Remember when you left school or college with dreams? Can you recall the mountain of applications you made for jobs you wanted? How long was it before the rejection letters piled up along with the household bills, and you considered getting a temporary job to tide you over? Remember telling yourself that you would continue to apply for jobs you wanted around this temporary job? The first few weeks you would check the papers and tear out any possibilities and put them to one side. Remember thinking you would get around to sending off for the application forms? Remember coming home from your temporary job every night too weary and discouraged and disillusioned to do anything but watch TV?
And then ten years go by, fifteen years fly by and your temporary job is now permanent. You are comfortable. You can pay your bills and go on holiday. You can buy a flat screen tele even though your old one, although enormously fat in comparison, was perfectly fine. You don't look for those jobs you wanted any more.
And one day, quite by accident, a job advert catches your eye. It is one of those jobs. It asks for someone with 10 years experience in that field. You think to yourself, if I hadn't spent my life working all that time, I could really have made a concerted effort to get that job I wanted all those years ago... and now it is too late.
Experience is everything. Make the right choice and remember when you make a decision that you will not have any regrets.
Regret only not making a choice.
Wednesday 25 November 2009
Tuesday 17 November 2009
The fucking NME
NME Editor Krissi Murison said this week about their current issue that contains the ‘best 50 albums of the first decade of the 21st century’: "This (list) is the definitive word on the greatest albums of the 00s - as voted for by everyone who helped make music brilliant this decade."
Can you believe the arrogance of this deluded journalist? She uses words like "definitive word" and "everyone who helped make music brilliant". Does she really believe ‘everyone’ is actually included? I just cannot express fully my disgust. The music press’s denial that any music of any quality is created that they do not know about, is unbelievably narrow-minded and short-sighted.
Now don’t get me wrong, it is not the chart that I find so distasteful, it is the way they feed it to us. We all know that these lists of best ofs and greatest of all times, are just horseshit, and no-one will ever be fully satisfied with the entire list (I for one cannot believe Tricky is not there, 3 truly original albums and not a sniff; Kate Bush’s wondrous return in 05 not mentioned; no Tokyo Police Club or Bombay Bicycle Club; no Art Brut, no Frank Black, no Aimee Mann, no Born Ruffians, no Red Light Company, nothing by Sigur Ros, no Modest Mouse; did I dream that Kings of Leon released 4 albums that didn’t make the list?; Antony and the Johnsons anyone? Gilbert O’Sullivan? And these are the bands you will know.. there are dozens more that are ‘very’ independent and you will never have heard of them)…
I’m sure you will all have a list longer than this with missing persons (why not comment below to vent that anger?). However, this is not my point. The problem I have is that ‘they’ think they are the dictators of good taste, that their ears are permanently tuned into what is great, that they are somehow contributing to this current cultural renaissance we now all enjoy (!). They haven’t got a clue, it is just business, it is just money, sometimes, somehow something good will see the light of day, but that is not by their judgement. They are so busy trying to create the scene, that they do not really know what is going on at all. They are like a freight train, full of their own self-important faulty produce, stuck on a predetermined course, unable to move from their tracks – great things are happening on either side but they cannot divert from their destination, so instead of stopping and listening, they plough on… and as they have the loudest voice (their steam whistle is heard for miles) everyone is forced to listen to them, but their voice is shrill and painful now. So you know what, I am putting my hands over my ears and going la la la la la la la la la.
From their list, I have left the ones I have enjoyed over the last decade below. By the way I am not saying that the other artists that made the list and I have deleted are not worthy (these things are of course very subjective), but I do object very strongly to being told that everyone who helped make music brilliant this decade, voted for this list: the BBC says that "Bands such as Radiohead (at number ten and fourteen) and Arctic Monkeys (at number four), plus record producers and label bosses were among those who cast their votes." Oh that’s right, ‘the business’ voting for themselves, holding each others’ willies as usual. Step out of the light ladies and gentlemen, you are standing in puddles of your own piss and you stink.
Remember that me and you helped make music brilliant this decade and always have done, the fact that most people will never hear what we do or say does not make it any less interesting or worthy. I have said it before and I repeat, stop buying into the false values perpetuated by the media and the music business! We will always be here and we will always write and play and sing. They will wither and die when we stop paying attention.
Edited top 50:
1. The Strokes - Is This It
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell
7. Arcade Fire - Funeral
13. The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
17. Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise
30. Elbow – 'Asleep In The Back'
31. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
32. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
43. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Can you believe the arrogance of this deluded journalist? She uses words like "definitive word" and "everyone who helped make music brilliant". Does she really believe ‘everyone’ is actually included? I just cannot express fully my disgust. The music press’s denial that any music of any quality is created that they do not know about, is unbelievably narrow-minded and short-sighted.
Now don’t get me wrong, it is not the chart that I find so distasteful, it is the way they feed it to us. We all know that these lists of best ofs and greatest of all times, are just horseshit, and no-one will ever be fully satisfied with the entire list (I for one cannot believe Tricky is not there, 3 truly original albums and not a sniff; Kate Bush’s wondrous return in 05 not mentioned; no Tokyo Police Club or Bombay Bicycle Club; no Art Brut, no Frank Black, no Aimee Mann, no Born Ruffians, no Red Light Company, nothing by Sigur Ros, no Modest Mouse; did I dream that Kings of Leon released 4 albums that didn’t make the list?; Antony and the Johnsons anyone? Gilbert O’Sullivan? And these are the bands you will know.. there are dozens more that are ‘very’ independent and you will never have heard of them)…
I’m sure you will all have a list longer than this with missing persons (why not comment below to vent that anger?). However, this is not my point. The problem I have is that ‘they’ think they are the dictators of good taste, that their ears are permanently tuned into what is great, that they are somehow contributing to this current cultural renaissance we now all enjoy (!). They haven’t got a clue, it is just business, it is just money, sometimes, somehow something good will see the light of day, but that is not by their judgement. They are so busy trying to create the scene, that they do not really know what is going on at all. They are like a freight train, full of their own self-important faulty produce, stuck on a predetermined course, unable to move from their tracks – great things are happening on either side but they cannot divert from their destination, so instead of stopping and listening, they plough on… and as they have the loudest voice (their steam whistle is heard for miles) everyone is forced to listen to them, but their voice is shrill and painful now. So you know what, I am putting my hands over my ears and going la la la la la la la la la.
From their list, I have left the ones I have enjoyed over the last decade below. By the way I am not saying that the other artists that made the list and I have deleted are not worthy (these things are of course very subjective), but I do object very strongly to being told that everyone who helped make music brilliant this decade, voted for this list: the BBC says that "Bands such as Radiohead (at number ten and fourteen) and Arctic Monkeys (at number four), plus record producers and label bosses were among those who cast their votes." Oh that’s right, ‘the business’ voting for themselves, holding each others’ willies as usual. Step out of the light ladies and gentlemen, you are standing in puddles of your own piss and you stink.
Remember that me and you helped make music brilliant this decade and always have done, the fact that most people will never hear what we do or say does not make it any less interesting or worthy. I have said it before and I repeat, stop buying into the false values perpetuated by the media and the music business! We will always be here and we will always write and play and sing. They will wither and die when we stop paying attention.
Edited top 50:
1. The Strokes - Is This It
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell
7. Arcade Fire - Funeral
13. The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
17. Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise
30. Elbow – 'Asleep In The Back'
31. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
32. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
43. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Friday 13 November 2009
Advice for younger writers
When you write something and give it to someone else to evaluate, if you are told it is not good enough, write something better.
It is easy to take criticism as a fault of the reader, that they don't 'get' your work. You can end up in a viscious cycle of giving out your work, getting bad reviews, blaming the reviewer, sending out the same work, getting bad reviews, blame the reviewer.
Stop it.
Learn from what you have created and move on; re-read your work. If you can't do any better then chances are, you are really not that good.
If you write more and receive more criticism, keep writing. One day you will have two things: a mass of work, and a plotted history of how you got where you are today. This is very important because it proves that you never gave up, and probably that work number 1 is not as good as work number 1000. You will see your progression and your improvement. This is your life lesson and it is something you taught yourself... if you still are a struggling unknown, consider the lesson you have given yourself your prize. Consider also that you really are a writer.
If you gave up at number 1, you are not a writer and were certainly not good enough.
Success is the point at which you creat something that speaks to someone else, even if that is just one person. Feel happy with what you have made, because no-one in the world could have done it but you. Never judge your own success in terms of who 'makes it', their work is no better than yours, it just landed on the right desk... a desk owned by someone with no real idea of what is good or bad, just what can sell.
If you only write to sell, you are not a writer, you are a salesman. This is fine as long as you are honest with yourself about your true intentions.
Now write something good.
It is easy to take criticism as a fault of the reader, that they don't 'get' your work. You can end up in a viscious cycle of giving out your work, getting bad reviews, blaming the reviewer, sending out the same work, getting bad reviews, blame the reviewer.
Stop it.
Learn from what you have created and move on; re-read your work. If you can't do any better then chances are, you are really not that good.
If you write more and receive more criticism, keep writing. One day you will have two things: a mass of work, and a plotted history of how you got where you are today. This is very important because it proves that you never gave up, and probably that work number 1 is not as good as work number 1000. You will see your progression and your improvement. This is your life lesson and it is something you taught yourself... if you still are a struggling unknown, consider the lesson you have given yourself your prize. Consider also that you really are a writer.
If you gave up at number 1, you are not a writer and were certainly not good enough.
Success is the point at which you creat something that speaks to someone else, even if that is just one person. Feel happy with what you have made, because no-one in the world could have done it but you. Never judge your own success in terms of who 'makes it', their work is no better than yours, it just landed on the right desk... a desk owned by someone with no real idea of what is good or bad, just what can sell.
If you only write to sell, you are not a writer, you are a salesman. This is fine as long as you are honest with yourself about your true intentions.
Now write something good.
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