy I used to use (with depressing regularity) was one of standing on a soap box. Sometimes your knees got wobbly, sometimes you enjoyed standing up there furiously gesticulating, but eventually its time to come down.

stelfox said:
(paraphrase) "on doing it for free"

as someone who has gone on to earn a few shillings from a couple of magazines, i'd have to admit i'm STILL doing it for love even though i'm getting paid.
 

henrymiller

Well-known member
from a writer's pov, freelancing is more or less 'for free', ie so badly paid it may as well be. the 'director's cut' thing is presumably why many pros get involved.

from a reader's pov: i only really engage while at work, so it's win-win really. the internet 'could do better' perhaps, but there are still inexhaustible supplies of *stuff*. if it isn't the early eighties or the late sixties, so be it. the need for 'one big movement' a la punk or acid house is the subtext of laments for the music press, which is fine, but there are always lots of things going on. while choosing between futureheads and 'hey ya!' might not appeal, the choice in 1988 between eric b and rakim and acid house and ar kane (fer example) is more interesting. the 'one big movement' nme was unable to deal with all three. arguably the net would have been better-suited.
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
well, that does depend on where you write for, henry. obviously 'lancing for the guardian isn't ever going to take you off to rio, but you can live on freelancing money and the more people take the line of "oh, well i'm lucky to be in print so the money doesn't matter", or "i'll just depend on the day job and write for love", the less it's likely to get better.
btw, the wire pays only very marginally less than certain national newspapers, marcelly (i'm not going to correct that typo coz i like it), so i think they do pretty well, to be honest.
re matt's point about blogdom's view of *itself* as the sole (probably true) and best medium (absolute insanity) to find good writing has led to quite a pissy atmosphere in certain circles, a bit of a mutual-masturbatory/congratulatory whirligig whereby some writing is hailed as brilliant because it's "the sort of thing you never see in magazines" even though it's often pretty bloddy shoddy and there's a good reason no one would print it.
that might well be the reason that i prefer the blogs of professional writers (or always prefered the blogs of those who went on to be) to those of writers who only had blogs (there are MASSIVE and numerous exceptions to this rule, obviously).
it also leads certain sections of blogworld to build up a view of themselves as much, much more important than they really are because their boys (it's so often boys) get the odd mention in the guardian.
re simon's point on MP3 blogs: i very rarely check for any of the "eclectic" MP3 blogs and tend to prefer ones with a pretty tight focus. as much as i think the guys behind fluxblog, tofu hut, bitchlaces et al are lovely chaps (they're the only ones i've ever had any dealings with in personal terms - comments boxes, emails, links etc), i just don't often feel like using them.
cocaine blunts, we eat so many shrimp, government names and a few others, however, have introduced me to a shitload of great stuff, reaffirmed my love for lots more, so i tend to find this the way forward: clear ideas, a honed aesthetic and a load of knowledge.
 
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Rachel Verinder

Well-known member
During my brief spell on the Wire I wrote six reviews and earned the grand cumulative total of £150, so it's about par with the monthlies. It was the unpublished seventh review that got me banned from their pages forever, on the basis that one is not supposed to criticise "friends of the Wire."
 

henrymiller

Well-known member
what k-punk said about the internet meaning that you can edit your own blog -- i think that's right. otoh i kind of agree with stelfox on the practical level. more or less every professional writer i've met thinks the net is bad 'for the profession' and i don't think that's just fear of unlettered names taking their edge off. usually the best essay-type material on the web is by pro writers or aspiring pros and as one of the latter you do wonder if it is a dead end, whether the aspiring writers should be trying harder to get into print.

also: much of 'the internet' is really print journalism online. obvious point, but key, i think.
 

jenks

thread death
I suppose from my point of view what the internet gives me is access to the debates in a way that the nme letters page of old could never do. for those who are pro writers/ musicians it may seem like a small world of the same old faces/ tropes but of course for those of us with other jobs this has a democratising effect, we are now party to the discussion and can communicate with those 'opinion formers' etc and actually get involved on a pretty immediate manner. the down side is the trolling etc that forces people to remove comment boxes from their blogs and there is a constant pressure to have something to say.
as far as the quality of the writing goes, i have to agree with a number of people here, giving access to everybody means allowing all those who can barely string a sentence together to publish in the blogosphere. the end result though is unread material, and at least it's not adding to a giant paper mountain.
what makes the internet work is the realtively new way it leads us to read, that is, not necessarily in a linear fashion but instead in a linking fashion. i came to the blog/ dissensus world through reading a small article in the wire about blissblogger and penman - from the links at the side i have come across all kinds of cool writing - some self indulgent and uninspiring and the occasionally awful, the former goes onto the favs toolbar the rest get forgotten.
i think those of you who work with music may forget just how difficult it can be to access all kinds of new music, the london pirates don't reach out here, there are very few vinyl shops, things don't come through my letter box for free - we welcome anyone who puts something up on usendit - i have heard more new music in the last six months through dissensus than i have donefor years, now maybe i am catching the tail end of something and maybe it was all better two years ago - i dunno.
fianllly i agree that the whole mainstream music stuff is poor but i would suggest that this is not that new, i still yearn for another 1988 or 1982 but it's not happening, i think blissblogger is right it's time to go back, there's plenty left and if it gets the writing quality up i am all for it.
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
Just one little tangent. On the actual act of writing.

It's often not about the quality of the writing - being a good weblogger
is also a matter of "web style". Short paragraphs, good headlines, the "conclusion" up front and so on.

Reading from screen is different from reading a newspaper article or a book. Many either
do not know this or make no effort to change their writing (just look at the replies above -
which ones are you going to bother reading?).

Only if the writing and subjects covered are exceptional (like K-P and blissblogger)
can you get away with a different style on the web for long.
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
this guy lomov blows me away for post-Chain Reaction ambience

seconded (it's one of my "4 stars or more" in my free, legal download cat MP3s).
Some of Biosphere's newer stuff (freely available from http://www.biosphere.no) and also some
Finns fall in that category (I can't find their name right now -
but when I heard them I had to check that they were not Lomov, they sound almost exactly the same).
 

Rachel Verinder

Well-known member
I think it's up to bloggers to decide how they want to write and present their blogs. If readers don't like them, there are millions of other blogs they can read. After all, it's not as if we're getting paid for doing them, is it?
 
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