Jon Pareles: Making The Rest Of Us Look Bad - Idolator Comments

Jon Pareles: Making The Rest Of Us Look Bad

VanillaXtraDry — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 10:36:23 EDT

when you're a 79 year old music critic for a major national newspaper, i think god forgives you for bringing a notepad to a show.

VanillaXtraDry

Jon Pareles: Making The Rest Of Us Look Bad

JZ13 — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:26:31 EDT

Thank you, Daesu. I've taken notes for reviews at plenty of shows. Am I really that annoying? I try to stay to the back (because I'm also really tall and hate people complaining about me blocking their view) and be as inconspicuous as possible. I fail to believe this is 1/1000th as annoying as the glare from countless camera phones.

JZ13

Jon Pareles: Making The Rest Of Us Look Bad

WHAD1 — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:59:42 EDT

I first noticed him doing this at a Mekons show at the Knitting Factory in 1989. It's certainly safe to say few critics are capable of notating music (and that many of the ones who can are probably not as readable as Pareles).

Taking notes does detract from the visceral experience of being at a show, no doubt. But the same goes for sporting events.

WHAD1

Jon Pareles: Making The Rest Of Us Look Bad

Chris Molanphy — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:48:03 EDT

I've bumped into Pareles at a couple of shows, and he's the nicest music nerd you'd ever want to meet. Years of, no doubt, crazy VIP treatment as the Times's chief pop critic don't seem to have made him an asshole, which is kind of amazing. Probably the best Boomer critic out there (and he manages to hide his Boomerness fairly well).

Chris Molanphy

Jon Pareles: Making The Rest Of Us Look Bad

Dickdogfood — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:50:48 EDT

Notepads aren't merely an aid to memory, though: often times, by writing about something in real time, you're also making yourself analyze what's going on in a way you sorta can't after the fact. (nb: I've never actually done this at show, but I do take notes when I visit buildings I write about, and I figure in this case what's true for a tourist trap experience is true for a concert experience.)

Dickdogfood

Jon Pareles: Making The Rest Of Us Look Bad

DaeSu — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:47:39 EDT

Ya know, in another life, I was a music critic for a metro daily, and lemme tell you, you need to take notes. It's not just the setlist you have to recall. It's between-song banter, audience hijinks, anything special. I never cared how many folks in the audience bugged me ("Who ya writin' for? You better give the band a good review!) or even when I was even called out by musicians who noticed me scribbling away.

Notes are a part of the job, and you'd better get it right because, when you screw up, it's the colossal nerds who will nail you every time.

Big props to Jon Pareles!

DaeSu

Jon Pareles: Making The Rest Of Us Look Bad

Al Shipley — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:58:29 EDT

Maybe it's just because I'm a colossal nerd and I've been memorizing setlists and writing them down as soon as I get home from shows since I was 16, but I'm always perplexed by writers who bring notepads to a show. If you are going to be that big of a nerd, you should at least train your memory well enough to not have to do that and look like such a nerd at shows. I'm sure you miss more details of the show by spending half the time looking at a piece of paper than you'd forget by not writing anything down until after.

Al Shipley

Jon Pareles: Making The Rest Of Us Look Bad

Catbirdseat — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:29:49 EDT

Anyone who bitches about not being able to find a WiFi hot spot or from here on out is officially fired from music criticism.

Whew! Good thing I'm not a real music critic, or I'd be in real trouble!

Catbirdseat