David Simon, apocalyptic preacher

Apparently blogging isn’t conducive with listening to music. The act of going out and exploring music is a world away from being sat in your study with the light of a Macbook corroding your retinas. Speaking of the death of local journalism and its impact, writer David Simon – a former ‘newspaper man’ himself, obsessed with the end of empire – put it,

…you do not, in my city, run into bloggers or so-called citizen journalists at City Hall or in the courthouse hallways or at the bars where police officers gather. You don’t see them consistently nurturing and then pressing others—pressing sources.

Although Simon is speaking of the local press rather than the music industry, some editors and journalists have been inclined to make such a leap and claim that music bloggers mostly stay at home bottomfeeding the industry. Now, If you are looking for a constructive narrative that honestly portrays and cleverly lampoon’s Simon’s claim, go here. However for a slanted, biased and uncredible account, looking at how this criticism is obsolete when referring to music bloggers, please read on. As the popularity of this quote and its various guises, including an article in the Washington Post, increases, it is becoming a benchmark position from which to attack the web community. They are unjustified and this is why:

It’d be a real shame fucked were the media not to engage with reality, if we find ourselves in some dystopian future where we are eternally confined to a single building and never leave. To be planted before a machine and to be force fed culture, news and bran flakes 24/7. To be completely subservient of the machines set out to provide. But this isn’t some disillusioned fantasy, nor is it some negative projection, it’s not even our future, it is our reality; but more than that it’s our history. No matter how it functions, inevitably pop culture is just one feeding machine, never satisfying needs, merely drip feeding us through a tube right into our frontal lobes. As frequently as the capitalist model professes about how we have limitless choice and unlimited selections the reality is very different. There is only limited air time, page space, chart positions, music blogs – even if they do appear to be infinite. There’s a limit to how many artists we can consume and a limit to how many gigs can be frequented. It is not only the mainstream media that is drip fed shite by the record makers and passed through in the same instant but the bloggers, the subversive magazines, the underground kids, everyone is at it, even this blog. So whereas the oligarchs, the number fiddlers and the press officers epitomise corruption in David Simon’s courthouse example, from the perspective of the music media, such characters (the industry heads, the promoters, the press officers) are deemed a necessary evil. What I’m saying is that it’s not the case that it would be fucked if Simon’s end of the empire apocalyptic preaching were to exist…it is fucked, because it does exist, it always has and always will.

However what’s wrong with this theory when applied to music bloggers (as it has been done) is that they do get out, in fact they get out to the gigs more than most. It’s because they are the journalists, the PR companies, the promoters, the bands. the management, the roadies, and most commonly, the DJ’s, the fans. It’s not that they need to go down to the courthouse to find out what’s happening…they are the courthouse. Unlike the critic, they do not exist on some meta-level where their involvement is purely observational. Don’t misconstrue my claim here with a Judge, Jury and Prosecution argument, rather that amongst the independent industry – as I perceive it – there’s an ‘all hands on deck’ mentality.

Furthermore, the machine is so bloated that the music critic scarcely resembles the hard nosed hack down City Hall as Simon so describes. Besides, what’s there to report on? What needs investigating other than the records and the performances? The hermited blogger is still getting half of the material to ‘investigate’ even if they don’t leave their wireless prisons.

So this got me thinking about who’s actually performing the role of music journalist. Q: Who is going down to the courthouse and returning with content? A: Everyone

Me thinks that the music journalist reconstructs the sonic narrative in a different medium, albeit text, speech, photography, illustration or a combination of the above. It’s worth pointing out that I do value hacks reporting back that Little Boots is from Blackpool, and that she went to school here, and performed her first song when. It’s important that such demi-goddesses are humanised so that our reaction to their music is, ‘She’s like me, maybe I can make music like her’, as opposed to, ‘This music reminds me how I’m a talentless fuckwit’. But this role of investigative journalism can be performed by anyone with a notepad, pencil and broadband connection. Hell, these hacks don’t even have to leave their increasingly barren office spaces.

Listening to sounds from The Earl of Edgecombe’s new mixtape entitled The Slow Death of Mr. Go Go Go the archival collages of the mixmaster is seen in the archivist blogger who posted it. Blake Leyh, musical supervisor to David Simon’s TV hits, from The Wire to the latest, Treme about New Orleans musicians and Katrina. It seems that the journalists, digging up the music and throwing it out there are operating on his time, with his money. Now I’m not accusing Simon of hypocrisy, but his own musical director is running an occasional blog posting cutting edge music, and you wouldn’t like to accuse Leyh of not being down the courthouse either. The mixtape works Soulja Slim, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Jelly Roll Morton, Wynton Marsalis, Juvenile and some unidentifiables into an all to brief hot slice of wild sounds. Now I’m not waxing lyrical on this just to parade some moral high-ground because in many ways I want to agree with Simon – he did write The Wire after all. Also, I’ve dragged his words so far kicking and screaming out of context that any claim for a moral victory would be completely delusional on my part.

I still believe music journalism is important and long may it live but when you consider the courthouse argument, if Simon is aiming his comments at the entire blogosphere, he shoots himself in the foot.

(This article was completed drafted on July 28 2009. It has been shown the light of day in an effort to do some ‘Spring cleaning’ through a process similar to carpet beating. Thanks – BM)