on 3/18/03 12:37 PM, Perfect Sound Forever at perfect-sound@furious.com wrote:
skip Heller wrote:
on 3/18/03 11:56 AM, Perfect Sound Forever at perfect-sound@furious.com wrote: Also, the technology of the time made it harder for fans to just start printing their own zines. The Xerox machine probably did more for indie music than we'll ever know.
Very true but even after that happened, it was primarily rock zines and not jazz zines or even much of other styles that were being covered. Thinking about this myself, I just wonder if the whole DIY ethic of punk music carried over easily to writing/publishing angle of it.
I don't think it did if you mean in terms of jazz writing -- skip h http://www.skipheller.com . Jazz reportage is measurably older than rock journalism, so the recipe was more firmly in place. The style was more firmly establish.
Even to this day, how many print jazz zines are there out there besides Signal To Noise? I'm sure I'm forgetting some but I don't think that there's many. Hope I'm wrong though.
There are a few, but just try finding 'em. WIRE & DOWNBEAT still rule, largely because they're not hard to find.
For rock, I get the feeling that there's a fear of appearing 'unhip.' As such, if you're a garage rock fan and you don't care for gangsta rap, you don't want to look like an old fogey by slamming the whole musical style in print. Pop is youth-orientated/driven so I think editors are conscious that their writers don't make the publication seem old-fashioned (unless of course you're publishing a garage zine for instance).
I think that's true with anything dominated by young people.
... if editors would think that it'd be more important to devote the space to more reviews rather than multiple perspectives on a few controversial releases.
They might do it for Krall or Norah. But for Matthew Shipp, I don't think so.