I’m not sure.
This is mostly because of the guys at Paste. I’m a subsciber to the magazine but ironically its not the magazine that is revitalizing my interest in music. I pay for the magazine but its something Paste gives out for free that is making the difference – its their Podcast.
I think Elvis Costello was pretty smart when he said : “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” Well, I do enjoy reading things written about music, but usually only about artists I’m familiar with. But I am never going to get familiar with an artist’s music reading about them. The writer can throw in as many adjectives as he wants but eventually its not even dancing about architecture anymore – its more like flailing.
This where the podcast is pretty handy. Things are happening in “real time” and there is less editing. During a interview conversation, you can’t chop it up in bits the way you can the notes from that interview, isolating the killer quotes that will be highlighted on the page as an enticement to the reader to read the rest of the piece. While you might think this would lead to a lot of boring stretches, it’s the humanity of a conversation that shines through. By giving me the whole conversation, I get to decide what the important parts are.
I have actually wanted to sit down lately and write some songs. But then the girls are sleeping and I don’t want to wake them up – or my hockey pool – okay pools – need tending and I neglect the writing again. I think I might come at it a bit differently now than I did the last time I wrote songs regularly.
