| September 20th, 2006 by Eric K (Permalink) Add Comments |
As UK licensing laws curtailed our last meeting I knew you would all be pining for more enlightening insights into yours truly. Thus, magnanimously devoting more of my precious time to benefit and educate others, I arranged the following e-mail interview (what I am calling an e-terview, feel free to use it) with the increasingly peerless (mainly because of the smell) Screaming Ineloquents.
SI: Welcome back, Eric. I’ve got some proper questions this time. I’m on the edge of my swivel chair waiting your responses. First off, I want to know what it is that motivates you to selflessly devote yourself to informing the uninitiated of the greatest masterpieces of our generation?
K: Aren’t we in a sarcastic mood today? I think I was just born with a deep sense of altruism. I can’t explain where this insight comes from. I just write and let God speak through me. And the free CDs. Yeah, it’s mostly the CDs.
SI: And how do you choose what you write about?
K: Well Indiecult operates a ‘recommended albums’ kind of system so it’s simply those records that pass the extremely demanding K standards of quality. Or if someone gives me a free CD I’ll pretend I recommend that, too (send all samples to Eric K c/o Indiecult plc, PO Box 667. No jazz rock).
SI: You don’t ever suffer from the infamous Writer’s Block then?
K: Oh no, I get that all the time. I’m actually writing an article on it at the moment. I’ve got kind of stuck though.
SI: [laughs]
K: No, really. There are lots of ways to overcome it though. Just not the ways everyone says. People often say the hardest reviews to write aren’t the 10 out of 10s or the 0 out of 10s but the albums that are just OK - the 5s and 6s. And there’s a bit of truth in that. The real bastards, though, are reviews of well-known bands where there’s already a lot of hype behind the release. Often writers who get stuck will say it’s because they can’t think of anything to write about. That’s rubbish. You can never have nothing to write about. There are an infinite number of things to write about. You get stuck because you’re too hung up on all the things other people have already said about it. Or what you think people are expecting to hear about it. There’s too much precedent.
SI: So how do you get over it.
K: First thing is I think you have to focus on something small. Something people haven’t written about before. If you are writing about a huge new piece of architecture and you think about all the things everyone else has said about it you’ll run yourself into the ground. And it’ll seem like you can’t think of anything to say. So you have to find something that noone’s written about before; or at least that noone’s taken the same angle on. Write about a brick; a single brick. In the same way, if you have to review a band don’t try and regurgitate all the hype and previous opinions that other people have given. Write about one particular aspect of the band. Their place within a ‘scene’; the end of one of their songs; an obscure influence or reference; the singer’s hair. That should get you past The Block at least. I don’t believe any writer who claims he never gets stuck.
SI: Happens to the best of us. And the second thing?
K: Well I always carry a notepad around with me. That way, if I think of anything when I’m out and about I won’t forget it. I used to put it on a PDA but a pencil and paper is a lot easier and quicker.
SI: Technology, eh? I agree, most of those things are not too easy to write on. It’s a lot less hassle just to carry a notepad around, like you say. Either that or learn the shorthand and, frankly, there isn’t enough hours in the world to learn PDA shorthand.
K: There’s a cool story about Michelangelo where he would have all these great ideas in the middle of the night - in his dreams - but by the time he’d scrabbled around for a match to light his lamp he’d forgotten them. It’s good that we have the technology to avoid a lot of problems like that. Think of all the amazing ideas that must have been lost because he couldn’t find a feather in time.
SI: A feather? Oh, right. To write with. Not that you’re comparing yourself to one of the genii of the Renaissance.
K: You know me. Modest to a fault. Another piece of bad advice we’re always given if you get stuck is to read some of the greats and that’ll inspire you to emulate them. I think that’s the last thing you should do. Every time I read Dostoevsky or Borges or whoever it’s just intimidating. It stops me from wanting to write anything at all because I know I could never create something that good. The only good thing writers like that are for is plagiarism.
SI: Ah yes, the good old journalistic ethic: If you can’t think of anything to say, steal it off someone else.
K: It’s not a joke. You know, there’re actually only about 100 articles in the whole world. We all just change the word order around and add our names at the bottom. If you don’t have anything original to say you will get your comeuppance eventually, though. The karma will find you out.
SI: True. You’re not a Buddhist, though?
K: No, I have no qualms about squashing flies. I do find it interesting. Eastern thought is almost inconceivably different. I’m actually going to stay in a wat [Buddhist monastery] in Thailand over Christmas. I don’t really agree with much of the teachings of Buddhism, to be honest, but I do think it will give me a whole new way of looking at the world. You don’t realise how culturally-derived the Western tradition, or any philosophical tradition, is until you see other world views.
SI: That does sound like it will be an enlightening experience. Back to the here and now, then. What’s in the pipeline? Another Overlooked Collection this month?
K: Yeah, should be. I’ve mostly been listening to those Sublime Frequencies records though so I don’t know what I’m gonna write about. I’m never stuck for possibilities though. Problem is narrowing down to the ones people really want to hear about. I’m always in two minds about whether to talk just about records that I like or those that I think other people will be interested in.
SI: Maybe a compromise; a bit of both?
K: Yeah, well I think (or hope) one entails the other. If I like something that should be because I recognise it as good and so it should be the same for anyone. I might be wrong but I can’t see any reason why good music for me should be something different than for anyone else.
SI: What music you like is very personal. It depends on a lot of your own experiences and associations. I mean, I like Ash but it’s mainly just because Girl From Mars reminds me of my first girlfriend.
K: Yeah, but you probably wouldn’t say Ash were great artists would you? Anyway, even if you would I think as a journalist you have to assess the music as it is, separate from any personal connotations you might have. Obviously you can’t get out of bringing your own experiences and prejudices to your appreciation of a record - you can’t be totally objective - but you can at least get rid of things like what you’re talking about. When I read a review I do want to know what the reviewer personally thought about it: did he think it was good or bad? But I don’t want that opinion to come from something as individually specific as it reminds him of one Summer when he was at school because they were always playing it.
SI: Is this what you want to do then? With your life, I mean.
K: Possibly. It’s hard to know. That’s partly why I’ve stayed at Uni so long. If any career appeals to me, it would be journalism. To be honest, though, I’ve been having pretty serious doubts about whether it’s actually possible to write about art. I’m not so sure it makes any sense to try and articulate why a piece of music has quality. Perhaps it’s just not expressible in language.
SI: Which would render the entire profession obsolete.
K: Not a bad thing, in your opinion, I bet. Most magazines overcome this problem by hardly ever writing about the music anyway. Which is fine. Rock isn’t art. There is a creative aspect to it but mostly it’s a cultural thing. It’s much more important what the music stands for, what it says, what they look like. Musically, there’s never much to choose between them. If you confine yourself to writing about the music I think it always comes across as rather dry and technical. It’s incredibly hard (maybe impossible) to get across the experience of listening to music into 250 words. That’s me just killed off music criticism then.
SI: I can’t say you lot would be missed.
K: I wouldn’t be too sure. It sounds like a good idea. No pretentious English grads who couldn’t make it in a band mouthing off about your precious, toiled-over creations. But imagine it for a second: a world without music journalists. All our recommendations would come from whoever has the most friends on Myspace.
SI: And you just need to look at the Artic Monkeys to see where that leads us.
K: Exactly. Either that or you’d all have to go on the 30-second Amazon.com sample.
SI: The guy that picks those 30 seconds would become the most powerful man in music.
K: Yeah. You could totally destroy a band by selecting the last 30-seconds of some filler track’s outros. Just because one guy writing for one magazine likes something doesn’t guarantee it is a valuable piece of art or even that you have to like it. But it does provide some quality control. And once you find a magazine you feel, on the whole, has recommended music which you generally have agreed with it’s another source of information to guide you through what is an increasingly massive quantity of new releases.
SI: Sure, sure. Well that about wraps it up.
K: Okay. Thanks, guys. Stay frosty.
The Screaming Ineloquents release a compilation of their previous EPs on Idiolect Records on the 20st October. For more information e-mail screamingineloquence@hotmail.com. Though judging by their last record it’ll probably be a bit gash.
‘The Life and Works of Eric K’ A Compilation of the writer’s arts reviews and other assorted articles is available to order from www.whothefuckwouldbuythisshit.co.uk.
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