The Dago Dish: DeSalvo v. Rock Journalism
Frank Zappa declared that, “Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.”
There is more truth in this blind statement than there could ever be in anything I’ll ever write. Rock music is such a relative art form. Some kids love Green Day. Others enjoy Animal Collective. Your cup of tea is just that: YOUR CUP OF TEA. For this reason, I have decided to write about what I want to write about. If you have a problem with that, tear my writing apart with hyper intelligent quips regarding my lack of knowledge on the subjects I am assigned to write about. Do it. That’s what’s so hypnotically attractive about free will! You don’t have to like it. In fact, I encourage you to hate it. Your standards of excellence in rock journalism are obviously far too ambitious for you to dabble any longer with the swill I [Chris De Salvo] insist on concocting on a weekly basis!
They don’t pay us to sling our opinions in your collective direction. That’s fine. I don’t do it for the money. I enjoy it. I may be God awful, but they’ve given me a chance to put that underachievement on display. I’m grateful for this, and will continue to do this. However, if I find myself at a Grand Duchy concert and notice my eye lids are moving over my eyes like the Nazis over Poland in 1939, I’m going to write about it. I don’t care if it’s Frank Black, or Kurt Cobain’s corpse-come-back-to-life. If something entirely sucks, I’m going to use my [very] humble opinion to explain why. This is my “job.” This is why my tickets were comped. I’m not afraid to insist that aging legends are human. I love Frank Black. He seems like a decent enough guy, but not everything he touches turns to gold. In fact, his latest band is about as exciting to experience live as waiting for an amoeba to tap dance with the fervor of one Fred Astaire.
Lester Bangs once said that New Wave music was “shit,” because it was “just too good.” Not everyone reading the Village Voice in February 1981 was going to agree with what Bangs so defiantly proclaimed. Does that mean he shouldn’t have scribbled such a bold statement? Hell, no. He wrote from the heart, and though many of his works were littered with contradictions, most readers eventually fell in love with his oft-odd interpretation of what a “music review” actually consisted of.
Hunter S. Thompson often made shit up. If you’ve done any kind of research on the gonzo-bard, you’d know this. He was rumored to have been able to drink an alcoholic army of wife-beaters under the table, and later insisted most of those decadent stories were insanely embellished. Regardless, he wrote in a stream-of-consciousness manner that revealed the voice of a sensitive mad-man who hardly had a credible grasp on the way the world worked. He simply told his story, based on the loose-outlines his editors provided him. This got him into trouble more often than it filled his perpetually empty pockets, but it made him a memorable scribe in his own right.
Let me get something straight, before I plunge forth with my less-than-mediocre vocabulary, and elementary-level prose: I am not comparing myself to these two brilliant, troubled, deceased journalists. Are you kidding me? That notion makes me chuckle. Not laugh, chuckle. It’s that ridiculous.
The truth is, I’d never aspire to be either of these men because they hardly achieved anything solid. Sure, they amassed meteor-sized bodies of work, respectively. Yes, each were mentioned in songs by respected artists, depicted on the big screen by great actors (Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Johnny Depp), spoken of more as folk-lore than actual human beings, et al… That’s all great. That’s fine, but writing isn’t something that paid off for either of them in the long run. Neither died with much of a net worth, and though money isn’t every thing, it’s certainly been on everyone’s mind since the stock market did a nose dive into a water-less deep end.
Writing is little more than a nice exercise for people (like… me?) who have a difficult time developing a full-length story to produce over a great deal of time. Or, it’s a glorified practice of escapism for relatively young men and woman looking to prolong their looming adulthood well past the college-grad deadline. “True writers” want to produce something that glorifies their voice: A screen play. A novel. A musical. These things take time, and sometimes it’s easier to just bang out a few “concert reviews” for the Hell of it. Why? They don’t mean anything. They are informative dissertations on the events of random evenings during which rock and roll bands attempt to impress those who forked over $8 to see them. That’s all.
It’s often assumed rock “critics” are merely supposed to produce an objective review of the concert in question without an ominous jolt of editorializing, or personal angst. Sorry. Can’t do that. Won’t do that. Why? I don’t write for people who adhere to the “standards” overachieving high school seniors pledge allegiance to as they strive for Valedictorian status. I write for me. That’s the one thing I have in common with the aforementioned journalism-legands. That, and that alone makes me happy. If you’re less-than-happy after reading this column, I don’t care. If you’re rolling your eyes because you think I think I’m better than you, congratulations! You’re not alone.
…and NO gay jokes to be found! At least on my All Time Low review I got called a “fag” a couple of times. Chris, you haven’t made it til they call you a fag (thought butt buddy, etc. will do as well).
Who is this guy (girl) llooppss? Cracking me up! I thought hardcore flaming on a blog/messageboard went out around 2002 or 2003. Am I wrong?
prodigy are lame, pixies are lame, spin is lame, rollingstone is lame, actors are lame, talking about actors is SUPER lame, defensiveness is lame, behaving like a 13-year old is lame, cutesy-bullshit is lame, you’re lame, your “writing” is lame, your opinions are lame, your self-aggrandising is lame, not doing things well is lame.>>>
Wait, wait, wait… you forgot to add “bickering on a blog on a Saturday night at 3am” is lame, too.
And last I figured, llooppss, your rebuttals and retorts all file under self aggrandizing, too.
It works both ways.
Bottom line: Chill.
You do win. Honestly. You do….
… So…… Are we getting married, or…. ?
P.S. You know how I know that I suck? I wait tables EVERY WEEKEND… Which is to say… GO BACK TO SLEEP SO I CAN GO ENTIRELY PLEASE PEOPLE WHO ARE SMART ENOUGH TO HAVE REAL JOBS AND SEND THE CRAB CAKES BACK.
P.P.S. Do you teach a class in being awesome, or… ?
you don’t have to “know all”, you could just start with the most basic understanding of the topic on which you’re writing.
“If something entirely sucks, I’m going to use my [very] humble opinion to explain why.”
I have explained why your writing “entirely sucks”, and all you’ve done is tell me I’m smart. Is that how I “entirely suck”? by doing what you say you do, only much, much better?
Give up. cut the see-through, self-deprecating bullshit and either learn how to write, or go find some teenagers who you can impress by talking kinda fast. this is boring. you are boring. i win. it’s obvious. and i don’t even care… this is easier then shooting fish in a barrel, it’s just shooting a barrel. you have no legs to stand on, and i’m getting a little embarrassed for you.
prodigy are lame, pixies are lame, spin is lame, rollingstone is lame, actors are lame, talking about actors is SUPER lame, defensiveness is lame, behaving like a 13-year old is lame, cutesy-bullshit is lame, you’re lame, your “writing” is lame, your opinions are lame, your self-aggrandising is lame, not doing things well is lame.
-if you’re gonna make hyperbolic statements about Hunter please ground them in a bit of reality; he died an internationally famous, multi-millionaire in Aspen.
–and as far as copy editing goes, you spelled ‘legends’ wrong in you last paragraph… how fitting.
THIS IS SO BORING… this is like playing super mario with a game genie.
game over.
ba-ba-ba-ba-bye-bye
Oh, and llooppss…? Sorry for not copy-editing my response. Are we still cool?
Stay Beautiful.
Wow. llooppss dislikes me. He [or she], like, authentically HATES me. Wait, was that too “cutesy,” or… uh, “high school newspaper, stilted prose…?” Not really sure what that means, but I’m more or less positive it ain’t good.
I admire the shit out of your ability to say “fuck you” [Thrice! :)]. You’re right about one thing: It was formulaic. I totally plagiarized the whole thing. I also admire your love with Hunter S. Thompson, and totally get you’re on a first-name base with him. “Hunter” would likely blow his head off again [for effect] in celebration of your love for him, and his “poetic” ways.
I am juvenile, and half-informed. Check mate! In order to write for an online “magazine” you must KNOW ALL, and BE ALL as a “journalist.” I neither know all, nor am I beyond adolescence [mentally --- Thanks for helping me deduce this! You're so cute it makes me want to curl up in front of a fire and stuff myself with candied yams!].
I just have to keep telling myself that you are my target audience, and I should keep trying to please you… And, I guess that means forfeiting my free-speech bullshit altogether… Shit. Well, I like writing, despite the fact that I should just, “KEEP MY IDIOT MOUTH SHUT,” and go away. Look, I honestly think you should spend more of your down time enjoying magazines like SPIN, or ROLLING STONE. Those motherfuckers get paid shitloads to scribe WELL-informed dissertations on stories worlds more worth your [speaking DIRECTLY to you] time. I’d like to think you were smart enough to come to that conclusion, but then I remind myself my peanut-sized brain couldn’t comprehend the sort of “higher level” information your beautiful mind thirsts for.
Well, thanks again for stopping two lines short of telling me to drop dead. You’re still amazing, and I think I’m still smitten.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend… going to wine parties, or whatever it is hyperintelligent superhumans do with their down time.
Love,
Chris
and don’t you think your defensiveness speaks a lot towards how deep down you really don’t feel like you have any talent or sense either?
…like a pane of glass…
if you REALLY write for yourself, why won’t you delete this shit before it gets out? what’s so great about yourself? why should anyone respond to you? there’s literally NO reason.
fuck you money, fuck your stupidity, hunter was a novelist and poet not a journalist even if he says differently, fuck your over inflated vocab, fuck your highschool newspaper & stilted prose, fuck your little references and cutesy touchstones, fuck your booshy & dull “this is for me, like it or not” formulaic stance… sooooooo boring
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE WRITING AND KEEP YOU IDIOT MOUTH SHUT ABOUT THE REST… why is that so difficult to understand?
you are truly terrible at this, and your arguments are half-formed and juvenile.
Chris DeSalvo checks in with yet another winning article. Of course you only write for yourself! Why else would anyone write? While I don’t like to toot my own horn, I am a musician, and I make sure to only play in soundproof rooms. This is the true essence of a true artist. I’m so glad to have finally found a kindred soul in this world. Or am I??????
Ironically enough, my favorite quote ever came from none other than Hunter: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway, where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
Yet we still do it.
The best word I can think of to describe your article is lovely. I enjoyed the honesty. Whether or not everyone agrees with your ideas doesn’t seem to matter. I admire that.
Kudos.
Question: why do music journalists in Australia ignore a music movement which is emerging in support of an Australian?
Seriously:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/07/prweb2696244.htm
I’ve seen articles by US and UK journalists, heard the songs on US web channels, and it was even the most popular tweet on Twitter worldwide a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.artistsforschapelle.com/twitter.html
But nothing in Australia! Why is that? Why are journalists ignoring it? Lack of balls? Or politics?
Some of the songs are pretty decent too:
http://www.artistsforschapelle.com/videos.html
What is going on?