The future.
The future, the future, the future.
I've pretty much committed myself to 4 LotFPs in the coming year (including the one to be released), so that's more or less 550 minus orders. OK.
What to do with it?
I'm sending off copies to over forty record labels (not even bothering with Century Media or Nuclear Blast or anything of that size), in hopes of getting promos. The more I have to choose from, the better the reviews I actually write will be. With the current format allowing for maybe 12 reviews an issue, most of what arrives will be unreviewed. The rest gets the email interview, which the band can ignore or not at its leisure. And those things do get read so I don't even get to feel shifty about the arrangement. I get to be choosy as to what I put in print. Everyone wins.
So how to choose what to review? I keep putting mental priorities in order. Spectacular albums, then unsigned bands, then Finnish bands, then whatever albums I have witty statements prepared for. No, maybe just albums that inspire a rant of some sort, things that trigger observations beyond the albums. No, maybe just albums that exemplify heavy metal characteristics. No, maybe just things I actually buy, and let the promo stuff serve to keep my perspective modern. No, maybe just bands with members that have no other side projects. No, maybe something else.
I just have this urge to have an ethic to all of it, some real way of deciding things before another album slips through the mailbox. Basically assert control over the content of LotFP instead of letting participating record labels do so.
Difficult to decide.
One thing I am going to do differently next issue is not just write and print. It occurs to me that while I'm waiting for the proofread copy to come back, I'm not really just wanting proofreading. I'm wanting a direct challenge to some of the ideas, the entire presentation, not just a check on spelling, grammar, and periods.
So next time, I think I'll give the LotFP crew the opportunity to tear the new issue apart before it goes for proofreading. Killkillkill the bad metal, killkillkill the bad writing about metal.
Three quotes drive this:
""You thought I'd bullshit you about being into metal? You've never been in love?"
"Metal surrounds me."
"Metal journalese is often ugly and inaccurate because the thoughts of metal journalists are often foolish, but the slovenliness of their language makes it easier for them to have foolish thoughts, and their language is full of bad habits which spread by imitaiton."
Work continues, ever so slowly, on the compilation book, and it's painful looking at some of that early stuff. How could I have thought that, let alone written it?
I am obsessed with the idea of writing that will still be as true in five years as it is now. That's the key to making it important.
It occurs to me that it is arrogant to say, "I want to do important work with LotFP." It also occurs to me the entire thing is a pointless undertaking if I think, even once, "What I do with LotFP is unimportant."
So I will act like it is important. Proofreading, a feature familiar to LotFP's printed works only since 2005, was a step. Backstage tearing and ripping at the thought processes will be another step. I always hate it when a "Well I never thought of it that way" moment happens after it sees print.
*shiver shiver*
It also occurs to me that I have never heard James Rivera sing aside from the Destiny's End albums. Fucking pathetic. It all started with knowing that the new Agalloch album was coming out. Special wooden box edition! With T-shirt offer! And the T shirts come in XXL! Well by the time I looked, the XXLs were gone. And that was the only size gone. For some reason I am amused imagining Haughm's face thinking about the fact that Agalloch's biggest fans are fat. Luckily I was indecisive on buying the box edition long enough for it to sell out. The album won't be any better cased in wood. The normal CD version ships today, so I headed on over to The End's site to order it. But I can never order just one thing. To me, cash management means spending it on things I enjoy before something "important" comes up and my money is wasted in "obligations". It's funny how unimportant things are when you don't have the money to deal with them "properly". Rent's paid, there's food in the cupboard, fuck everything else. Funny when the wife "just wants to look" in furniture stores. "Oooh, that couch is nice!" She's seeing a couch, I'm looking at the price tag thinking "I could buy the Rage catalog for that amount." And I have a distinct disinterest in most of the new stuff coming out. That gets hyped, anyway. Blind Guardian and Solitude Aeturnus are the only new albums I'm looking forward to. Everything else I want is old. I bought an Overkill album yesterday. Had some bad experiences with them in the past, but Matt Johnsen suggested Horrorscope, I obeyed, and I'm glad I did. Cool stuff, and I realized vocalists today are lacking character. Blitz has character. I love it. Last two songs are fucking awesome. Totally the opposite of that Testament album I bought a couple weeks back. The New Order is boredom in audio form, interrupted by guitar solos. And for some reason I got excited knowing there was a new Terror Squad album out. The last album was completely reckless in ways I did not appreciate at the time. Disco Bloody Disco! That got me to thinking, I need Artillery albums. Only place I know to find them is Evil Legend. So that got me wanting the first three plus the two Pagan Altar albums they have on sale. $75 plus shipping? Too rich for my current budget. Irresponsibility is best doled out in responsible doses. So I started checking around for older stuff. The End is not the place to go to look for old stuff. But I found some anyway. First Metal Church album, in the shopping cart. And the first three Helstar albums. That's why I started thinking about Rivera. The guy's a lifer and all I've heard are fucking Destiny's End albums? God damn I suck. Situation corrected, I got the first two. And Zebulon Pike has a new one? fuuckkk. With some creative finangling, that's five CDs then, $50 post paid to Finland. Even if customs snags it, that's less than 9 in charges. Worth it. For that price I get the new album of one of the best current bands, a cool instrumental band (well, hopefully they still are), and some classics of the genre.
Yeah.
The internet is good because without it, that might have made it into print.
Current listening also leads me to believe that while Bruce Dickinson may be the better singer, Paul Di'Anno just might be the better vocalist. I don't know how he would have handled later material, but he's better than Bruce on the songs from the first two albums.
The future, the future, the future.
I've pretty much committed myself to 4 LotFPs in the coming year (including the one to be released), so that's more or less 550 minus orders. OK.
What to do with it?
I'm sending off copies to over forty record labels (not even bothering with Century Media or Nuclear Blast or anything of that size), in hopes of getting promos. The more I have to choose from, the better the reviews I actually write will be. With the current format allowing for maybe 12 reviews an issue, most of what arrives will be unreviewed. The rest gets the email interview, which the band can ignore or not at its leisure. And those things do get read so I don't even get to feel shifty about the arrangement. I get to be choosy as to what I put in print. Everyone wins.
So how to choose what to review? I keep putting mental priorities in order. Spectacular albums, then unsigned bands, then Finnish bands, then whatever albums I have witty statements prepared for. No, maybe just albums that inspire a rant of some sort, things that trigger observations beyond the albums. No, maybe just albums that exemplify heavy metal characteristics. No, maybe just things I actually buy, and let the promo stuff serve to keep my perspective modern. No, maybe just bands with members that have no other side projects. No, maybe something else.
I just have this urge to have an ethic to all of it, some real way of deciding things before another album slips through the mailbox. Basically assert control over the content of LotFP instead of letting participating record labels do so.
Difficult to decide.
One thing I am going to do differently next issue is not just write and print. It occurs to me that while I'm waiting for the proofread copy to come back, I'm not really just wanting proofreading. I'm wanting a direct challenge to some of the ideas, the entire presentation, not just a check on spelling, grammar, and periods.
So next time, I think I'll give the LotFP crew the opportunity to tear the new issue apart before it goes for proofreading. Killkillkill the bad metal, killkillkill the bad writing about metal.
Three quotes drive this:
""You thought I'd bullshit you about being into metal? You've never been in love?"
"Metal surrounds me."
"Metal journalese is often ugly and inaccurate because the thoughts of metal journalists are often foolish, but the slovenliness of their language makes it easier for them to have foolish thoughts, and their language is full of bad habits which spread by imitaiton."
Work continues, ever so slowly, on the compilation book, and it's painful looking at some of that early stuff. How could I have thought that, let alone written it?
I am obsessed with the idea of writing that will still be as true in five years as it is now. That's the key to making it important.
It occurs to me that it is arrogant to say, "I want to do important work with LotFP." It also occurs to me the entire thing is a pointless undertaking if I think, even once, "What I do with LotFP is unimportant."
So I will act like it is important. Proofreading, a feature familiar to LotFP's printed works only since 2005, was a step. Backstage tearing and ripping at the thought processes will be another step. I always hate it when a "Well I never thought of it that way" moment happens after it sees print.
*shiver shiver*
It also occurs to me that I have never heard James Rivera sing aside from the Destiny's End albums. Fucking pathetic. It all started with knowing that the new Agalloch album was coming out. Special wooden box edition! With T-shirt offer! And the T shirts come in XXL! Well by the time I looked, the XXLs were gone. And that was the only size gone. For some reason I am amused imagining Haughm's face thinking about the fact that Agalloch's biggest fans are fat. Luckily I was indecisive on buying the box edition long enough for it to sell out. The album won't be any better cased in wood. The normal CD version ships today, so I headed on over to The End's site to order it. But I can never order just one thing. To me, cash management means spending it on things I enjoy before something "important" comes up and my money is wasted in "obligations". It's funny how unimportant things are when you don't have the money to deal with them "properly". Rent's paid, there's food in the cupboard, fuck everything else. Funny when the wife "just wants to look" in furniture stores. "Oooh, that couch is nice!" She's seeing a couch, I'm looking at the price tag thinking "I could buy the Rage catalog for that amount." And I have a distinct disinterest in most of the new stuff coming out. That gets hyped, anyway. Blind Guardian and Solitude Aeturnus are the only new albums I'm looking forward to. Everything else I want is old. I bought an Overkill album yesterday. Had some bad experiences with them in the past, but Matt Johnsen suggested Horrorscope, I obeyed, and I'm glad I did. Cool stuff, and I realized vocalists today are lacking character. Blitz has character. I love it. Last two songs are fucking awesome. Totally the opposite of that Testament album I bought a couple weeks back. The New Order is boredom in audio form, interrupted by guitar solos. And for some reason I got excited knowing there was a new Terror Squad album out. The last album was completely reckless in ways I did not appreciate at the time. Disco Bloody Disco! That got me to thinking, I need Artillery albums. Only place I know to find them is Evil Legend. So that got me wanting the first three plus the two Pagan Altar albums they have on sale. $75 plus shipping? Too rich for my current budget. Irresponsibility is best doled out in responsible doses. So I started checking around for older stuff. The End is not the place to go to look for old stuff. But I found some anyway. First Metal Church album, in the shopping cart. And the first three Helstar albums. That's why I started thinking about Rivera. The guy's a lifer and all I've heard are fucking Destiny's End albums? God damn I suck. Situation corrected, I got the first two. And Zebulon Pike has a new one? fuuckkk. With some creative finangling, that's five CDs then, $50 post paid to Finland. Even if customs snags it, that's less than 9 in charges. Worth it. For that price I get the new album of one of the best current bands, a cool instrumental band (well, hopefully they still are), and some classics of the genre.
Yeah.
The internet is good because without it, that might have made it into print.
Current listening also leads me to believe that while Bruce Dickinson may be the better singer, Paul Di'Anno just might be the better vocalist. I don't know how he would have handled later material, but he's better than Bruce on the songs from the first two albums.
