I know what you do in the shower. Well, maybe not in the shower -- you might do it alone in your room, or, if you're really visual, in front of a mirror. Don't let the fact that I know stop you from doing it -- and don't feel guilty either. I do it perhaps more than you do, and I don't feel guilty. It is a natural thing, and probably a healthy one (so long as you don't do it too frequently).
You dream of being a rock star.
And why not? The incredibly public lives of rock stars have something for everyone -- fame (and fame without responsibility), money, a clothing line, glamorous cars, a video tape of your ephebophilic micturition and (if you make it really big) midgets to carry trays of cocaine at your birthday party.
For me, the attraction is two-pronged (or so I'd like to think). On the one, apodictically certain hand, I'd very much like the attention. That being said, I'm in no hurry to become the next Fergie. For one thing, my humps probably aren't going to make-make-make you scream. I'd also like to think, that I have sufficient personal scruple not to become, like Fergie, the worst kind of sellout. I'd want to be one of those rare intelligent rock stars. I would make you think even as you were rocking. You'd be rocking and then, whoa! -- you would realize that equal rights for women is obviously a good idea.
Of course, one doesn't see many of these kinds of rock stars around -- perhaps hard rocking slowly dulls the intellect, or perhaps musical snake-oil peddlers just have more digestible tastiness in their empty-calorie pop than brainiac art-rockers could muster in a year (hi Robert Fripp, Dream Theater and the Mahavishnu Orchestra).
You probably know this. It might explain why you don't do what you do in your shower in the street, or on a stage (unless maybe you're a cutting-edge actor looking to put the "public" back in "showering in public").
Maybe you also suck at singing. Either way, that dream of becoming a rock star is looking pretty grey, and unless you have some sort of indefatigable determination, dementia or lovely lady lumps, you're probably not going to be the next Fergie either.
Even if you can't become a rock star, however, you can still get your dream's consolation prize: you can become a music journalist.
I'd like to say that just as an inability to sing should give aspiring singers pause, the inability to write well should stop aspiring music journalists dead in their tracks. But that's just not true. Between the blogosphere and the increasingly spineless and servile reviews published in most music magazines (Hi, Rolling Stone magazine! Didn't you used to tell bands they could do better?), even the most untalented hack can make it as a music journalist these days. You won't become famous -- you definitely won't become Almost Famous -- but you, dispassionate Dartmouth Graduate, could easily pay the bills. Plus, you get a sort of indirect fame, and you might even get invited to the parties where midgets carry cocaine around. Still pretty good, huh?
"But," you're probably saying, "I majored in Geography! I don't know the first thing about covering the arts!" Au contraire, messieurs-dames! If you have read this far you have already seen utilized all of the major tricks necessary for you to become a insubstantial writer of words about music.
Once I have pointed them out, you will see that they are as natural as the other stuff you do in the shower, and you will reach something like the dream of rock stardom you sporadically entertain.
First, it is not enough to like the music you are reviewing. You must like it, but more than that, you must like it because it is so darn honest. 50 Cent? The "realest" rapper out there. System of a Down? Hard-Rocking Honest Abes. The Black Eyed Peas? An act unafraid to look critically at the Humps of our age.
Next, utilize food metaphors and only food metaphors. Every musician is a Chef, every album something off the menu. Guitars and drums should be crunchy foods, (as in "his blistering solo goes down like unchewed Chex Mix") and everything else should be a sauce of some sort. Pop should be made of desserty-syrup, techno of bitter or poisoned dressings and other music should be some form of meat-based gravy. As necessary, substitute genres or instruments for food items, as in "they serve up a chunky stroganoff of funk with a deadly electronica glaze."
Third, constantly drop the names of already famous musicians, writers and social events. This should be obvious enough -- it gets your piece greater readership or more Google hits. You think its any accident I've mentioned the Black Eyed Peas like 50 times in 900 words? I gotta get signed!
Fourth (and only if you write for a magazine with predominantly Caucasian readership), begin each review of any hip-hop album with a statement about how you know nothing about hip hop, really you don't, not anything past Run-DMC and Outkast anyway, but you were (accidentally, maybe?) listening to this album and, well, it's pretty good!
And finally, even though you will be every bit as sequacious and uninteresting as the artists you will be reviewing, never -- and I mean never -- let down your facade of superiority. You have become a critic and you don't take crap from anyone.
