She's with the Band

I’ve seen the future of rock ‘n roll, and it is Brooklyn’s Mink Lungs… Caitlin Cary’s second album makes a perfect soundtrack for the sorts of days evoked on the languid, unhurried "Sleepin’ In on Sunday."… Mix a half-cup of Jeremy Enigk’s Return of the Frog Queen, two tablespoons Ron Sexsmith and one quart Neutral Milk Hotel. Stir counterclockwise, and you have a serviceable description of Castaways and Cutouts…

Such is the state of modern music journalism. Such is the lack of inspiration and opinion. Even in the service of minor bands, writers desperately churn out meaningless hype, sad cliches and vapid non-opinion toward two goals: pleasing the publicists and allowing the writer to blather on about more useless acts in the future.

Though I offer this statement as fact, you needn’t accept my humble, free opinion. For $65, a successful music journalist named Shirley Halperin was willing to help aspiring hacks at her May 15 MediaBistro seminar, "Almost Famous: Breaking Into Freelance Music Journalism."

What’s more, Halperin takes pride in knowing the truth about her profession.

The people seated in this room on lower Broadway are the target audience for Friends. Tonight’s the big season finale, so clearly they’ve made a difficult choice—they must really want to be music critics. Some may even have dreams of fighting for space on the red carpet outside of the Video Music Awards.

I’m surprised by the comeliness of the crowd; most of the attendees are capable of attracting members of the opposite sex. Maybe that’s why they need help breaking into a field of what are universally accepted as some of the most unattractive jobs in journalism held by the most unattractive journalists. Anybody can be a music writer. I’ve certainly been one for way too long, as proven by how comfortable I am attending this seminar under entirely false pretenses. I have no interest in breaking into music journalism; I’m more into figuring out why anyone else would bother. And I’m just not looking to make a few quick jokes about guitar pyrotechnics on acid and tasty licks from hell.

This evening promises to go beyond the usual hackety-hack action. According to MediaBistro’s sales pitch, I’m going to learn how to "get [my] foot in the door of the music business," which might come as a surprise to people who thought music journalism was about covering the music business. Those are the people who don’t understand the Halperin Formula for Success.

To sum up the seminar bio: Shirley Halperin is the music editor for Us Weekly magazine, a job she landed after stints editing the teen mag Bop and serving as the New York correspondent for the industry publication Hits. She’s also a popular talking head, having appeared on Extra, MTV and VH-1.

The first thing Halperin wants us to know is that she loves music. In fact, she’s "very much a rock person." She also believes that music writing is about more than cashing in promo CDs to cover the phone bill: "It’s a destiny."

The 30-year-old pro isn’t here to offer sympathy. We must "have a passion for music," she says, since our destiny as journalists "can be frustrating." Why? Because "the politics of the music industry plays such a large role."

All this, five minutes into her presentation. We are soon to learn that people who love music share a common destiny with those men who love dressing as women and hanging around the meat-packing district:

"Seventy to 80 percent of the time, you’ll be writing about artists you don’t like."

This could actually be construed as good news. Somebody, after all, has to note that N.E.R.D. is getting critical acclaim for ripping off bands like Styx and Slipknot. And why is Aimee Mann only now discovering that moths can get burned by a flame?

Sadly, Halperin doesn’t seem to understand that writers—even those with a "passion for music"—can express negative thoughts. We will find ourselves writing positive things about artists we don’t like, she informs us. For all intents and purposes, Halperin is warning that 70 to 80 percent of the time, we will be expected to tell lies.

That’s the big opening, and everyone who doesn’t walk out deserves to hear the rest. The good news is that Halperin doesn’t expect anyone to do a lot of work. Her first advice is to read lots of other music magazines.

"You are what you read," she declares, and then suggests that we read Blender, Rolling Stone and Spin—all magazines that primarily share a commitment to female musicians willing to show off lots of cleavage.

To her credit, at least, Halperin avoids recommending Us Weekly, which she describes as "writing for borderline idiots."

And of zines that might cover lesser-known acts and grant more freedom to the writer? Halperin, after all, came from the self-publishing world with her daddy-funded mag, Smug, in the mid-90s. These lesser publications are outlets in which aspiring music writers can learn basic music journalism skills. Her example: "Are you using words that are too smart?"

Writers might also get accustomed to working for free by writing for zines, because many editors think they’re doing us a favor by giving us two tickets and a VIP pass.

"You know what?" she asks. "They’re kind of right… That could actually get you somewhere."

Not surprisingly, Halperin will later invoke Pamela Des Barres, the groupie turned writer, as one of her favorite music journalists.

To be fair, Halperin is right about some things. For example, she makes a good point about approaching editors: "If you start spewing out the names of bands they’ve never heard, they won’t be impressed by that."

For Halperin’s ilk, editors rightly don’t want to be bothered hearing about bands that haven’t already been hyped into redundancy. MTV is successful playing only 30 music videos a day—why should music journalists follow more than 30 bands?

That advice doesn’t just apply to big mainstream mags. Head down to your local zine shop, and you’ll see the same indie acts bannered on all the same magazine covers. That slavishness has proven profitable for a publication like Magnet, which Halperin cites as an "excellent magazine" for indie rock coverage. Magnet is also the publication that gave us two of the bad examples of rock writing found at the start of this article. Its writers don’t use words that are too smart, and it has no problem with critics raving about one another’s bands. That’s Halperin’s kind of "excellent" reading.

Cooperation is king, and perhaps this is best summed up by Halperin’s thoughts of what’s relevant when covering rock stars: "They might beat their wives and stuff, but if you’re writing for a music magazine, that’s not your concern."

There’s also no place for unpleasant conversations with publicists: "You can be a complete guerrilla renegade reporter," Halperin notes, "but are you going to get cooperation the next time around?"

This would be a good time to point out that Halperin has used her Us Weekly position to also become a contributing writer at Rolling Stone—a magazine that has a proud history of defending authority figures who commit perjury in sexual harassment trials. It’s also a good time to note that the MediaBistro folks have announced that the evening is being taped, thus saving me the trouble of secretly recording it myself.

None of my fellow attendees seem disturbed by Halperin’s viewpoints. It’s a fairly large audience, too, with what they claimed was 28 people at a minimum of $50 a head. That’s big bucks by rock critic standards.

This is a crowd ready to make its money back. When one aspiring hack questioned Halperin’s suggestion that writers concentrate on bands with attractive performers—which may, he dared to consider, blur the line between journalist and publicist—Halperin responded: "This is about you getting the assignment to write about the band."

The near-rebel somberly nodded his head in agreement.

"How many of you," she then asks, "if you hated the band ethically and morally, wouldn’t write about the band?"

Two people raise their hands.

"You have to learn how to temper your reaction," she explains. "They don’t want to hear [deep sigh]. They want to hear ‘Cool!’ ‘Great!’ ‘Awesome!’"

Besides, Halperin adds, you can always express your disdain for the band "after the article’s been edited and published."

Halperin also warns us about all the trouble that comes with having an opinion. She cites Spin’s hard lesson after they put Creed on their cover, accompanied by an article that mainly goofed on the popular band. She wants us to consider the long months spent trying to placate the publicists afterwards: "Half of your year has been spent thinking and analyzing about how to get out of this mess with this band… It just becomes a mess that takes up half your life. So, that’s that."

As noted, Halperin’s seminar does some good. There’s some occasional useful advice, like her suggestion not to ask predictable questions. Halperin even suggests that it’s okay to sometimes print controversial news about a popular band—that is, once you’re sure that the band’s publicist represents so many bands that he or she "has to work with you."

Most importantly, Halperin does an excellent job of representing the banality of modern music journalism. She is the true face of pandering, and is completely honest about how well this serves her. It would take a lot less than three hours for her to convince anyone with integrity to walk away from the business, and I would’ve paid a lot more than $65 to be talked out of this business back when I was younger.