In the Cameron Crowe film “Almost Famous,” a teenage journalist lands his dream job and gets to tour with the fictional band Stillwater while covering the group for Rolling Stone magazine. The film is semi-autobiographical, as Crowe himself was a teenage writer for Rolling Stone.Much of the material in the 2000 comedy-drama rings true. As a music journalist, I could relate to many of the situations. But as much as I’d like to believe that when I was starting out I was as calm and collected as the bright young writer portrayed in the movie, that’s not the case. A descriptive title for a film about my early experiences as a music journalist would be “Nobody’s Perfect.”
A recent article offered advice to bands and artists that use the web as a promotional tool. In the spirit of full disclosure, for Top-10 Tuesday, I’d like to fess-up to ten blunders, gaffs, and missteps I’ve made in my career as a music journalist.
In no particular order:
1) Lost Archives – I started my journalism career in the 80s, and had the opportunity to interview the local and national acts that performed in Delaware at venues like the Tally Ho and the Stone Balloon. I usually had my trusty tape recorder at my side when interviewing artists like the Hooters, the A’s, Huey Lewis, the Romantics, and Modern English. But being young and dumb, I would record over those tapes once the article was written.
A few years later it dawned on me that those interviews should have been preserved.
2) Name Recognition – I wrote a feature on the band Semisonic (of “Closing Time” fame) that appeared in both the News Journal and the Washington Times.
For some reason that I still can’t figure out, I referred to lead singer Dan Wilson (who I had interviewed) as “Dan Murphy” throughout the article. Nobody caught the mistake… except for the band’s publicist when I sent her copies of the feature.
3) Equipment Failure – Batteries die, microphones break, and tapes can tangle. I learned these lessons the hard way. On more than one occasion I left an interview thinking I had gotten great material, only to find out that what I really had was a tape full of hiss. On one occasion, Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen was kind enough to call me back (while he was at a skating rink with his daughter, no less) and “re-do” a telephone interview I had botched.
These days, I always go into important interview situations with my batteries fresh, and my audio-visual equipment well-tested.
4) Communication Breakdown – When I began my career, I typed my features using a typewriter, and turned in my stories on paper. These days, everything is emailed or uploaded electronically. It’s a quicker, more efficient, and all-around better method – unless you email the wrong file.
I once accidentally attached a sketchy, unfinished work-in-progress to an email instead of the completed article. Because the editor was up against deadline, the piece was sent to production without being proofread. When it was published, it read like a first-time writing effort from an incoherent, grammatically challenged high school freshman.
5) Swamped – My first “Sonicbids Sunday” profiles ran here last week. When I opened the press coverage opportunity on the site, I thought I might get a few dozen responses. To date, I’ve received nearly 300. About a third were picked for coverage, so expect “Sonicbids Sunday” to be a regular Examiner feature for some time to come.
6) How’s That Again? – Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of artists from all over the world. I’ve dealt with all sorts of dialects and accents, but the two that proved the toughest to decipher were a trans-Atlantic telephone interview with Nick Marsh, the lead singer of 80’s British Goth-punk band Flesh for Lulu, and an in-person chat with reggae star Luciano.
The telephone interview was hampered by a bad telephone connection and Marsh’s heavy Brit accent. Luciano’s Jamaican dialect was also difficult to understand, especially since the interview took place in a noisy Philadelphia club. Somehow I was able to get through both with enough material for a feature.
7) Coming Attractions – I once made the mistake of letting a musician “preview” a feature before it was published. The guy was a “composer” related to someone at the publication I was writing for at the time. I was asked to interview him about his latest "project," which was a rock musical based on “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
As awful as that concept sounds, the finished product was worse. But in the article I was kind; I simply stuck to the facts and let the fellow speak his mind.
The mistake I made was obliging him when he asked if he could do a quick “fact check” before the piece was published. Instead of a “fact check,” he tried to do a re-write. Ever since, only my editors and I get to preview my work before it’s published.
8) Wiki-Wacky – Any high school freshman will tell you that you’re not supposed to use Wikipedia.com as a factual source. A few years back, I was writing a feature on Carlos Santana and wanted to use his full name in the piece.
Because I was on deadline, I grabbed it off of an article on Wikipedia, figuring that some fan would have spotted and corrected any error. I figured wrong. His publicist informed me, after the feature was published, that Santana’s full name is Carlos Humberto Santana de Barragan.
Years later, Wikipedia still lists Santana’s name incorrectly as Carlos Augusto Santana Alves.
9) Kiss Off – One of the perks of being a music journalist is that you sometimes get tickets, and better yet, backstage passes to shows. I was backstage at the Wachovia Center for Kiss’s Psycho Circus tour. I was having a great time, and I should have been satisfied with the fact that I got to hang out with Sebastian Bach, Bruce Kulick, and Tommy Thayer, who were also there before the show.
When the show ended, I got back stage again. I noticed that Kiss’s mic stands had been brought back from the stage and were sitting at the top of the entrance ramps. Still attached to each of the stands were several personalized guitar picks that the band tosses to the audience during the show. I figured, they were free then, so why not now? I headed up the ramp and began pulling a few picks from each stand.
When I turned around, a very large roadie was standing behind me. By the expression on his face, I knew he wasn’t happy with my impromptu souvenir shopping. I got out of there quickly – with a set of guitar picks in my pocket and only my ego a bit bruised.
10) You Can’t Get There From Here – In 1990 I did an interview with former Angel keyboardist Gregg Giuffria for his band House of Lords. The band was opening for Nelson (which was a weird pairing) at Upper Darby’s Tower Theatre.
My buddy and I had backstage passes and got to hang out with the band and crew after the show at the bar across the street. After a few hours, lead singer James Christian wanted to get back to the downtown Philadelphia hotel where the group was staying, but the band’s tour bus wasn’t scheduled to leave for another half hour. Out of the blue, the tour manager asked if I would mind dropping Christian off at his hotel.
"No problem," I said, failing to mention the fact that I’m known for my lousy sense of direction, and really didn’t know how to get from Upper Darby to downtown Philly. Once Christian was in my car, I mentioned as much, but he must have thought I was kidding.
Ten minutes later, as I circled back to the Tower after three failed attempts to find a familiar road, Christian looked at me and asked, “You guys really don’t know where you’re going, do you?”
Fortunately, the tour bus was still parked behind the Tower. Christian decided to hop out and wait for it. Ironically, House of Lords’ hit single at the time was a cover of Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home.”
Here's the ideal life of a music journalist, as portrayed in the trailer for "Almost Famous":
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