rock journalism quotation
Charles Ulrich
original context?
It is most often quoted as either
> Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who
> can't talk for people who can't read.
or
> Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people
> who can't talk, for people who can't read.
I've also seen
> Rock journalism is people who can't write, preparing stories based on
> interviews with people who can't talk, in order to amuse people who
> can't read.
In TRFZB, FZ quoted himself as saying
> "Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing
> interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles
> for people who can't read."
Interviewed by Ben Watson (Mojo, 3/94), FZ quoted himself as saying
> Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who
> can't talk in order to provide articles for people who can't read.
The quotation (in the first form cited above) was reportedly included in
a 1980 book by Linda Botts entitled Loose Talk, so FZ presumably said it
before 1980.
I found one citation with the date 1978. And I found one (in the second
form cited above) with an exact date and publication: Chicago Tribune,
Jan. 18, 1978.
Does anyone here have access to back issues of the Chicago Tribune (on
microfilm in the library, perhaps)?
Does anyone have any audio interviews from circa 1977-1978 in which FZ
defines rock journalism?
--Charles
indifference.
Tomasz Michalak
don't laugh. Whenever you laugh, somebody else must be crying. Good old joke
by Sam Beckett. Just kidding
globual
"indifference." <wheredothebirdsgowhenitrains> wrote in message
news:EtadnR2pa6b...@sysmatrix.net...
Tomasz Michalak
the roles (and ills) of rock/music journalism: two excerpts from an
interview with Simon Frith (available at
http://www.perfectsoundforever.com/v/2004071/features/64)
globual
PSF: You seem to see music journalism as mostly a feedback mechanism for the
record companies. Is that a fair characterization?
SF: Yeah, but I didn't mean to knock critics in particular. I was just
speaking about how it works within the industry structure. I think what
record companies get from critics is that they're the first people to
respond to a record with a degree of independence, given that they're trying
to keep in touch with their readers who they're writing for. Therefore,
record companies get an early indication of whether this record is going to
work or not or whether it's worth promoting or not. I think that's quite
significant as well. On the whole though, I don't think critics have a lot
of influence on what people chose to buy. Hearing a record is much more
important to them than reading about it.
PSF: In that context, you're talking about reviews instead of think pieces?
SF: Yes. Most [music] journalism that you see is day-to-day, week-by-week
where people are responding to something on tour, somebody playing a gig or
somebody's record that's just come out. Think pieces, which help define a
genre, may well become that much rarer.
PSF: What's the purpose of think pieces, then?
SF: I think partly it's to do with being a way for a freelance journalist to
make money by selling a story! (Laughs) You know, fitting in an arts page
and being an intellectual of a certain sort. I think in less cynical terms,
they can be important in kind of articulating the beliefs of a particular
sort of musical community so you have a [written] record of a particular
genre, at a particular time. NME, one of the last remaining music weeklies
in Britain, still articulates more or less what it sees to be the taste of
its readership, what they mean to the history of rock, and what sort of band
they've taken up, and why. They give people in the industry and the audience
a term to talk about. I don't think that happens until after the event,
though.
PSF: What is the importance of those kinds of pieces to the readership?
SF: I don't know. When I was on Melody Maker, we always discovered that from
the readers' point of view, they were infinitely more interested in news and
reviews and upcoming concerts than they were in think pieces. People would
read about artists that they were interested in, but it was unclear whether
they were interested in reading intellectual think pieces about the state of
music. I suspect think pieces about music would have to be considered more
along the lines of think pieces about other art forms rather, rather than in
the context of rock journalism. In other words, if you take a good think
piece journalist, like Bob Christgau in the Village Voice, he would be read
alongside other pieces about literature or art or theatre.
PSF: But you'd also see record reviews in the Voice, too.
SF: Yes, but they seem to me to have a rather different function.
*******************
PSF: In your mind, what qualifies as good journalism?
SF: I think good journalism does two things. One is that it surprises me.
It's like what we were talking about, where a record comes out of the
ambience and strikes you. There's so many words written about music that no
one could possibly read all of it. I would say that with 80% of what I read,
from the first three sentences, I know what the argument is going to be and
then there's no real need to bother. So good writing is something that makes
me want to keep going. You think, "I wonder what they're going to say next?"
or, "I wonder what they mean by this?" It can grab your attention, and that
can be with the style or the content or whatever.
The other thing I find in good music journalism is that you feel that this
person has genuinely responded to a piece of music, and that makes me want
to go and listen to it. That's a lot of music-industry journalism and
personality journalism, but I think that some people can write and make you
feel that something is really happening in the music. That's a much harder
skill to come by.
"Tomasz Michalak" <tmic...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:JpRAe.234541$El.128218@pd7tw1no...
Charles Ulrich
"dancing about architecture")
<http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/07/rock-journalism/>.
They confirm the 1/18/78 Chicago Tribune article, but add the
information that it was quoting a 9/24/77 Toronto Star interview.
> Does anyone have any audio interviews from circa 1977-1978 in which FZ
> defines rock journalism?
it possible that another one predated the one in the Toronto Star,
although 9/24 was pretty early in the fall 1977 tour.
--Charles
Michael Brenna
Diogenes
I've long abandoned. Seems like it was in there.
( I could be wrong, but it's all I can offer...)
Charles Ulrich
wrote:
> Sometime between '77 & '79 there was a Playboy Magazine interview,
> which I've long abandoned. Seems like it was in there. ( I could be
> wrong, but it's all I can offer...)
<http://www.afka.net/Mags/Oui.htm#1979Apr> The quotation doesn't appear
there.
I'm not aware of any Zappa interviews in Playboy before 1982.
This seller
<http://www.ebay.com/itm/PLAYBOY-MARCH-1979-MARIO-ANDRETTI-INTRVW-FRANK-Z
APPA-THE-DEVOS-R-PLANT-/151037691273?pt=Magazines&hash=item232a8c4589>
indicates Zappa content in the 3/79 issue of Playboy, but this page
<http://the-collectors-library.com/pby70s.htm> gives a fairly extensive
list of contents and doesn't mention FZ. Perhaps it was just a record
review.
--Charles