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. 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.
On the other hand, you hardly ever see a rock writer dismissing ALL of a rock movement, except maybe to say something like "grunge is dead" or something equally revolutionary. But you do see self-ordained pious be-bop guardian crits dismissing what they think is "downtown", and you see avant garde losers dismissing be bop.
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).
That was more the exception than the rule. Not that many albums got that kind of treatment. I have old DBs where the be bop guy is trashing Benny Goodman, and the trad jazz guy is bashing Diz. And everyone trashed Monk.
But at least it happened at all then! I rarely ever see that happen now and again, the sad fact is that this comes down to diminishing print space that magazines have (and the amount of space they have to cede to ads more and more). I wonder if this wasn't an issue 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. Best, Jason -- Perfect Sound Forever online music magazine with warped perspectives perfect-sound@furious.com http://www.perfectsoundforever.com