NOT ENOUGH HOURS OR EARS!!!
The life of a rock scribe is not as glamorous as you might imagine. Let me tell you --- deadlines suck! Then there is having to sort through some 40-odd emails a day, playing phone tag with publicists and agents and managers, only to have an artist “forget to call” for the interview that took the last of your sanity and most of your previous day to set up. Arrrrrrrrrrragh! Sometimes it’s enough to make you scream! Then of course, there are those folks who can not grasp that they are not the center of your universe. While I can understand that they are excited about whatever it is that is driving them to call and/or email daily, but yeeeeesh...it tends to drive a person nuts! And that is not even including all the extra work that comes with having a weekly radio show to prep and pull music for; nor the productive work time lost while making appearances and/or hosting events for either the print or radio projects. Ahhh...but those are soooo much fun and the beer is always soooo cold! But I digress... For the record, I love opening the mailbox and the P.O. Box and finding packages of music just waiting to be ripped open and discovered. I greatly enjoy listening to all the local/regional/national music that comes in, but more often than not, we are so deluged with demos and press packages, that it takes considerable time to get some of it. As a rule of thumb, I generally takes ‘em as we gets ‘em, especially when it comes to regional/local CDs. The stack of discs awaiting my attention never seems to get smaller, but one by one, they ALL eventually make it into either my boom box, the car stereo of my assistant Lisa (as we race off to some appointment), or the disc player of my trusty old MacIntosh computer (as I answer emails or design pages). The bottom line is that... eventually... all of them are heard. If it sounds like I am grousing here, I’m not! Because even though –– like every job –– mine has it’s downside, it also has a great upside. Aside from all the typing, calling, talking and reading that comes with this writing gig, my job calls for me to do a LOT of listening. The basic requirement of being a rock scribe is first and foremost being a music “fan.” So checking out all the tunes being sent in is the part of my job that does not suck! I especially enjoy those rare days – when there is no place special to be and no project so pressing that it can’t be put off for an extra day – so that I can really dig into the locally-produced demos and promos. It’s great when, while ripping open envelopes and slipping discs into the stereo’s CD drawer, that we discover some regional artist that really jumps out from the pack. I enjoy hearing fresh sounds from those artists who are willing to break the mold and be something besides an emulator of the latest flavor of the day. On occasion, I even find a true diamond in the rough. Recent “diamonds” in the last few months have included local original artists –– Tristen Gaspadarek (emotive chick rock), SOAP (young rockers with some edge and talent), The Steepwater Band (tasty blues rock), The Dan Whitaker Band (country variations), Stellar Road (story-weaving acoustic-driven modern rock/pop) and a very intriguing outfit called, The Thadeus Project (eclectic/progressive rock). Thanks to those above mentioned artists, and those I have yet to discover in my mailbox, for helping to remind this weary writer why it is, that I do this thing I do... | |||||||
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