Trying to find interesting content today has been a bit of a challenge thanks to the music corner of the internet’s 24/7 fascination with CMJ clogging up the tubes. And that–coupled with my current location some 2,500 miles away from New York City–is making me beg for the music media’s outsized obsession with this festival to end, or at least abate a bit.
I certainly understand the appeal of seeing a ton of bands day and night, but what does all of this coverage add up to for the reader who doesn’t happen to be in New York City during the second-to-last week of October? Sure, I may (have some repressed anger toward the area I live in, but most of the acts being raved about on every blog every day just don’t matter to me now, and they’re not likely to ever matter, thanks in part to their getting lost in the endless ecstasy. As much as the fellas at Brooklyn Vegan might be totally psyched about Passion Pit, telling me that their live show doesn’t quite have the impact of their recorded output doesn’t mean they’re ever likely to actually play here–and even if they do make their way out to the West, they’ll probably be broken up by this time next year.
I like wearing laminates and feeling important too. But occasionally it helps to think of your audience, and in the end, the “as it happened” photography and attendant breathless commentary (not just on BV, which at least has the excuse of being a blog written primarily for a New York audience, but all over the place) doesn’t mean much to those outside your particular favorite coastal metropolis. The much-written-about singer Lykke Li might have been great at that private show she played for that magazine the other night, but at some point, writing one of the the nearly 300 blog posts about her performance teeters over the line from “chronicling your every move this week for the benefit of your readership” to “feeding your own ego for liking her and being there first, and not much else.” Sure, there are probably a few worthy bands that somehow flew under everyone’s radar until this week, but in the flood of “I was there!!!11one” posts loaded with beardo-laden photos I’ve been forced to wade through since Tuesday, I wouldn’t have noticed.
Idolator’s CMJ 2008 Coverage [Idolator]
I don’t know that I agree completely, at least as far as Idolator’s coverage goes. I thought last year’s coverage was so perfect–funny, informative, and compelling even to a person who didn’t know what CMJ was until then (I didn’t!). And based on Idolator’s coverage last year I discovered several new acts that I really like–acts I otherwise wouldn’t have heard about until much later (when they are no longer cool..). So I, for one, am grateful for the coverage of it–it at least seems to serve a purpose, unlike coverage of other music festivals which ultimately just amounts to “omg you should have been there to see that live” or “god you did not miss a thing.”
I think Idolator does a good job…seems like the coverage is limited to 3 acts per day or so, and only a few sentences about each; that’s all I need to know or care to know.
Anything more than that is like the website Yelp: You 320 reviews of the same mediocre chinese food restaraunt…okay, I get it, you ate some food/saw a mediocre band. Cool. Now stop.
Totally agree.
The day-by-day, this writer saw this band we always talk about, I saw that group we always talk about, ventures well into “who gives a shit?” and “Zzzzzzz” territory.
That said, the months devoted to SXSW coverage is a million times worse.
@AquaLung: Word on the SXSW bit.
@MayhemintheHood: Originally, I had included in this post the caveat that I enjoy Kate’s posts here, but I thought it seemed a little too “stick up for the team”. She largely covers bands I’ve never heard of or, at least, openly mocks Brooklyn Vegan. That’s all I can ask for, really.
@AquaLung: Just came here to say the same thing.
The thing I think that is annoying about the coverage is that everyone is going to the same damn shows, like the Lykke Li performance or the BV showcases which I have read about a billion times (including in the NY Times). There are over 1,000 bands playing the festival but almost all of the blogs are going to the same overhyped shows, idolater included (save maybe coverage of dent may and his ukelele).
As much as everyone whines about the majority of CMJ bands being mediocre, I think most bloggers would be suprised and rewarded by going only to showcases where they didn’t know any of the bands playing beforehand.
Anybody want to take bets about how many posts there will be if Jeff Mangum decides to show up at the Merge showcase tomorrow? A lot, but I will probably enjoy reading all of those at least.
I’d trade ALL the concert reviews on ALL the music blogs for ONE multi-paged, comprehensive “Vice Magazine ‘Do’s & Don’ts’ - CMJ Edition” posting…
One thing that drives me crazy is that New Yorkers think their clubs are good, and most of them are absolute garbage in terms of layout and sound. Our three marquee venues in Athens are better than nearly every venue I’ve ever been to there, and that’s one of the world’s largest cities.
Personally, I see the NYC press as a giant self-aggrandizing circle jerk that perpetuates its “scene” by writing articles that make you feel like you are totally missing out. Sorry, but from the outside looking in, that’s the way much of the rest of the country sees it, too. It’s hard not to see Brooklyn band after Brooklyn band trotted out as OMG without feeling a tad resentful, and I live in a place with a fine music scene.
I don’t know why people should read about it, but I know why you, Dan Gibson, should read about it.
BECAUSE YOU GET TO WRITE ABOUT MUSIC. IT’S YOUR FUCKING JOB.
Do you know how many people would kill to get your job? You’re a goddamned music writer. You get to go to concerts and get free CDs and get to interview musicians, and you even get paid to do so! It’s your responsibility to learn everything you can about music. Have you ever once read an album review of longer than two paragraphs that didn’t make a comparison to some other act? No, which means you better know a whole lot of acts. So if you’re telling me that you have no reason to read CMJ coverage, I’m telling you that you have no reason to be a professional music writer. I will gladly take that gig, and I will gladly read every single bit of useful (i.e. coherent and literate, and not having to read more than one or two articles about any given band/show) CMJ news I can find. (And for the record, I have barely read anything about it, despite living in northern Jersey and going to a CMJ show last night.) Would a movie critic ignore news about indie films? Of course not. To do your job as effectively as possible, you need as much information on musicians as you can get. By choosing to ignore- and complain about- legitimate pieces, you’re ignoring your very choice of careers.
You know, this is the same as when video game critics bitch and moan about their living rooms being full of too many consoles, plastic instruments, and other accessories. Well, I’m sorry, but if you want to give me all of those free games and systems, I will gladly do what you do for a living. I’ll play twelve hours of a horrible game for a a review, I’ll do interviews with boring graphics designers about boring technical specs, and I’ll read every single article on twenty different gaming sites every day, because that will be my damn job.
I’m sure you’re a fine person, Dan Gibson. I’m sure you’re more just arguing that the proliferation of stupid/bragging articles needs to cease- that the news needs to be filtered in such a way that the important information rises to the top. But please, stop bitching.
And by the way, Freezepop was incredible.
!!!!!11!!one!!
@kicking222: Hmmm. I have been doing this for a month now and I have yet to receive one free CD and get into one free show.
Anyway, Dan’s from Arizona, and part of his consternation (and I could be misquoting him here) is that he DOESN’T get to see many of these acts, and, furthermore, he finds them musically or geographically irrelevant to him.
I think what Dan is asking here is this: is CMJ coverage news? Should he care about it if he doesn’t find it relevant?
Not to straw man anybody, you’re saying that it’s his job to read CMJ coverage because he is a music journalist, and that perhaps you could do better. Maybe you could and maybe you couldn’t do a better job as a music journalist, but that seems to be a different issue. I just don’t detect the perceived whining tone that sets you off, and it’s foolhardy to suggest that Dan is being a poor music journalist for not wanting to ingest every morsel of banal, self-referential, and repetitive CMJ coverage. There is a lot more going on in the music world than just the CMJ Music Marathon, fun event though it is. So, you say “it’s your responsibility to learn everything you can about music”…what if Dan IS learning everything he can about music, just not in freaking CMJ Music Marathon write-ups? 99.99999999999% of the musical knowledge of the world has absolutely nothing to do with the CMJ Music Marathon, a once-a-year event, but Dan’s inability to find CMJ coverage relevant to his musical life somehow disqualifies him from writing about music? That’s as myopic as it is absurd. There are so many more musical stories being told around the world; an inability to find emotional resonance in one of them should not be a litmus test as to one’s fitness as a music journalist. I doubt you would think the same thing if one of us wrote this about a Polka convention or a yearly gathering of gamelan orchestras, but what would make that any different?
I think it’s absolutely reasonable to suggest that most CMJ coverage is banal. So is most SXSW coverage. Hell, most music coverage is banal, and we’ve put up our fair share of it in our day. Hell, we’ve reveled in it (I have interviewed two computers in the last two weeks!). At some point, music journalism becomes a giant echo chamber within which the same bands are covered in the same manner by the same types of journalists. Hey, I read most of the CMJ coverage. Dan doesn’t care. The guy still knows tons about music. He can still write about it. He’s simply reacting against this and suggesting that this big yearly event is possibly not germane to him in any way.
And wouldn’t it be nice to read a review for once that DIDN’T reference other bands and still gave you a sense of what the music sounded like?
I’m not sure how reading about CMJ coverage makes you a better music journalist.
There’s tons of bands playing in towns all across America tonight. And they all have sounds and plenty of stories to tell.
To pretend like any one festival is the center of the universe is part of what’s wrong with the myopic world of music journalism these days.
The sad part is those who are most under this illusion are the same ones put in charge of feeding it back to us.
@AquaLung: You and me are like THIS on this one.
@Lucas Jensen:
>There is a lot more going on in the music world than just the CMJ Music Marathon, fun event though it is.
Damn right. I am the EIC of a national music magazine based in NYC, and I have not been to a single CMJ event, and have no plans to attend any.
@Lucas Jensen: You make fine points, my friend. I have a few quick comments, simply because I don’t feel like writing another diatribe.
First, I don’t feel as if I could do a better job- in fact, I almost certainly could not. I’m not a particularly good writer; unlike my best friend, who has 70,000 songs in his iTunes and an encyclopedic knowledge of everything from East Coast rap to alt-country, the odds of me ever cutting it in your industry are slim-to-none. The point was that I (and many others) would gladly take the job, and that I would do all that is required from one holding such a position.
Second, I made clear that I don’t think Dan, nor anyone else, should be subjected to the self-referential, repetitive coverage; I’m just as against that sort of writing as anyone. But there’s a distinct difference between ignoring 99% of articles (and digesting the 1% that actually have something new or interesting to say) and ignoring 100% of articles.
Third, as to your last question: Absolutely. I think that’s a difficult endeavor, but I’m sure it’s possible, and I’d love to see it.
Finally, as to your first question: Yes, CMJ coverage, in general, is news. Most of the specific coverage is useless, but some of it is not. That’s what I- personally, speaking from a non-professional standpoint- would expect music journalists to at least try to consume. To say that this marathon/showcase/clusterfuck has nothing to do with someone whose job is to write about music is ridiculous. Maybe some band that played a well-regarded show in SoHo is coming to Arizona next week, or maybe there’s a well-written article on a credible blog about some small-time group that sounds a lot like Dan’s favorite band, but in avoiding all coverage, Dan will never hear them.
Look, in the end, I’m not trying to be overly critical (dear god, no pun intended) of Dan, or you, or any other music writer; obviously, if I didn’t generally appreciate Idolator’s content, I wouldn’t read the site every day. But, if I may reiterate, I think it’s Dan’s job- and your job, and my job, and the job of anyone who wants to stay informed- to (if nothing else) attempt to wade through the crap and not completely disregard all coverage.
Finally plus one, this was not nearly as quick as I’d imagined. In fact, it was much longer than my original comment. Clearly, all of my points can be disputed by just stating that I’m an idiot.
Really? You have more time to comment on CMJ articles and coverage than you do to actually go out an see a couple of bands. What a bunch of jaded ex-music industry butt heads you are. Go see some bands, enjoy yourselves, and get a flippin’ life already. Jeez. I mean WOW!
@Dan Gibson: I appreciate your follow-up, and looking back, I apologize if my tone was too harsh. I certainly stand by everything I said, but I do wish it’d been stated a bit differently. I think that I have seen, as you alluded to, one too many articles where someone in a culture-related industry I’d die to be part of (games, music, film) moans about how much they dislike what they have to do for their jobs; the truth is that you (this is the universal “you”, not the Dan Gibson “you”) don’t have to do anything at all- if you don’t like your industry, get out and let someone who will appreciate the opportunity in.*
Anyway, I completely agree that the amount of CMJ coverage far, far outweighs the amount of CMJ interest, and that most of the coverage is, as you put succinctly, “boring and lacking in actual content”. I’ve mainly stuck to the content on this site, Stereogum, and the NY Times, which I think have combined to paint a rather good portrait of the event without veering into over-saturation, poor writing, or bloggingheads trying to force their preferred bands down readers’ throats. (If I wanted that, I’d read Pitchfork… ba-dump-ching.) I think that what I most objected to in your original article is the assumption that all info about CMJ was irrelevant, which I feel that you’ve clarified as not being the case.
Regarding your point when you referenced my video game parallel, I don’t think that’s necessarily the case- IGN does coverage of the Independent Games Festival, but they don’t sacrifice coverage of other games and events; on the other hand, I haven’t seen much in the way of important non-CMJ music news this week with the exceptions of GnR, and perhaps the Lil Wayne and Jennifer Hudson stories. There’s certainly been lots said about “Shackler’s Revenge”, and I doubt there would be many more stories about it during any other given week. Of course, this whole point is subjective- it’s hard to say if other stories are getting overlooked, and it would depend on what news broke during any given year’s CMJ.
This is becoming a bit of a ramble, so I just want to thank you for actually examining what I had to say. If the universe has learned anything from this little discussion, perhaps it’s that we should approach music (and journalism related to music) with an open mind and the want to hear/learn more- and that I shouldn’t tell you (or anyone) how to do your (their) job.
*Aside: I know what it’s like to get what I thought would be a dream job, as I used to do play-by-play ESPN.com; while it ended up not being all it should have been, the problems were not because I hated watching and reading about sports- those were the best parts- but because of issues with management, getting paid very little while receiving no benefits, and living in middle-of-nowhere Connecticut. I never once bitched about what they told me to watch until the week before I was fired- and not just did I deserve to get fired, I was actually subconsciously hoping to get fired so I wouldn’t have to quit, thus confronting the fact that my dream job had become a nightmare.
I haven’t heard anything about CMJ this year outside of this blog and the hundreds of promotional emails I get that seemingly operate on the premise that I think it is a massive cultural event and not just some music festival that has no relevance to me.
@johnnyrotten: I don’t know what I’ve been doing the past couple of days, but it sure does feel like I’ve been out seeing bands…
Granted I haven’t always been enjoying myself, but we do offer firsthand coverage here at Idolator, however limited and curmudgeonly it may be. Also, Dan lives in Arizona so I don’t really see how he COULD be at CMJ…hmmm…read more closely next time!
There’s nothing wrong with critiquing or something, despite what everyone else in the music blog world seems to think.
*critiquing or questioning
@kicking222: Thanks for your perspective on this. I recognize that no one wants to hear whining from people who make their living in a field people would be thrilled to be a part of. To be honest, that wasn’t my intention.
In this line of work (and in my music “day job”), the ideal of learning everything everything there is to know about music is impossible. Naturally, journalists (if that’s what you want to call them) gravitate to a portion of the business that either they find interesting or are compelled to cover by their employer. In my case, I tend to work on a more “national/global” level covering both musical and business trends. To be frank, I’m thankful to be in the particular part of the business I’m in because the sort of endless championing of a parade of disposable “indie” acts (remember how excited we all were about the Black Kids last year?) doesn’t have much value for me as a music fan, either. As far as my own particular West Coast bias goes, I find Coachella coverage redundant in largely the same way (”Daft Punk were awesome! Here are a bunch of pictures!”), although at least two thirds of the bands will still be around the next year.
Maybe I did a lousy job articulating my point (which might prove the point that you could be a better music journalist than I), but my point was that the volume of CMJ coverage doesn’t at all match up to actual public interest; instead catering to the particular whims of the authors. In the case of CMJ, there are (at least) fifty blogs and websites ecstatically covering bands that might not Soundscan fifty full length albums over the course of the next year. That fact won’t make them “good” or “bad”, but it should make a writer or an editor think twice before running a seemingly endless stream of previews, reviews and recaps. To borrow from your video game press reference, if Gamespot and IGN spent a month covering an indie games festival almost entirely dedicated to games on consoles you can’t purchase in your area or barely exist at all while at the same time, a new Zelda, Grand Theft Auto and Halo were hitting stores, you might wonder what they were thinking. Heading back to the music world and CMJ, it certainly doesn’t help that most of the coverage is deathly boring and lacking in actual content.
I appreciate your point, “kicking222″, and I’ll try to have a better attitude next year if CMJ and I are both still around in this business. Still, I can’t help but think the time and energy could be better spent and slightly less self-absorbed.
FYI, everyone, no one in New York reads or cares about CMJ coverage either.
I love the link for “Idolator’s CMJ 2008 Coverage” at the end of this post! Beautiful!
Hi Dan, some honest answers to the question posed in the title of this post:
1) the same reason why someone in New York, like me, would be interested in reading a post about how someone in Arizona doesn’t want to read CMJ coverage. I agree I didn’t gain anything from this post at all, but I’m interested, as a music fan, in knowing what other music fans are thinking.
2) if your sole reason for not wanting to read what people thought of Passion Pit’s performance is that they’ll probably never come to Arizona, then that would apply to show reviews of a large number of independent bands, CMJ or not, and that would be rather unfortunate because there are a lot of small, good bands here and elsewhere that perhaps will never make it to Arizona, but at least based on the show review you could decide to explore their music or that review could maybe shape your decision should you happen to be somewhere where they’re playing.
3) I actually do want to know if the line at Pianos was long because if I didn’t make it to that show, that helps me visualize how it might’ve been. Truth is, for a lot of the CMJ and non-CMJ shows where smaller and newer bands play, the turn-out can be a challenge, and I feel nothing but love for the bands who brave it; but, the lines are always a good indication of what shows drew what kind of a turn-out, which can be telling, and you just have to figure out why, even if it may make no sense to you.
4) in the end, the responsibility of finding and reading more useful CMJ or any other show coverage, perhaps of bands you hadn’t heard of before, falls on the reader. There are maybe a 100 music blogs that seem to dominate, but there are a thousand others who have their independent voices, and it would be nice if readers like you tried to search them out.
5) I personally hope blogs continue to review shows because I find performances to be central to music, and to me show reviews can be as important as album reviews, especially since I’ve found that there are a lot of bands that are exceptional live, but not on record.
@Lucas Jensen: I’m sorry, but I find this kind of sentiment to be totally unnecessary. As someone who loves experiencing a city/town/place through its culture of performance, music or not, I and several people I know in New York dream about traveling the country (and beyond) specifically with the goal of checking out local venues, bands, scene, etc. This is something I try to do no matter where I travel. Your venues might be better designed than New York’s, but so what. New Yorkers can only make a judgment based on what we have. In our everyday-life of concert-going, how would we benefit from knowing this one venue in Athens is better than this other one in New York? Besides, the attachments I do have with certain venues aren’t because of their sound and layout; the attachments are entirely tied to the vibe, the kind of crowd that frequent the place, the kind of bands that tend to play there, the booking style, perhaps even the kind of people who work there, and my prior experiences of having had a fun time at the venue. And yes, Brooklyn has a ton of bands, and I don’t even know if it’s a good thing, since it makes everything so much more competitive. A lot of them are decent, if not good, but I’m sure that for every one Brooklyn band hailed as the next big thing, there are twenty that are trashed if not ignored. I don’t understand the resentment. It’s like being resentful of France for having too many good authors. To state the obvious, why not enjoy them all.
the inevitable blog retort: [flavorwire.com]
@bugsbark: I was being a bit of a brat, and I love teasing NYCers about the self-perpetuating cabal that they have created, though you bring up good points about not every band there making it. That is absolutely true, but plenty of bands have moved to NYC and made it when they struggled for years in other cities. Does that mean they sucked before? Nope. It meant they were in a city with a disproportionate amount of blogs, press, etc.
@Silverfuture: I apologize for that. I should have noted that he’s an aspiring journalist, and a great one at that. The fact that he can effortlessly rattle off extensive amounts of music knowledge certainly contributes to his writing, though that in no means makes the writing.
Yeah… that sentence made less sense if you don’t know the guy. With that said, he’s a great dude- you should know him.
@kicking222: Most of my other points have already been made, for example, the fact that so much of the CMJ blog chatter is so light on actual content above and beyond “this band played!!”
This sentence of yours stuck out for me though:
I’m not a particularly good writer; unlike my best friend, who has 70,000 songs in his iTunes and an encyclopedic knowledge of everything from East Coast rap to alt-country…”
I currently have about 50 gigs of music on my hard drive and a fairly extensive knowledge of (some) music, but that doesn’t make me a good writer.
I am very much outside NYC. I live in Belfast. I’ve been to CMJ twice, so I do read some of the coverage out of interest and a sort of wistful longing to be back in New York. I’m also in a band at the minute, and we’re starting to get some industry attention - now - here’s my point. I really get the feeling that nowadays, across the music press, a music writer’s purpose is not to write for the everyday music fan or average punter, but instead to write for the industry. If promotion in the music press is deemed successful, the evidence will be in the musician’s inbox the next day. Emails from managers, booking agents, record label representatives, other artists wanting to tour or collaborate, photographers or designers offering to help you with yr ‘brand’ - the industry comes knocking once you get press. It’s maybe obvious to you guys, but for ages, I thot the point of being in a magazine or on a blog was to reach yr fanbase. But it isn’t. Maybe because music fans either don’t really read music press anymore or even worse - honest-to-god music fans, in the large, do not exist anymore. But the industry exists. Incidentally, all the industry people who’ve been in contact with my band over the past couple of weeks made sure to send emails last week saying ‘I’m off to NYC for CMJ, we’ll talk again when I get back!’
i think idolator’s coverage has been good. most blog coverage has been pretty lame. the content is boring. the writing style is especially boring. i’d rather read posts about what the writer ate between sets, or how many free, sponsored drinks were consumed. something different.
at the very least, bloggers should remember to include a few links to songs/myspace pages in their posts. that’s the whole point…turning people on to new music. just embed a track here or there. make it easy on your readers. if i wanted plain text without media or hyperlinks i’d read the newspaper.
at the very least, this cmj coverage has been valuable because it allows other people to do the tedious work of sifting through the heaps of marginally talented bands to find the few bright spots. that is a task new yorkers happily accept, and one i happily give to them.