I’m retiring from being an asshole.
In my early 20s, my ultimate career aspiration was to be an a-hole pop music critic.
I wanted to be a pop music critic more than anything. This isn’t to say that all music critics are a-holes (walks like duck? talks like a duck? or whatever), but back then I lived for the takedown.
I would scour sites like Buddyhead (RIP), and local pacific northwest weeklies like The Rocket (also RIP), not just to catch a glimpse of a Seattle punk music scene now long gone, but to witness when music writing had to do the necessary evil business of putting a band in their place.
Their offense? Working hard at making a piece of art that captures a moment in time that offended the delicate sensibilities of a well-read, well-listened music writer. I wanted to be the type of guy who would write reviews like this. (Editorial note: I must admit, this is easily one of the funniest pieces of rock journalism that I’ve ever read).
Seattle is/was a breeding ground for assholes.
I think it all started when I volunteered at this punk club in Seattle called The Paradox. In the early aughts, I would drive up to Seattle from my hometown of Rainier, WA multiple times a week to listen to and judge demo submissions.
This meant sitting in a dusty, little office with hundreds of CD and cassette demos and decide what was “good” and what was “not good.” This pile included submissions from bands and booking agents from all around the world just trying to fill a date on a tour, or locals hoping to grace the stages of the venue for the first time.
I liked the power I had in that little demo submission spreadsheet in the office overlooking University Ave. I liked that I had the power to deem an artform unworthy of the halls of one of Seattle’s most (at least to me) iconic rock venues. This is where I learned to be an a-hole.
So I started writing like an a-hole.
I remember some of my earliest record reviews. I look back at the kid who wrote those reviews and want to ask him one, poignant question: “Da fux wrong with you, bro?”
I was brutal. I would pull out half-baked historical references of proto-punk culture that I barely understood, and reference other albums the artist in question was ripping off that I hadn’t even listened to before. I just read all the music biographies and oral histories I could get my hands on. My goal in life was to know more useless information than the next guy or girl.
In my young age, all of my musical experience was anecdotal. I saw it through the eyes of the likes of my criticism heroes Lester Bangs, Simon Reynolds, and Chuck Klosterman.
I was a petty, know-it-all by osmosis.
Then I got fired from a big writing assignment.
The band, record label, and publication will go unnamed to protect the innocent. But for no reason at all, and for no merit of my own, I was assigned to review a popular, up-and-coming band’s sophomore record on a very popular indie label.
I was excited for all the wrong reasons. I was excited because a) I knew the band very well b) I also knew that I hated their music very much and c) I knew exactly what I was going to say about the record before I even listened to it. It was going to be brutal. I was stoked.
So I did just that. I took all the historical punk and independent rock anecdotes I had in my arsenal and ripped this record apart. I referenced the records I had never heard. I spoke of the band’s inauthenticity, and used $10 phrases critics liked to overuse back then like “pop sensibility” and “Captain Beefheart-esque.”
I was so happy with my assholiness. I hit submit and waited for the praise and accolades to come.
Then I got a phone call from my then editor.
If you can imagine, her feedback wasn’t great.
She told me the review sounded angry, and she asked if I had some sort of personal vendetta against the band. I said, “No” and muttered something about their artform offending my delicate sensibilities, and so on.
In her very brief stint as my former editor, she went on to detail that this band’s record label paid a lot of money to advertise with the said publication. This was my first brush with the reality of working in creative media, and I wasn’t ready to accept it.
As an early-twenties know-it-all is wont to do, I rolled my eyes very deeply—almost audibly on the phone—and muttered some other punk rock nonsense about how ad dollars shouldn’t dictate how I write about a certain band. Blah, blah, blah.
Write or wrong, I was fired as a freelancer and received my first taste of humble pie as a music journalist.
You don’t have to be an a-hole to do good work.
This took a while to settle into my value system. I could regale you with about two dozen stories from other assignments as a music writer, an agency copywriter, and leading creative projects over the last 10 years or so, but we don’t have that kind of time.
The only way to learn this type of belief system is to experience it on both sides of the spectrum (and I have). When I started leading rock bands and making records, I’ve had these same types of critics call my art “too depressing,” “derivative,” and “dated.”
That hurt. A lot.
I’ve also had some of my favorite creative directors (I’m looking at you, John Stengle and Meg Kaczyk) shower me with praise after working my ass off on professional projects and coach me in ways that made me want to aspire to be a better writer and creative leader in my own way.
That was revitalizing.
Through a combination of grit, experience, and some of that iron-sharpens-iron creative development, I’m learning to be less of an a-hole and more of an advocate. Less judgemental and more judicious. Less fearful and freer to try new things even if they don’t work out. Even if they are deemed “bad” by someone else.
Eventually, you just figure some things out, reflect a little, and elevate your own creative work a little bit the next time. And the next time. And the next.
So, I’m not sure who needs to hear this but, you don’t have to be an a-hole to make great things.
You just have to warm up that icy, cold heart every once in a while.
Thanks for listening.
