Where Art Though Lester Bangs?

For years I have tried to lose my NJ slang, but after watching 13 episodes of the Sopranos in a row, courtesy of Chico Velo Captain, Ed McLaughlin, it’s back in all its friggin’ glory. Turns out I went to the same High School as Tony Soprano. "But he’s a fictional character," my wife exclaims. "So am I," I retort. If that weren’t enough cred to fulfill my dream of being Italian, the paper Tony picks up every morning, The Star Ledger is edited by my brother-in-law, Jon Lazarus, talk about being a "made" man! And now I got a Newark Star Ledger Munch Mobile t-shirt........uhm, it’s means something different in NJ.

Besides having dreams and aspirations of being even thinly associated with a TV show, I also, amongst my many talents, write for a weekly in Chico, CA. I’ve written for just about every paper in town, started a few, and now have a column that is pretty much a straight forward, man-about-town, with a music slant thang. No Pulitzer prize on the horizon with this column. For those of you who write in smaller communities, you know that your words ring heavier than would be expected. It’s something about our fragile Western egos that makes people OH-SO-SENSITIVE whenever they think they are directly or indirectly being referred to in a column.

Last week or so, besides my name dropping of "joes new band..blah..blah..blah," I brought up the point that locally, reviewers should have to pay to see shows. Now in bigger cities, the economics are different, and I don’t live in a big City, so I’ll stick with what I know. The average show in Chico is $5. In 1967 it was $2, in 1977 it was $3, in 1987 it was $4 in 1997 it was back to $2 and now it averages around five bucks. Now everybody who works for a paper feels that they should get into shows for free, just like Cops get free donuts. Like it’s written somewhere that the press gets to see music for free. I can’t get over the whole concept that without reviewers, musicians would still play their instruments, but without musicians what would reviewers do? What would they write about?

And what is a review, but somebody’s opinion. No I’m not totally anti-social, but I do realize that most peoples opinions are, as the English are fond of saying, full of posturing and wankering. Vicariously through the written word, reviewers get to feel that they have a talent because by virtue of the rag they write for, their name is associated with a band. For Instance: The Beatles at Hershey Park, by DNA. "See, I can talk about things, look at me, I’m not the same dork who used to sit in his room and do things to his cat. I get into shows for free now. I get backstage. I’m friends with the band." Yeah, right.

It’s a given that within the music industry they are a certain amount of pariah that nobody has been able to shake loose yet and reviewers are amongst the (to stick with this metaphor) vermin. But hey, everybody deserves to make a buck in America, and herein lies the rub. My experience of reviews is that generally one get’s paid between $15 and $45 dollars depending on the length. For those of you who still yearn to write reviews for bigger papers and magazines, you can usually expect anywhere from $25 to a couple of hundred bucks, which ain’t chicken scratch. But again, in my neck of the woods, the ratio is you get paid $15 dollars to write less than 700 words on less than humble opinions.

Meanwhile the average music rag has a staggering slanted system wherein those at the top make significant sums of loot, while those at the bottom, the writers, make substandard fees. And once again we find an anomaly that is askew, for without articles and interviews and, ahem, reviews, nobody would even bother to pick up a music rag. That is to say that when one sees the cover of a rag with a band on the cover, and the promise of something interesting inside, it is scooped up and taken away. But in the scheme of things, within the hierarchy of the paper, the people that create the content are ALWAYS the least paid people on the staff. And the financial numbers are staggering! An advertising sales person can bring home a decent paycheck, while a writer can only hope of earning a fraction of the sales person’s paycheck. Yet, Nobody picks up a paper to see what new ads are in it.

Without a doubt, I believe that papers should absorb the cost of entry fees to shows. Why is it that papers assume that they should get free tickets? Again it is the same situation that without something to write about they wouldn’t have one paper taken off the rack, yet they act like dilettantes when it comes to admission prices? And worse, act like despots when writer’s squeak that they should be paid more. I suppose the thought is that writers are a dime a dozen while sales crew are a rare breed. Symptomatic of our diseased Western society, artists are devalued while corporate do-gooders are rewarded.

One of things this has done is produce writers of inferior quality, lessening the impact of anything their pen touches. In fact, when one looks at the sad state of affairs within the music industry, a straight line can be drawn between poor writers who glorify untalented bands, to insure that they can continue to receive their meager rations, and our nations infatuation with infantile desires and codependent thought.