The Time I Met Patricia Lockwood

In early September Patricia Lockwood posted that she was doing a mini poetry tour, and would be at Liz’s Book Bar in Brooklyn the following week. I decided to just show up, thinking it was a release party for her new poetry collection Agate Head/Stone Soup, her first new poetry collection in 12 years. It was a free RSVP and she encouraged people to “come out if you’re around!” I showed up to discover I was at a very small gathering of Lockwood, her husband Jason, publicists, editors, and a few people she’s met before for a reception: Lockwood had been awarded McSweeney’s Gabe Hudson Prize of $10k, an award devoted to second novels that “demonstrate humor, pathos, and a deep understanding of contemporary America.” I was early and browsed the fiction titles. I sat quietly in the corner, in a chair settled all on its own, until she read from Will There Ever Be Another You. It was absolutely fantastic. She did voices. Gabe Hudson is a writer who passed away in 2023 and his mother was there, bestowing the prize to Lockwood sitting on the small sofa set up two feet from two microphones. I’ve been sober from alcohol ten years later this month so despite it also being a wine bar, I didn’t get myself a glass of anything to switch between my hands. (If you have a seltzer or something people usually don’t bother you with the “you aren’t drinking?”) There were three very nice looking charcuterie boards for everyone and anyone in the back, one mainly made up of olives. I kept hearing someone say, “please help yourself!” but I couldn’t bring myself to have any. I had made sure to eat dinner before.

Finally I got up the nerve to go over and talk to Lockwood. I thanked her for reading. I thanked her for her work. I even started to cry and she held my eye contact like an angel. She is the sweetest, funniest person I’ve ever met. I told her how much her writing has meant to me, and my best friend Emily. We trade her lines and essays in the London Review Of Books like religious passages laughing and loving every dip, reference, and exquisite turn of phrase. WHEN will the second installment of the Tradcath wedding essay come out?! Emily wonders. I was too distracted to ask. Instead asked Lockwood when will a collection of her nonfiction be released? She told me a book about rocks and earth was coming out somewhat soon, next year maybe?

Lockwood had been at Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, NY the day prior, according to her “come out!” post. I went to college there and told her I knew The Ith. I asked if they went to Moosewood, a famous vegetarian restaurant. We bonded. I told her my husband, Ben, is a poet who went to SCAD in Savannah, where she lives, trying to find anything to connect with her. She says they live right near Forsyth Park. Lovely, I said; “I’ve been there!” I told her weeks ago she replied to a post I made and told me that “talking about the work is part of the work” and that it meant the world to me. She claimed to remember our online exchange. She gave me a hug, maybe because I had teared up. Then I asked her for a photo. Luckily I’m wearing my Saturn Bar t-shirt and I had combed my hair. I love this image of us.

Then our circle of two widened and I was introduced to the Excutive Editor of McSweeney’s and not to a darked haired woman who told Lockwood a story about how her niece was just hired as David Remnick‘s assistant; she had put the resume on the pile and the niece was worried it was a nepo hire. “He picked your resume out of the pile!” she recounted. By this point I had been unemployed for six months (hence not buying any books or drinks at Liz’s) and I politely stood there and hit save. Days later I saw her face in TNY with a caption, Fiction Editor, and realized who I had been talking to in a circle of four people: myself, Lockwood, the McSweeney’s Exec. Editor, and Deborah Treisman.

Then Lockwood introduced me to her husband Jason, the one from all her stories, essays and poems, and we stood and talked for 40 minutes about everything: their trips to London, my stone fruit allergy, how he travels around with her a lot, about his caecal bascule she wrote about in the LRB, how he was born in Seoul and grew up mainly in Colorado, or used to live there. He told me how they met and asked about me and my writing. He told me the Mad Men essay I’m working on sounds fascinating. He told me he submitted Lockwood’s poetry for years because she wouldn’t. That she wrote for 13 years without notice or payment and just did it because she loves it. He said the first time she was paid for her writing was for writing recaps of Mad Men episodes as haikus for Adult Swim and they paid her $30 an episode (!!!!!). That they would often be on family vacation and Lockwood would have to go up to a hotel room to watch Mad Men in broadcast and would squiggle poetry for hours to submit. Jason was so nice. He was taller than I thought and wearing lightly washed jeans that were tighter than I expected and a cool leather jacket. He kept offering to buy me a glass of wine: the open bar of the event had closed but he had given them his CC.

I had Lockwood sign my copy of Will There Ever Be Another You and I saved the ballpoint pen as my Lockwood pen; it’s the one stowed in my dollar crossword puzzle book I use daily and also happens to be a 92 WICB Ithaca College radio station pen. Kismet. She wrote “bon courage,” I assume, because I had started to cry while talking to her. She thanked me for talking to Jason for so long. “He’s always so bored at these things.”

She told me the launch for her poetry book would be in the next month, here in NYC, at an n+1 event in Dumbo and told me I had to come and bring Ben. They both wanted to meet him. Life and other shit got in the way, preventing me from going; it also ended up being in Willyberg and I really don’t have the patience to commute to North Brooklyn from Flatbush, so I skipped. But I knew I was two seconds away from getting Jason’s cell number. I told him I was going to London with my husband on his work trip in two weeks, I was tagging along for three days. I wish I could tell him all about my trip. Jason told me they went there back and forth a lot because she’s judging the Booker.

(Jason: I had absolutely horrible jet lag but the best time in London. I spent five hours at the Tate Modern where there was a Frida Kahlo exhibit and an entire room of Guerilla Girls art. I saw Tower Bridge and wandered to Banglatown for an underground vintage mecca in Brick Lane. I saw the pelicans in St. James Park and went record shopping in Soho where I got my white whale vinyl: a German pressing of Captain Beefheart’s Safe As Milk—with an alt sleeve and track listing!!—and a VU radio broadcast from 1969, the second show The Velvets ever played with Doug Yule after Cale left, at Sister Ray Records. I went to Reckless Records, I’ve also been to the one in Chicago; I went to Third Man Records, I’ve also been to the one in Detroit; and I went to Rough Trade, I’ve also been to the one here in Brooklyn. These are my cathedrals.)

I had falafel, lahmacun, and the best Indian food my stone fruit allergy could find—which was tricky!! A red curry butter chicken with the best rice I’ve ever had, and I tasted a lamb & peas thing. As an American Coffee Snob (registered trademark) the coffee situation was god awful—no filter coffee just espresso based drinks everywhere. The ass of Westminster Abbey is more beautiful than its face and Big Ben was beautiful at dusk. I truly believe Buckingham Palace to be the silliest place I’ve ever seen. I thought there was a backside view and while I was wandering toward it I stopped a bunch of young people I saw leaving the building wearing lanyards, very obviously government employees. I stopped them and said, “hey are you guys locals? I’m trying to find the other side, or the front of The Palace.” They seem shocked I was speaking to them and directed me back to where I came from and I realized I had already seen it: the government building to end all government buildings. I thanked them and headed back. I decided to pay total tribute by putting on the most fitting and disrespectful song I could think of. So I hit play on L7’s “Wargasm” and cranked the volume, headbanging while the Beefeaters stepped their silly little marches. Those MFs. I even saw a horse-and-carriage “motorcade” with accompanying cops (?) on horses in tailored tweed, leather boots, silver straps, fancy hats, and what appeared to be snooty fuckin attitudes. London loves a line AHEM a queue, and not one goddamn person there is in a rush. I went to Hatchards where I bought Justin Silver’s Fruit Fly and befriended a lady cop at St. James Church who let me into the locked public handicapped restroom; public toilets everywhere! Woohoo! Fortnum & Mason had a fucking buiscuitorium; that place was a hoot. It was the longest and shortest three days of my life. I had a blast.)

the German pressing of Safe As Milk is called Plastic Factory and is covered in chickens

All this to say: I met my literary hero this year! She was so incredible to me (and, I imagine, everyone). Jason too. He is a real life character I know from the page, only now he was actual man standing in front of me. It was like talking to someone I had been texting with for years and finally meeting them in person.

I love you, Patricia. And: hello, Jason. You guys are the best. Patricia: you are the first hero of my own I have met that has not been a disappointing weirdo. I will follow you into hell. Thank you for your kind words and for your work. I find you inspiring and absolutely lovely, if that is not already clear. I hope you are having the best day. Cheers!

Donnie Darko, The Bunnymen, and me

There was a time in my life where I did not “get” New Wave. I understood its place in Pop/Rock history and had listened to it mostly for work and never really understood its draw. Every song sounded the same to me.

When I worked in Music Programming at Sirius XM they assigned me to program the Classic College Radio channel, which was “online only” at the time. Meaning listeners could only stream it on their browser, and not on the actual satellite stations while in the car, the company’s “bread and butter.” It was a low stakes responsibility, one of the three channels I programmed, one of the six channels of daily operations I was responsible for as an entry level assistant employee. (Ask for more work and you shall receive!) It taught me how to program—don’t let the same song play at 8:03am every day when someone is getting into their car to go to work—and it gave me a crash course in New Wave.

Classic College Radio played The Smiths, The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen, Sonic Youth, The Replacements, The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., and should’ve included every band from Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life but I guess that depends on how much Meat Puppets you really want and what Nirvana isn’t too played for you. (Answer: none of it is!!) My boss, the VP of Rock Programming, who once led what ended up being a two hour meeting where elder Boomers debated Rod Stewart’s catalog and whether or not he should get his own channel, told me we could play Smashing Pumpkins, but only Gish era stuff.

Because this is my blog, I’m allowed to tell everyone I find The Pixies to be extremely overrated and The Replacements to be unlistenable, whiny bastards. My eldest sister is a family law & domestic violence attorney in the Hudson Valley and I happen to know that Tommy Stinson’s former partner was her former client. This was maybe ~10 years ago and yes she has some loose fuckin’ lips. Either way, since she told me that I’ve never been able to separate the two pieces of information. I digress.

Let me say what I came here to say: Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko got me into New Wave.

The original soundtrack only contains three pop songs: Tears For Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” Echo & The Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon,” and Duran Duran’s “Notorious.” There is a British re-release that also includes INXS, The Church, Joy Division, and Oingo Boingo, which really just proves the point I realize I haven’t even made yet. Whatever. This is my blog.

The Donnie Darko score was written by Michael Andrews, who I am just now learning did the score for “Freaks & Geeks” (my favorite TV show) and after that groundbreaking and revelatory show was released and canceled in 2000, Kelly asked him to score DD. The OST went on to sell over 100k copies, which feels like a lot. (What I am also just learning is that Andrews did the score for, including many others, lolol, Walk Hard: The Dewy Cox Story, the greatest musical comedy ever made. Anyone who makes fun of Brian Wilson is a friend.)

To me “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and “Head Over Heels” are the sonic language of fall. Donnie Darko specifically captures and marries a very distinct visual story about time, our understanding of it, or our lack of understanding it, and the moodiness of fall with thanks to Andrews’ compositions but also to those three very dead-on songs. Kelly’s artistic vision of Donnie Darko is so exact and concrete. These songs and their booming synths and slow motion emotions are the glossy, blurry time portals that lead and follow the characters. Kelly’s use of rewinding, speeding up, and time lapses not only create a very specific visual story and concept, a tricky trick that I’m amazed every re-watch Kelly pulled off. The image plays to the way the music sounds. The dissonant tones and off kilter melodies boom electricity while Roland Orzabal sings round and sweetly. It is a mood.

“The Killing Moon” opens the film. Patrick Swayze and someone else are golfing and they find Donnie asleep on the green. Somnambulism, a fancy word for sleepwalking I learned while reading William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist this summer, is a built-in part of the Darko family narrative. Donnie wanders off at night, so much so that the wipe board on their fridge reads “where is Donnie?” when we first see it. They all know and accept Donnie’s mental illness. It defines his character and how he gets around. He can’t drive until he’s 21 so he rides a bike most places, walks, or takes the bus when he’s not being driven somewhere by his bumbling dad, another fantastic absent ’80s movies dad, played by Holmes Osborne. Teens on bikes in a movie set in the 1980s is begging to be soundtracked; and when Donnie starts to pedal in his PJs and socks, the metallic trickle of “The Killing Moon” starts. And as the drums kick in and the lyrics start, “Under blue moon I saw you/so soon, you’ll take me…” all the vibes coalesce like weeds growing over a hole in the ground.

There’s even something curious about the name Echo & The Bunnymen. Is it the word “echo” where the name of the thing mimics how it sounds? Or is the strange compound word “bunnymen”? I don’t really want an answer. Asking questions is part of the fun.

These songs are their own twisted carnival in the world of Pop music, which is the ultimate scary soundtrack: an organ off in the distance, lowering the sounds of childhood jewelry boxes—the one with the spinning ballerina on a spring—and jingles found in toys. It’s the soundtrack of the evil luring children, and adults, into a fantastical place of oddities, from 1962’s Carnival of Souls to Pennywise The Clown. I imagine it’s the music that plays when you call Stephen King instead of a ringer; it’s the hold music of his brain.

I first watched Donnie Darko alone on my laptop in high school, a rented DVD from the library. I am positive I had no idea what I had watched. I recall the movie theater scene where Donnie is alone with Gretchen and Frank shows up taking my breath away: the lights were off, I was alone in my headphones, and, also, a notorious scaredy cat. By the time I returned to this as an adult years later, I had read SK’s IT twice. And seeing Rose Darko reading it just made all the details of DD come more alive. I love the choice Mary McDonnell makes with her hand turned out while she reads. There’s something about that added, small gesture she brought to a very intimate moment that is so completely unimportant. Anyone who has read IT will understand because the terror in those pages are consuming. She is such a caring mother with deep concern for her son and what is happening to him. When Donnie catches her in his room staring into the calendar he drew of Frank The Bunny, her hand clutching her mouth in awe, is another moment that strikes me, telling me the internal wall this mom is running into over and over again. This family has it’s own universe and they each bring a different piece of the puzzle to the wider story.

The chemistry of the perfectly cast family is really what makes Donnie Darko. Casting Jake and Maggie as brother and sister is organic instinct. I like to imagine they went in to read their scenes together and everyone knew right at that moment, oh this is gonna be great.

This whole blog post started when the other day I posted “it’s officially “what’s a fuck ass?” season. (I’d embed the video here but YT tells me that the content is age restricted.) Only for my husband to tell me its an esoteric joke no one is gonna get, and when they do get it, it’s not that funny. Well, well. My best friend who I am increasingly convinced shares a brain with me, only she is much smarter, and a mom, was the sole person to like it.

“I think about getting squashed by an airplane engine all year long,” she DM’d back when I thanked her for liking my very specific joke post. “‘I’m voting for Dukakis.’ gets me every time,” she said. “I’ve revisited Donnie Darko a few times thinking, “surely this movie must actually be stupid” and it’s never been stupid. I love it.”

Which is the same exact way I feel about Donnie Darko.

Over the last few falls I’ve stumbled upon Donnie Darko either on TV, watched it on Criterion, or sought it ought on my own. Last year we watched it on October 27th and it was the first time my husband had seen it since he was a teenager. He was the nagging “is this movie dumb?” in my head; but I enjoyed what he had to say about it. I’m not ashamed to admit that every time I watch Donnie Darko I feel like I’m closer to understanding its time loop chronology. But part of the fun of this film, for me, is not quite knowing and not quite getting it. I guess I like asking questions knowing there is no answer.

I made a playlist in October of 2019 that I keep coming back to every fall and I sprinkled the Donnie Darko Pop songs next to other, lesser known 1980s hits: The Waitresses’ “I Know What Boys Like,” The Specials’ “Little Bitch,” Altered Images’ “Happy Birthday,” Oingo Boingo’s “Wild Sex (In The Working Class),” alongside the folk classic by Norma Tanega “You’re Dead” — which listeners know as the theme music to the TV show “What We Do In The Shadows”—The Cramps’ “I Was A Teenage Werewolf,” and Harry Belafonte’s “Jump In The Line.” (If you need me to explain to you why that song is on a spooky October playlist, I’m so sorry/and you’re in the wrong blog.)

Sound is story—which is my own personal ethos when I am watching movies, listening to music, or understanding and explaining life—and New Wave is the soundtrack of fall. I am not the first blogger to suggest this, nor will I be the last. There is a legion of music history behind it, about Post-Punk and Goth Rock, where it’s all dark romantic lyrics and eerie jangles, lonerism, and tragedy. All I need to say is Bauhaus and I think you’re right there with me. Look at this image and you will hear “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

A song of slow building torture, released one month after Ian Curtis killed himself, as a non-album single. Curtis, is, of course, also known for being into Nazis. (Some say they “were just trolling.” Sure, Jan.) I’m more of a New Order kind of gal. (“Blue Monday” forever!!!!!) “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is the most famous Joy Division song and every time I try to listen to more of their music I get sad and then bored and then said again. But the track is so perfect, and so famous for a reason, marrying ideas and sound and a spectral spirit of a tortured man and his liminal spaces.

And in the end we have the story of Donnie Darko itself: the story of a young man and his family struggling to deal with and navigate his mental illness. It is the story of someone giving into the psychotic break of their illness, in this case paranoid schizophrenia, to, Donnie thinks, prevent catastrophe by sacrificing himself. The scene Donnie has with his therapist, Dr. Thurman, played by Katharine Ross, is an internet meme about imaginary friends. But when you’re in the movie, it it a much more powerful moment. And again, when Donnie’s folks go talk to Dr. Thurman on their own and she reveals to them what they have been unable to detect or realize. It’s almost like they can’t believe it, even though it’s happening all around them.

Unfortunately I believe the potency of the movie weakens the more you see it. Which is why I return to the songs. I like to walk through the crisp leaves and stare into the deep blue sky as the trees yellow and orange at its edge as the “Head Over Heels” piano slams at me. I can see the turned camera, Donnie and his friends getting off the bus and going to school, time speeding up and slowing down as Drew Barrymore and Noah Wyle move through the halls, students bustling in their uniforms, Seth Rogan, the bully, among them. I guess I’m head over heels.

Don’t take my heart/don’t break my heart/don’t throw it away. Happy fall!!

Mood Machine by Liz Pelly Will Change Your Life

This book should be required reading for all music streaming customers, whether or not you use Spotify. You owe it to yourself to read Pelly’s work in full.

From detailing how every click and keystroke in app is logged and analyzed (and sold to whomever wants to pay for it) to uncovering ghost musicians, Pelly’s ten+ years working on this book is extraordinary. Spotify paying and contracting musicians to make music that sounds like popular music (and paying to send them to songwriting camps) so they can program and place it more than the music of working/touring musicians so they can continue to pay them even less is emotionally despicable. When Pelly goes into detail just how much music used to be publicly funded in Sweden (its on a decline) and how pro-union Sweden workers and companies are, it is amazing to see how evil and mindless Ek and co have become since becoming the biggest part of the music market in America. When discussing this with a well-read friend of mine, this friend didn’t even know Spotify was Swedish. Reader: how did we get here? This is not my beautiful wife!!

The surveillance of our streams, clicks, and Spotify For Artists (S4A) side of the app (which I’ve never seen) made me actively put down my phone and the app the more and more I read. I joined Spotify about a decade ago when I got my first iPhone and it drastically changed how I listen to music. I used to be an album oriented only listener, now I am a playlist person. She’s right. We shouldn’t be able to pay $10 a month for access to any music we can dream of typing into a space bar, but we can. It’s so convenient but also just so bad. Bad for how musicians are making music (many are basing what they make or play next on what does or charts well on Spotify playlists), bad for users who have lost their ability to care or to crate dig, bad for us to think for ourselves. All of us! The lobbying, the indie playlists packed with major label signed artists, and my god the moods. Everything is mood based, coded or tagged as a mood to fit your mood. It’s called Mood Machine for a reason. I’ll never do it justice in this blurb. The individualization of artists used to be what drew us to the art, now it’s about us, the user, and how we listen, how we can brand ourselves, how every detail of our days is a song that will tell Spotify what to do next.

What got me the most is reading quotes from Ek who said “our biggest competitors aren’t Apple Music or Amazon Music or TIDAL, it is silence.” They just want you to use the app. That’s all it is. There are sleep playlists, audio books, podcasts: just log time on their app. They can charge more money for ads that way. They are quite literally selling your data, that you provide, to military intelligence agencies. The worst part is the whole streaming idea was built around encouraging sharing and piracy. (The history of music piracy in Sweden is fascinating.) No. The worst part is Ek started as an SEO guy. No the worst part is that Spotify doesn’t actually know how much money artists are paid because they only pay publishers and licencors of music. No the worst part is the former White House aides and employees who now work at Spotify and are on their lobbying side. No the worst part is the bits about Barak Obama’s involvement with his infamous Spotify playlists. No the worst part is they eventually want to develop the app so all you have to do is open it; you don’t even have to hit play. We are living in Wall-e (2008).

At the end, Pelly details how local librarians have started to catalog local music scenes, paying artists $200 to license their music for a certain period of time because local history includes local music. Pelly wants us to get involved in our scenes, DIY and local and what have you, and the easiest way to do this is, well, a: stop using the app and pay for the music you love, support artists; and b) “find the names of the directors and board members of your local library, and create targets campaigns” to get the people who decide where money is spent to spend money on building local libraries. (Apparently there are more local libraries in America than there are locations of McDonald’s; that does feel nice to read and type.)

Slowly figuring how to get myself off Spotify. Dug out my 2TB external hard drive of music but can’t find the power cord. Luckily my credit card was hacked last night and I have to re-set all my automatic payments when a new card comes in the mail. Maybe that will be my end with this service? I’m not sure what comes next. But it simply can’t go on like this.

Is Jerry Gonna Be There?

Because this is my blog I can blog about whatever I want. Even if that means a one-liner joke from my husband’s former boss at a summer work party several years ago.

This man is a top ranking Chatty Charlie. I may never meet another like him. I know a few: my mother, I have two older sisters, and best friends who live out of state I spend hours on the phone with. Years ago my dad declared this state The Chat Blackout. So. This former boss, let’s call him Ed, can CHAT. When I was introduced to him, we bonded instantly over our love of music: he saw Led Zeppelin in high school and Led Zeppelin is the first band I ever loved: eighth grade; he told me about seeing The Dead when he lived in Paris and it started to snow as they started “Morning Dew.” We talk about hippies and eating acid. During COVID lockdown he and I started an email thread, chit-chattin’ the blues away, mostly about nonsense and nose swabs. But it all started with the Jerry Garcia licorice quote:

“Our audience is like people who like licorice,” Jerry Garcia said. “Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”

Ed saw The Dead many times. But after Jerry died in 1995, he no longer saw the point. “I was invited to see them by a friend,” he told me, “and this was later in the 90s and he had great seats. And I asked, Is Jerry Gonna Be There?”

He laughed. I laughed. It makes no sense to anyone and it’s a specific punchline to a meaningless story and it’s become a one-liner my husband and I reach for all the time any time the name Jerry comes up (or The Dead). And when I bought this Jerry shirt during lockdown (hey! we all have our coping mechanisms) that I actually just sewed up an armpit hole because I love it so much. It’s a t-shirt that’s become a uniform to me, one of a few shirts I wear to feel exactly like myself, like I cannot be stopped. It’s armor. And every time I wear it, I proudly announce: Jerry’s Gonna Be There.

RIP? Pitchfork

I know it’s not dead, not yet, but it certainly feels like the end. With Marc Hogan’s piece in Rolling Stone, “Pouring One Out For Pitchfork” and Linnie Greene writing The Official Pitchfork Obituary, it feels gone.

Every time I open the page I wonder …will it load? I’m surprised and happy to see new reviews going up daily, so far, and then remember production schedules. When will they run out? Watching from the sidelines for over a decade, even though I was never part of Pitchfork, just a reader, I feel a profound sense of loss over the layoffs, restructuring, union busting, and realignment. Whatever the fuck you want to call it.

If you read this blog, or any music blog, music press, you are aware that Condé Nast has shut down and union busted all over the Pitchfork masthead, laying off the the glue of the site, the features editors, the ones who were still doing it, waiting for the call to come from inside the house. According to what I’ve read, Pitchfork union was told that there would be no layoffs before the holidays and now there are layoffs. To all the writers and editors: I am so sorry for the loss of your jobs. But also: thank you for doing what you did. You changed the course of music, music journalism, and the way I consume music and music writing.

When I started this website over a decade ago to show that “I could do it too” I referred to Pitchfork as The Fork, because I was in my early 20s and who did they think they are?! (They’re Pitchfork.) I called it The Music Internet and I started (and kept) blogging on WordPress because I wanted to be a part of the conversation. I wanted to have something to say. I have something to say.

Through it all, Pitchfork was my touchstone, an anthology of what was being listen to, written about, discussed, and given the time. I didn’t always agree with it, no one will, and it sparked a lot of dumb posts (again, I was in my early 20s) in the blog rock era, whatever the hell that was. It was posts about gatekeeping, about Ariel Pink (he crowd surfed on me at the 930 Club) and the indie world’s then-obsession with him (I genuinely liked Before Today you guys!!! That shit takes me back!!!), it was me doing a Worst Of 2012 list and putting Channel Orange at the top of that list (my 20s!). (Look: Frank Ocean isn’t for me. I appreciate his output and whole deal, I am just not the audience for those sounds.) I was going to a lot of shows around Washington, D.C., where I lived and worked in corporate music programming at SXM, and writing about them online for myself: The Men, Megafaun, Mac DeMarco (when I got dragged to that show, horribly sick, there were 12 of us there and I sweated out what was probably the flu), Bon Iver, Washed Out (snooze fest), Youth Lagoon (more snooze), Toro Y Moi (he used projected water inkblots and it was some real hippie shit, people) Dirty Projectors (Swing, Lo!), Titus Andronicus (Pat Stickles read my blog post, and we got in a twitter fight over it), Japandroids, FJM (the Fear Fun show at The Black Cat is a landmark memory), The Orwells, Action Bronson at the Howard Theater, WU LYF (I will love them forever), UMO, White Denim, …the list goes on. I felt just on the cusp. I wanted to belong. (There I said it.) But never did. I hate being told what to read or write about, especially if I’m being assigned a music review. Those were always like pulling fingernails, and for free. My heart was never in it. I wanted to say what I wanted, and still do, and not give any fucks, and still do. (I’m still here!) I complained a lot about Pitchfork, ahem, The Fork, and like many things in that era of my life, my overly public attitude about these things likely kept me away from participating. (I was a scene of a person, and it was a mess.) I’ll never know because I never tried. I’m just some fan, what can you say.

But I started this site to, lol, reply to Pitchfork. I had something to say. I wanted to contribute. I still do. And I’m still here, in charge, for free. Let’s blog.

I wrote to escape my job, and wrote at work in my cube. I would write before work (what is that witchcraft?!): wake up, make and drink an entire french press of coffee, and read the front page of The Music Internet, write something, hit publish, go to work, share it, and watch a few people chime in (eventually). Briefly, I wrote for a site called Chunky Glasses (that approached me, having found my site) and edited my voice so bad even my dad called to say some blog about an indie band (god knows what I was writing about, oh wait it was likely Titus Andronicus) didn’t sound anything like me. I used clippings from this site to apply to graduate school…and it worked. I submitted pieces about Odd Future and gatekeeping and my vinyl collection and got into an MFA program (and away from my corporate, soul-sucking music programming job, the most fulfilling work I’ve ever known!). I wrote about Jack White releasing a song by balloon, about my monster fangirl crush on Jack White, and how I crossed state lines two different times to see him on the Blunderbuss tour (that album is really good, you guys, it’s a shame his solo stuff sucks now. He needs to stick to producing.). I was at the inception of the Firefly Festival in Delaware (Hi, I’m In Delaware) and he took his shoes off in the rain; it was the all-male band, and I understood in that moment why women throw their underwear at rock stars. (I spent a lot of time on this site writing about JW.) Then Spectrum Culture found me (through my site) and didn’t offer to pay me to review Jonathan Rado’s debut LP, Man Man’s On Oni Pond, and some other stuff. But then I stopped writing for free and started writing for myself, again.

And then I started experimenting. I told myself music writing can be anything you want it to be. This is when I stopped paying attention and started writing about music in a new way, bringing music questionnaires into my nonfiction workshops and …getting away with it. I wrote a lot about hip-hop and Kendrick Lamar, and put it on my site because why the hell not. I’m in charge here.

I wrote, briefly, for Philly dot com, mostly about White Fence (psych rock forever) and Kurt Vile. But when the Vile review went live a commentor said I had misspelled the album’s name throughout and in the headline, and no one caught it. I had to email them, begging for them to change things. Being unedited and unpaid and unchecked sounds great, but it’s not. It’s taken me years to learn how to edit myself (lol) (sleep on it!) but I’ve never been much of an editor, and I’ve never actually worked with one. Can you tell?

(During graduate school I was an intern for The Talkhouse for 10 months, unpaid! They said uhhh there would likely be a job. There wasn’t. I did free work for them and got to meet Michael Azerrad, one of my heroes (never meet your heroes) and discovered the music journalism of Zachary Lipez who is a genius and I’ll read anything he writes. I don’t have the money to subscribe to Creem but it is fitting he is there. I fucking love it.)

I never tried to review for Pitchfork. I once pitched The Pitch but failed and never went back. Freelancing has never been my game. I am not the kind of person that can do work and eventually get paid. I like a paycheck, and I like to punch in and punch out. I stopped writing about music conventionally and stopped reading reviews. I lost touch. I spent a year writing a manuscript called I’m Gonna Be Almost Famous about how much I wanted to be William Miller when I grew up, about how left out I felt, how just on the sidelines my life felt as a music writer. It later became an essay, which I published here, because I barely tried to “place” it or pitch it because I still have no idea what I’m doing, refuse to confirm or be told what to write, so I just blog it. (I did pitch it to an actual editor I took a summer workshop with who connected me with someone at Longreads. They said no.)

In 2019 I started contributing to Albumism, a site that never paid me for my work, for years. (To my knowledge no one makes money from it, not even EIC, founder, and writer Justin, which sucks but also: free content?) When I pitched my list of anniversary write-ups, all twenty of them were “accepted.” Because I was a dumbass, I didn’t realize four or five few thousand word (completely unedited, not fact- or spell-checked) pieces a month was a uhhh bad idea, or overwhelming, until the deadline list hit me. I cranked them out and wrote some of my most favorite stuff over there: on Floyd’s The Wall, on Scorsese and Let It Bleed, on Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York, on Bitte Orca, lots of Zeppelin, my dad, Neil Young, The Go! Team, and my Abbey Road Is The Most Psychedelic Beatles Album retrospective.

(Court & Spark is turned 50 on January 17th, 2024, and something I wrote in late 2018 is being edited and republished right now, poppin’ off online.)

Wow this is turning into a long list of all the places that never paid me for my writing and work. What an experience. The point of these stories is, Pitchfork was a guiding light. Whether or not I liked it or agreed with it, it was there. The steady hand. What are people listening to? How are we writing about these sounds? I watched it change from white boy guitar rock into the queer, multi-genre, international coverage site that we know today. I used to judge people based on their music tastes. It was my whole personality for a while, and took a long time to unlearn. I know most of it is still in me, but I know how to use my edit button now. (Not on the blog though, haha, suckers.) Working in music programming, blogging during blog-era music, (whatever the fuck that is, still, I don’t know… it seems to mean a certain “era” now, ten years later. JFC.) I was all miffy when I started this blog, yelling into the void WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?! Well, they were Pitchfork.

My favorite Pitchfork-adjacent story (which I’ll allow myself here because it’s my blog) is when I read Lindsey Zoladz’s review of Grimes’ Visions in 2012, and then continuously read anything she would write. (Oh my god, Claire, you’re going to have three children with Elon!!!!!!!!! WHEW! Wow. Writing that sentence is like watching The War Room (1993) and seeing James Carville with hair and a young Hillary while present life seizes before your eyes. It’s overwhelming.) After Visions, that’s when I started reading by byline. I was already reading anything BNM (back before it was Best New Album). I followed along in LZ’s Ordinary Machines column and had my Fiona awakening along with everyone else who hadn’t yet, and then realized we circled around each other, growing up in the same NJ area, she went to American and lived in DC while I was up to my neck in music libraries at SXM, and then she moved to NYC, and years later, I interviewed her for a project I never finished: an anthology of interviews with women music journalists. (I also interviewed Jenn Pelly. Jenn, your 33 1/3 on The Raincoats changed me.) Then she went from Pitchfork to being, briefly, New York Magazine’s pop music critic before a long run at The Ringer (or is that reversed?), and now she is at The New York Times. I love you, Lindsey, and can’t wait for your book, Fear of a Female Genius.

I have something to say, about music specifically. Which is why I blog. But also, I read. When I grew into manuscript writing, I lost my music writing bug. But when I was ready to start up again, reading Pitchfork reviews was like going back to ballet class to get back in shape: what are people talking about? How are they talking about it? What’s the structure here? What’s the sound of this review? What does this sound like? I will read anything that strikes my fancy, still, and usually always the lead review. Like choosing a wine, I read reviews of any record with a wild cover. What does it sound like? How do we talk about this?

Reading Pitchfork for all these years confirmed that to me that music writing can be anything you want it to be. Sometimes they are formulaic. And you’re not always going to agree with what they’re publishing. But reading Pitchfork for over a decade changed my relationship to music, to writing, and to music writing, three things that are the core of my identity. My theory about writing is: as long as the writing is great, the subject will be interesting. And my theory about music writing is: good music writing should make you want to listen to the record. I watched from the sidelines. I longed to belong. But now…to what?

I started this blog because I wanted to have a voice on The Music Internet; to be in conversation with The Fork lol long before Condé bought it. And then Condé bought it, which made me question their editorial power more. And now, this week Condé (Hi, Anna!) folded it under GQ (of all things!!!!!! because when I think GQ, I think music journalism!!!!!). The outpouring of love, grief, reward, disappointment, relief, profound sadness, job loss, and confirmation that the machine will eat us all is overpowering. If you have your own little corner of the internet–book internet, film twitter, sports ball–you know when something is happening, because it consumes you, it’s all anyone is talking about. Fans of all genres have come out to say how much the site has meant to them. All the writers I’ve been following for years (some older than me, mostly now they’re all younger, and worse, many my age: proof I didn’t work hard enough) are losing their jobs and I hope I get to keep reading their writing. I hope you are all taking care of yourselves. (I also hope you all start blogs.)

Jessica Hopper’s Instagram story this week really shook me to my core. Remember when she was EIC? I will follow you into hell, Jessica. These stories are bananas.

this one is the most insane!!!!!

This meandering blog post is how much Pitchfork meant to me. A new era of The Fork is upon us. I don’t know what it will look like and it seems like no one does, not yet.

My favorite thing I hope that stays is the Sunday Review. I look forward to it every week. (OK, I read it nine times out of ten.) I want to learn about all the music. I want to find the missing link. I want to write a Sunday Review. How far ahead does the production schedule go?

Thank you to all the people who feel like my friends from the internet I just haven’t met yet: the Jeremys, Jill, Ian, Jessica Hopper, Lindsey, Jenn Pelly, Marc Hogan, Dylan Green, Amanda Petrusich, Mark, Alphonse, Stuart Berman, Nina, Philip, Eric, Madison, Julianne E., Brad Shoup, Andy, Marc, Judy Berman, etc etc etc. I’ve been reading you all along, and the other stuff you write and post. Thank you for your work. I can’t wait to see what comes next. Your work has meant more to me than I realize.

Music is also a conversation. Please let’s keep it going. That’s all I wanted to blog. Have something to say. Show me something. What’s your most dangerous music opinion? I’ll go first. The Beach Boys are a novelty band and their only good album is The Beach Boys Christmas Album (1964). @ me. I love you all.