On music journalism: Occasionally you have a mini win

Although metal journalism & critique can often be a thankless task – most of the feedback one gets is negative (usually from fans if you’ve written a bad review about one of their favourite acts) – occasionally you have a bit of a win.

I’ve had a couple in the past six months. But the thing is that I generally don’t like to talk about them because it looks like skiting. Today I don’t really care because any news is good news, right? Right.

So the first one happened when I had the awesome fortune to interview Rich Ward of Stuck Mojo/Fozzy fame earlier this year. Not only was this one of the best I’ve done, because of the nature of the conversation, but it could’ve gone on for hours if we’d had time. Rich is a great bloke and an excellent conversationalist.

Once the interview had gone up at Metal as Fuck, Rich posted it in his various places – Dukerocks.com was one; Stuckmojo.de was another. While this is fabulous for the interview’s traffic (forums especially are well known for their ability to draw readers to a site), it makes you feel good about your work because the artist went to the extent of posting it for his fans.

The second one happened earlier this year as well – sort of around the same time. Prior to the Death Angel/Armored Saint tour to Australia I had the awesome fortune to talk to both Joey Vera and Rob Cavestany (these interviews are linked from this blog: do a search to find ’em). Both interviews were great instances because both guys were talkative and happy (this makes so much difference, believe me).

After the Death Angel/Armored Saint show here in Adelaide months later, we all were at the local Enigma Bar together, and Joey thanked me for the interview. Remember, this is three months or more after it had occurred, and this dude talks to the media often. He told me that him and Rob were discussing my work whilst on the tour – at which point he got Rob in on the conversation. Both were quite chuffed with my relaxed interviews. This totally blew me away. Still does, in fact.

Little do these guys know how nervous I get beforehand! Still, it proves that doing your research pays off. Without the research, you have less to talk about!

My last little win was fairly recently, when I had the lovely opportunity to interview Bumblefoot about his release Abnormal. Unfortunately it was an emailer, and email interviews are always quite impersonal. You also don’t get the depth of conversation or diversion that phone interviews tend to offer. Bumblefoot, like Rich Ward, posted the link in his fan forum for others to read.

The beautiful thing about seeing your work presented in other people’s forums is that, while those fans won’t necessarily drop comments on the interview itself, they do go back and post comments in the forum. So, while sometimes the comments are negative, which, let’s face it, is a hazard of the job, most of the time the majority of them are positive.

While doing this sort of work is just like doing an editor’s job – that is, pretty well faceless – it’s still grand to see people appreciate what you do.