Guitars don't kill music; musicians kill music
Just posted this on the ilX Rolling Music Writers' Thread in response to some unthought-through statements from Matos and Weingarten:
I doubt that someone who hasn't "earned" the right to use the first person has earned the right to bore us with adjectives and genre designations either. Someone who falls asleep at my use of the first person isn't interested in my ideas anyway, whether I'm in the first person or not. To go back to my analogy [upthread], the phrase "guitar band" is a red flag for me these days, indicating that I'm likely to dislike what I hear. But the problem isn't with guitars themselves; guitars don't kill music, musicians kill music, and if you had the same guys playing keyboards or xylophones they'd probably be just as dreary. "Electric guitar" meant electric excitement in '66, it means drudgery now. But there's plenty of electric guitar excitement in music today - great stuttering Keith Richards-style guitar chords at the start of Martina McBride's "Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong," for instance - it just doesn't usually come packaged with "guitar band" on the label.
The first person is a red flag for Chris because he associates it with a style of wandering P4k writing c. 2000 that I never paid much attention to anyway. But that's not an inherent problem with the first person. Any reader who sees the name "Kool Moe Dee" in the kicker and sees Kool Moe Dee's picture at the top of a review is gonna know that the piece will get around to Kool Moe Dee even though the lead is "I transport myself into rage a lot." And editors who think that "Kool Moe Dee transports himself into rage a lot" would be as good an opening as "I transport myself into rage a lot" probably should re-evaluate their career choice. But then, which opening to use depends on the piece as a whole; by starting it the way I did I put the rage closer to the reader than if I'd assigned the rage only to Kool Moe Dee. But then, I wanted to put the rage close to the reader. If I hadn't, I'd have started the piece differently. Doing what I did, I was immediately able to call my record player a rage machine and put Kool Moe Dee in the context of other performers on my rage machine (Stones, Stooges, Sex Pistols, Big Youth, Spoonie Gee), so the piece isn't about these misogynist black youth out there in hip-hop with their rage, but about something basic in a lot of music that - problematically - attracts me and potentially the reader too. But it wouldn't be as problematic as I want if it isn't the writer's and the prose's rage that is at issue, and potentially the reader's, not just that of the guy I'm writing the review about. (And if you don't want reviews that read like that, why in the hell would you listen to music that sounds like that?*)
By the way, my use of the first person back then was heavily influenced by Mick Jagger's use of it in "Under My Thumb" and "Back Street Girl" and "Street Fighting Man" and so on, the way he made himself problematic. But I wasn't sitting down and going, "Oh, I'll use the first person in the way that Jagger does." I just was someone who'd analyzed a lot of Jagger and then wrote the way I wrote.
*Not a rhetorical question.
I doubt that someone who hasn't "earned" the right to use the first person has earned the right to bore us with adjectives and genre designations either. Someone who falls asleep at my use of the first person isn't interested in my ideas anyway, whether I'm in the first person or not. To go back to my analogy [upthread], the phrase "guitar band" is a red flag for me these days, indicating that I'm likely to dislike what I hear. But the problem isn't with guitars themselves; guitars don't kill music, musicians kill music, and if you had the same guys playing keyboards or xylophones they'd probably be just as dreary. "Electric guitar" meant electric excitement in '66, it means drudgery now. But there's plenty of electric guitar excitement in music today - great stuttering Keith Richards-style guitar chords at the start of Martina McBride's "Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong," for instance - it just doesn't usually come packaged with "guitar band" on the label.
The first person is a red flag for Chris because he associates it with a style of wandering P4k writing c. 2000 that I never paid much attention to anyway. But that's not an inherent problem with the first person. Any reader who sees the name "Kool Moe Dee" in the kicker and sees Kool Moe Dee's picture at the top of a review is gonna know that the piece will get around to Kool Moe Dee even though the lead is "I transport myself into rage a lot." And editors who think that "Kool Moe Dee transports himself into rage a lot" would be as good an opening as "I transport myself into rage a lot" probably should re-evaluate their career choice. But then, which opening to use depends on the piece as a whole; by starting it the way I did I put the rage closer to the reader than if I'd assigned the rage only to Kool Moe Dee. But then, I wanted to put the rage close to the reader. If I hadn't, I'd have started the piece differently. Doing what I did, I was immediately able to call my record player a rage machine and put Kool Moe Dee in the context of other performers on my rage machine (Stones, Stooges, Sex Pistols, Big Youth, Spoonie Gee), so the piece isn't about these misogynist black youth out there in hip-hop with their rage, but about something basic in a lot of music that - problematically - attracts me and potentially the reader too. But it wouldn't be as problematic as I want if it isn't the writer's and the prose's rage that is at issue, and potentially the reader's, not just that of the guy I'm writing the review about. (And if you don't want reviews that read like that, why in the hell would you listen to music that sounds like that?*)
By the way, my use of the first person back then was heavily influenced by Mick Jagger's use of it in "Under My Thumb" and "Back Street Girl" and "Street Fighting Man" and so on, the way he made himself problematic. But I wasn't sitting down and going, "Oh, I'll use the first person in the way that Jagger does." I just was someone who'd analyzed a lot of Jagger and then wrote the way I wrote.
*Not a rhetorical question.