Mostly it´s great to have a look at our blogroll. You can read Karl Hyde´s photo-diary daily and sometimes the Exsurrealist has posted a new one-picture-story. At 33 1/3 I spotted this book. It arrived yesterday.
After reading it a few minutes I am enthusiastic about it. After an hour even more. In 13 chapters (from 1 to 33 1/3, which follows 12) various music journalists write about topics like the album review, the live review, track-by-track, analysis, the artist-interview, personal essay or blog-piece (!). Between the chapters there are so called „go-betweens“ with offbeat-advices, lists of sources and desert island discs and discussions about whether you need to know how to make music to write about it, how to make contact or where to find inspiration. I find inspiration from many sources, says Joe Bonomo, essays, memoirs, songs, abandoned buildings, movies, road trips. Bryan Charles counters: I´m not a great believer in inspiration. It´s really a matter of getting your ass in the chair every day. What I liked most are the „writing prompt“ chapters with their writing suggestion. Hope to surprise you with the one or another exercise within the next few weeks or months.
You don´t know what a shelfie is? In March 2014 Jazz critic Ted Gioia published a blog post titled „Music Criticism Has Degenerated Into Lifestyle Reporting“ which you can read here. Within the following twitter debate Ted Gioia tweeted a photo of his bookshelf to demonstrate he was well-read. Others followed. The term „shelfie“ was born.
The rewards for writing about music? The only reward you can ask from writing is the chance to keep doing it.