What music is easy/hard to write about?

[sloopjohnc]

I have a friend who's a sales manager for Backbeat Books here in the US
http://www.backbeatbooks.com

He asked me to look at their guide to reggae and I told him I didn't need to because no way could it compare to The Rough Guide.

I just got the new edition. I can't see too many differences except for some more dancehall compliation info and some older stuff that was deleted cuz it must've gone out of print or something.

However, they do publish a pretty good guide on funk that even lists whose sampled the songs
http://www.backbeatbooks.com/?c=3&p=0879306297&s=D0859F42-E7FF-F1E7-36979553C5BF4D78

[Quaco]

I have a friend who's a sales manager for Backbeat Books here in the US
http://www.backbeatbooks.com

Can you get me a job as a proofreader for them?

[The Write Profile]

Trying to review Sleater-Kinney's album at the moment and my goodness it's difficult for people (like me) who don't have knowledge of real chords/progressions etc with guitars to not fall back on adjectival cliches. It's something that's best avoidied, and I try not to, but saying something like "spiralling guitars", though inherently meaningless, actually can get the point accross. Thankfully it's a phrase I don't have to use much.

There's something about personifying instruments that doesn't look right to me, but I'll be blowed if I know what it is.

[Card Cheat]

I wonder, too, what sort of music is easier to write around, rather than write about, per se. The discussion on John Cage's 4"33 is a case in point, because there's really no music, just an idea. Also, as much as I favoured the idea of detachment in music writing earlier on the thread, I think I got it wrong in that the best writing features a mix of critical thinking and impulse. Albums are canonised for a lot of reasons over the single song, some of them understandable, but the fact is, they effectively give one a lot of room to be more general. The song is about the moment, really.

[The Red Heifer]

When I used to write reviews, I wrote short, sharp ones. And it was a lot easier to write about things I hated then things I liked.

[Quaco]

I think there is an on going competition among Proust scholars around the world to write the shortest and more accurate summary of 'In Search of Lost Times' (I think it's called now). I remember one lady coming up with:

Marcel writes.

"Synesthesia" is one letter shorter and yet says so much more.

She's the one who screams in vain if I'm correct?

No that is Anastasia!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

[Quaco]

I remember being rather proud of my previous comment and I wasn't sure you had gotten it, so I didn't know whether you were kidding or not! Ah, the troubles pride gets us into.