If prefigurative politics and Wayne's World 2 have taught me anything, it's that sometimes you need to start building and trying to make something you think might be worthwhile, because maybe there's some other people who might find it worthwhile, and are seeking an alternative too.
As I've been doing some critical reflection and trying to flesh out the ideas of what I'd like to do with this site the last few weeks/months, I've chatted with a few people about some of those ideas and come to realise more and more my general distaste for a traditional style of "music media".
In the same way that I'm hoping to help encourage people to move to social networks rather than social media, I'd like to try and also build a music network site rather than a music media site; a predominantly web based journal set apart from more traditional music media in a few key ways I can hopefully explore and try to explain in this loose plan.
First off, I have no real inclination to do reviews for new music releases.
It sits quite strangely with me to be some sort of arbiter on other's artwork, having my shitty opinion help shape how someone else might first approach it. I know that reviews have long been a part of music and art media more generally, but I don't really fuck with the power imbalance granted to the critic in that scenario. Often, reviews are just a kind of a dick swinging exercise for the critic, and in some sad cases can simply reduce the artists output to a rating out of 10 once they've finished enjoying listening to the gentle proverbial *thwap* against their thighs. Fucking yuck.
I think the world will be just fine without another "driving rhythms and thunderous bass" type review, and honestly think any work is more than capable of speaking for itself, in a kind of David Lynch-ian sense.
By the time someone could've read any review, they can have listened to the track(s) and decided whether they'd like to sling the band a few bucks for themselves.
If labels and artists are already comfortable writing their own press releases, then I'm entirely happy to share those and point punters towards their new releases. However, if your band is not really used to writing press releases, then what I would like to do is help you to create an artist's statement.
These are much more common practise in the visual arts, and I think can help to create a kind of simple statement of intent for what you're trying to achieve with the release (single, ep, album, clip), and serve as a welcome and guide into its little world, while also hopefully avoiding just writing hype cheques that can sometimes struggle to be cashed.
I'm working with my wife - a former higher-ed tutor and doctor of visual art/art history, to come up with a few prompts to help folks generate just a couple hundred words (a couple paragraphs) that I'll use in lieu of a press release to promote new releases on the site.
Secondly, I would however love to invite people to send report backs on live shows. Writing about more ephemeral events rather than recorded media seems to make more sense. Again, I would like these to be a little different to a music media live review. What I would really like is a more sort of gonzo journalism approach, with the reporter writing as an active participant of the event and writing more about their whole experience of the evening, rather than just the order the band played the songs in and if one particular song was crowd a favourite or not.
I don't really care if you don't know the names of the songs to put in your write up, the band would announce them as something other than "FRUGKALOPADOOOOOOOOOR" if the song title was the real take away.
Sell me on the live experience with good writing and I'll want to check out their music or their next gig anyways.
If any bands, tour managers or touring crew would like to write report backs on full tours or 'tour diaries', I would love to be able to publish them for you too.
I'd also love if you'd like to put your qualitative research degree to work and use live reports, and periodic critical reflection articles, as a sort of semi-longitudinal ethnographic action research study on the prevailing or changing norms in your scene:
How is the inclusion of more women in the scene bringing about changes? Is inclusion the gold standard we should be aiming for, or is simply being "one of the boys" only creating a kind of hardcore/metal spin on girlboss feminism? What could a gender equitable scene look like, and what markers or goals could be identified to help make a path towards it?
How can we strive to have events be accessible to a variety of mobility levels? Are there even any venues that are fully accessible in your town that local/smaller bands can play? What might be a line of action for making our scene more inclusive?
Third: If any print zines would like to create an online repository of older articles and interviews so that they can be read by folks who couldn't get a hold of older issues, or just to create a digital record of them, then I would love to offer the site as an option for that too!
I can include your logo on the cover of the article so folks can see that it's from your zine even before opening it; and by using site tags, a unique page and url will be created for you to link to in a linktree, or similar tool, to your collection of articles on the site.
Fourth: Hopefully some of you have seen the few PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY interviews up on the site already, and I've just published the first in the SCRATCH THE SURFACE interview series of musicians as well. I'd also like to do more sort of informal interviews with folks, to help fill out the visual guide with good food and chill spots as well. So I'll start reaching out to peeps about those soon too.
I've also got a few ideas for how-to/guide articles about a few different topics, so will also start getting them together.
In classic youtuber/influencer style, if there's anything that you'd like to see talked about then lemme know! Or if you'd like to pen a spicy op ed of your own, then get in touch and I'm happy to help you get it sorted.
Lastly! Just a few kind of housekeeping notes. I've had a couple neurospicy people mention to me that they've found the simple chronological calendar style gig-guide and the minimal and clean design of the main website as helping them to better process the site info and more easily keep track of what gigs are coming up, and that is almost entirely by design! I've been slack with alt text on images so far, but the clean site design will also hopefully help those who might need to use a screen reader, as well as trying to comply with web standards for accessibility.
In time, if the site can produce some quality articles, interviews, gig and tour reports and photo catalogues, I'd love to print an annual almanac/journal celebrating the best of all of it. A broad snapshot of that year in australian heavy music culture, an artifact to commemorate everyone's efforts and