Calling All Reader/Musicwriters.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Call for entries for the 2009 Best Music Writing series:

Hello lover of great music journalism,

I'm the series editor of the Best Music Writing series, an anthology
now in its tenth year of publishing the year's best writing on topics
music-related. I'm honored to be working with Greil Marcus for the
upcoming 2009 book, and hope you can help me make this the best book
in the series.

My job is tough. I am responsible for reading all the music
publications in the English language and selecting 100 pieces from
these publications for possible reprint in the volume. It helps a lot
to get suggestions from writers, editors, and music writing fans who
read every day.

So this email serves as a call for submissions for the book Best Music
Writing 2009. For the anthology I want to reprint brilliant features,
essays, profiles, news articles, interviews, creative non-fiction,
fiction, book reviews, long-format reviews, blog posts, and journal
articles on musical and music culture-related topics. I mean the term
"music" broadly to include all genres, time periods, and performers
and "writing" to mean all work published in periodical form in the
calendar year 2008. I regret that I cannot consider books, book
chapters, liner notes, or transcripts of broadcast journalism.

Please send your own best work, work you've edited or overseen, great
work of your friends and colleagues, or work that you have admired in
passing throughout the year. You can send email links, hard copies of
articles, whole publications (please paper clip or post-it the pages
to read), or if need be, just email the series editor Daphne Carr with
the author name/article title/publication title/date.

If you are an editor, please limit the number of submissions to your
publication's best, most favored, most original and important works.
You can share my email with your writers too, so they can nominate
their own works.

Feel free to forward or repost this email, and to send mail multiple
times as you find more pieces that you find notable. Please send items
between now (December 29) and February 1, 2009. Please feel free to
forward this and repost it. Make sure the contact information is
contained:

Email to: musicwriting@gmail.com

Poptimist Overlord freakytigger was featured in the 2008 edition for his piece on ABBA, if I'm not mistaken. And it was, in part, thanks to the poptimists here that they knew to check it out.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Who is Nelson George, and why did he feel compelled to write this:

"I suppose Tom Ewing’s piece should have originally been categorized with the other archivist pieces, but there’s an obsessive quality to his definitions of ABBA songs as “adult” and “dark” that leads me to believe Ewing spent a great many (too many?) hours listening closely to these records over and over in a closed room. That kind of focus, which could be viewed as committed or demented, depending on your view of ABBA’s canon, is what makes this essay flow. To me it reads like the testament for some strange Scandinavian religion."

About a piece that's actually a quite sober, accurate, and down-to-earth (and, dare I say it, FAIR) assessment of ABBA's work? He makes Tom sound like a loony, when the remarkable thing about the essay to me is how methodical and reasonable it is.

[koganbot]

Nelson George writes about soul and r&b, or at least he did back in the '80s in the Village Voice. Tends to be more matter of fact than fiery. Perhaps George has a standard expectation that it's somewhat misguided for smart people to spend time studying groups like ABBA (though obviously in this instance he liked the result).

I haven't yet gotten a copy of this email. Maybe I've been dropped from the list. Is it from Daphne? It seems rather dead in its prose.

Marcus could make very good choices, though that depends on whether the screening process doesn't screen out anything that's any good.

I am preparing a selection from the Nia & Pixie Show.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yep, from Daphne. I must have erased her name with other address info.

I am in the inner circle after all

[koganbot]

Daphne missive just arrived!

Re: I am in the inner circle after all

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

nelson g was music editor at billboard writer in the 80s -- very thorough journalistically, and sensible, but never particularly exciting; i raided his book on motown for facts rather than insights

[koganbot]

Btw, how was the 2008 book overall?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Haven't read the book yet -- opens with a Carl Wilson piece I know and ends with a Tom Ewing piece I know (yuk) but between them I'm not sure I've actually read any of them. Substantial previews at Google books that I'll probably skim through, and Michelangelo Matos compiled all of the online honorable mentions in an Idolator series (starting here (http://idolator.com/399499/idolator-presents-second+best-music-writing-2008-part-one), part one of four).

I think the closest I'll ever get to this thing is the Skye Sweetnam MySpace page honorable mention last year. Which is good enough for me! Though I am seriously considering transcribing some of Britney's responses for that doc.

[koganbot]

Would a doc meet Daphne's criteria?

[koganbot]

Every year those of us who read about music compulsively, whatever our professional standing, await Da Capo's annual Best Music Writing anthology because we want to read good pieces we might have missed the year before.

I dispute this.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes I was a bit cheesed off by that description!

I wrote a couple of things this year that were deliberately Marcus-esque in places (my Dylan tell tale signs review and one of the Poptimist columns). Maybe I should submit those! In general tho I don't think I wrote anything specially inspired: I've been happy with the overall quality of Popular but nothing stands out in my memory.

I will have a think about other people's stuff. I don't think I READ as much criticism as usual this year either.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

the two articles (not written by people I know) from this year that I remember intending to flag up were that Lil' Wayne piece everyone went nuts over a while back, and Khia's track-by-track review of Trina's Still Da Baddest (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=41251292&blogID=373300476). I could quote it all day but this is just poetry:

KILL URSELF HOE!!! HANG URSELF!!! BITCH!!! JUMP OUT DA WINDA AND CHASE UR CD DAT I JUST THEW OUT AND GET RUNNED OVA WIT IT AT FULL SPEED!! BITCH, IM DRAGGING BY DAT DUSTY ASS WIG.... SO HOLD ON TO DA BUMPA AND GET THEE BEHIND ME.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I OUGHT TO TAKE OFF MY BIG RED CLOWN SHOE AND KICK U IN UR BIG BOBBLE HEAD!!!!!!!!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

YO FEET IS CRUSTY AND YO WIG IS DUSTY AND YO HEAD LOOK BIGGA DAN YO BODY!!!!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

HO U AINT PARIS NOR NICOLE AND IN DA HOOD, THE BOYS ARE SCARED OF U POINTING AND WHISPERING..... SHE LOOK LIKE SHE GOT DAT THUNDA LIGHTNING!!!!!!!!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

US REAL QUEENS IS SOOO TIRED OF U TALKING BOUT UR ASS!!! WE ALL KNOW DAT IT IS AS RAGGEDY AS A MANGO SEED!!!!

[koganbot]

Is crucial that we not overlook William Bloody Swygart this year.

[vumgarda.livejournal.com]

I vote this one:

http://williambswygart.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/all-i-wanted-was-you-to-take-me-out/

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'm tempted to transcribe all of Britney's interview responses from her "4 the Record" documentary and send that in.

Stuff that stands out to me: a lot of what dickmalone has been writing over at Idolator this year, Tim Finney's year-end round-up (again), the Popmatters article (http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/one-bare-shoulder-the-effect-of-dream-street-on-the-sexual-identity-of-the-) on "teenipop"...nothing else is coming to mind at the moment, but I have yet to round up the other usual suspects.

[koganbot]

I just sent Daphne "it felt so wrong, it felt so right" and "there are only losers" from the Nia & Pixie Show (considered including "that does not make me want to la la" a.k.a. "boob popping out and greasy hair," but since it was friends-only I thought that'd be pushing it).

Need to go back and check piratemoggy's greatest rants. I might not be as circumspect.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I need to look back over the hoarpop thread.