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Are you someone who reads album reviews with envy and wonder, someone who fantasizes about parading a vast, encyclopedic knowledge concerning the Velvet Underground or Bootsy’s Rubber Band? Or, alternately, are you someone who snorts disgustedly and says to anyone within earshot, “I can do better than that!”
Either way, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that you can become a rock critic in your own home, on your own time. The bad news will appear at the end of this essay. (Don’t peek!)
Before you actually try to write anything, cultivate some ‘tude. Assume that you know everything that needs knowing about popular music, and that your readers are cretins who aren’t even aware that Stephen Still auditioned to be one of the Monkees. The more obscure facts you can toss around—“No, Harry Nilsson didn’t do the original version of “Without You,” Badfinger did”—the better. At many rock magazines, this arrogance would be called your style.
Next, pick an album to review that you either love or hate, since strong emotions are easy to get across. Don’t bother to actually learn anything about music theory, but it might be handy to get a glossary of terms from a music text, just so you can toss around these words (arpeggio, glissando, thwack, etc.) as if you knew what you were talking about.
Now you’re ready to demonstrate your crucial understand of the critic’s lexicon. Make no mistake, rock critics have their own jargon just like any other discipline—it just has no concrete bearing on the subject. The great thing is that it’s pretty easy. Make that very easy. All it comes down to is making comparisons and the strategic use of adjectives.
I’ll give you an imaginary example: “With a bone-crunching guitar attack supporting insanely catchy melodies, the Illinois trio Deprived Lizard sounds like Black Sabbath meets Abba at a chainsaw massacre.”
Although musicians hate having their music compared to anyone else’s, the truth is that every group sounds like at least one group that came before. Comparing a new group to an old one not only helps the reader get an idea of the band’s sound, it has the added bonus of making you look like pretty hot shit in the process.
For beginners I’d recommend a simple exercise:
A) The Spin Doctors sound like who? (Steve Miller Band)
B) Crash Test Dummies’ singer Brad Whatsisname sounds like who? (Marianne Faithful)
C) Bon Jovi and Pearl Jam sound like who? (each other, harhar)
It starts to get trickier when you’ve got a new band that sounds unique, so more complex comparisons (“like Cowboy Junkies on steroids”) or contrast-comparisons (“imagine George Clinton as produced by the Carpenters”) can be useful.
As for adjectives, I’ll let you in on a little trade secret: The animal kingdom is a great resource. Anything that brings to mind the kingdom insectae is perfect for describing singers (“whining,” “piercing”) or guitar solos (“stinging,” “biting”), while large mammals like elephants are better for the rhythm section (“plodding,” “bottom heavy”).
Next you can try mixing regional and food metaphors (“southern-fried rock”). With practice you graduate to nouns, and the whole process becomes second nature, and clichés become second nature—you try reviewing Doctor John without using the word “gumbo.”
With those crucial skills under your critical belt, master a few key phrases: “one-hit wonder” (as in the Chambers Brothers, the Knack, Milli Vanilli); “soundscape” (anything produced by Brian Eno, Trent Reznor, or Moby); and “product” (the music biz term for album).
The rest is simple: quote a couple of lyrics, and make a passing reference to the group’s other recordings sound as if you’ve actually listened to them.
A final rule is that you must use whatever bad puns the album title might suggest. For example, if Deprived Lizard’s album is called “Wild Lemon Pie” and it sucks, the review should end with something like, “Wild Lemon Pie sounds like it fell off the window sill into a pool of slush.” It may sound obnoxious, but it’s all part of the job—so get used to it.
And what reward can you expect for doing your job well? For starters, lots of free stuff! CDs—tons of them—and free concerts are given to you; if you’re good (or just persistent), you may even get money for writing about the free stuff. But you’ll get nowhere near as much attention as the bands you’re writing about, which is why reviewers can get pretty snide, hold grudges, and generally lord it over the bands. Ever sobbed over a scathing review of your favorite band and wondered, “If he thinks he’s so fucking smart, where his album?” The reviewer is, in fact, very smart for getting paid to air opinions about something as inconsequential as rock music.
This brings me to the bad news I was telling you about: You’ll have to accept the fact that you are a nerd. I haven’t met very many reviewers, but those I have met are definitely not exciting people. At a gathering, a rock critic would huddle by the entertainment center making faces at the music selection. Get two together and they’ll start arguing about session drummers from the 60s (“Oh yes it was Hal Blaine!” “It was Earl Palmer, you asshole!”)
Let’s face it, anyone who can compile a book about there one HUNDRED favorite singles of all time just spent too much time indoors with their Close-n-Play.
If you get worked up over whether the Sex Pistols were better than the Clash, or if Hendrix was better than Clapton, then you are perfect for this business. But you’re not the kind of person anyone would want to be stuck with at a party.
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