Wednesday, 5/21/97 Rock Love turns tide of music journalism
Rapidly growing publication spotlights positive aspects of
industry, artists
By Kristin Fiore Daily Bruin Senior Staff Schmooze your way into
a club on the Sunset Strip on any given night and you’ll find the
same scene. Fifty flushed twentysomethings hug the stage in
ecstatic communion as a four-piece combo rips through an hour-long
set. Behind them, music industry fops and journalists line the
walls, stirring their martinis and discussing the weekend’s golf
game. The passion that hurled them headlong into the music business
has been reduced to an occasional tapping of their $200 shoes
against the sticky floor. As you push past them on the way to the
restroom, you want to strangle them with the laminated VIP passes
that hang limp around their necks. But you’re an adult now, and
there are better ways to deal with such situations. Ask Scott
Hunter, the founder, heart and soul of Rock Love magazine. He has
found a solution that not only frustrates insipid industry cynics
but also returns the important and oft-abused privilege of music
journalism to its rightful owners – the incurable music fans. With
the aptly named Rock Love, Hunter dispenses with the gossip,
negativity and journalistic egotism that plague major rock
magazines in favor of intelligent interviews and rave reviews of
deserving artists. His premise is simple – there’s too much great
music out there to waste ink and trees slamming bands or discussing
Courtney Love’s latest fashion crisis. If a band or an album
doesn’t strike his fancy, he simply doesn’t include it. "Who are we
to criticize somebody’s creation? How about instead, we go a little
deeper than that and find out what’s behind it? We want to be a
resource guide," Hunter says. "’Here are the artists, CDs and shows
we like, here are the people we’ve interviewed that we find
fascinating for whatever reason, and here’s why. And I try and
leave everybody with, ‘Go and find out for yourself.’ The other
approach is, ‘Here’s what sucks and here’s why.’ We’re just taking
the approach of passionate music fans who want to give publicity
and notice to the artists who are giving us something that feeds
our passion," Hunter says. The magazine, which began a few years
back as a mere pamphlet, is now on the brink of national
distribution and recognition. Though its content is based on
Hunter’s philosophy, its origins are more practical. "This all
stemmed out of the things that I was missing when I was a music fan
getting out of college, and I didn’t have as much time to keep up
on things. I was at the mercy of the magazines that were out there
to read and the information they were filling me with. "I was a
bumbling idiot as an attempted musician. I have no skills
whatsoever. So I took it upon myself to become the biggest music
fan in the world that I could be. And as I got older and busier,
the industry made it hard for me to be that, which was unacceptable
to me. So I created something to satisfy my own needs, basically.
And what I’m finding out is that it’s also satisfying the needs of
many, many others." Hunter hopes that the respect Rock Love shows
artists – and consequently, fans – through focusing on artists’
successes and important issues will repair some of the damage that
spurious, nasty journalism has done to the relationship between
critics, artists and fans. By sidestepping the most common
journalistic sand traps – self-indulgent writing, shallow
interviews and cranky critiques that needlessly berate artists –
Hunter and Rock Love may be able to establish the sort of
relationship with artists that music magazines should have had all
along. "We are looking for the redeeming qualities in the artist
and the music. We’re not looking for an angle that’s based on
gossip or some kind of lifestyle practice or anything like that.
That’s really where I see us setting ourselves apart. We are really
attempting to bring the fans and the artists a little bit closer
together and do something about pulling out that wedge that’s been
driven between the various factions over the years, just by the
sheer force of this industry, by how it’s grown and become a $15
billion industry. It’s not what it was 30 years ago," he says.
Thanks to years of "best and worst dressed" features and articles
centered on drug rehab experiences and sexual exploits, Hunter has
his work cut out for him. "Artists are used to most of us coming at
them with a knife. We’ve created this beast. And now, I’ve had to
spend three years getting artists to understand that we want to do
a nice, encouraging, positive interest story on them – not a hack
job. And it’s hard. "Look what’s happened. You can’t sit down and
talk with someone without them looking at you cross-eyed, like,
‘Where are you coming from and what are you up to?’ And that’s a
shame. You’ve got to take these people for who they are, not what
you want them to be or what you’re trying to make out of them,"
Hunter says. Earning trust, focusing on the music and putting the
ball in the artist’s court has been beneficial, as many artists
have confided in Hunter in ways they would not with other
journalists. Even if personal information a musician reveals is not
used in an article (a request for privacy is always respected),
that knowledge helps Hunter and other writers better understand
them. The end result is a more thorough and engrossing interview
that paints a three-dimensional portrait of a human being – not a
flat, sensationalized gloss of a star. Journalistic jargon and
ego-inspired introductory monologues are equally alienating and
commonplace in music magazines. Critics often spout clever
witticisms and theories in hopes of impressing their peers, but
this empty literary masturbation only pushes readers away. Hunter
is dismayed by the exalted position of these critics who bask in
the spotlight they should be shining on the artists they profile.
"What I see and what I’ve studied shows me that the initial intent
of entertainment reporting was supposed to be different from
journalism. It was supposed to be a combination of information,
education and somebody’s personal opinion. And I think the info and
education part has really taken a back seat to the critic’s
personal opinion, combined with the fact that many of the critics
nowadays have become celebrities themselves. So, there is now a
conflict of interest in their ability and desire to report on the
music instead of writing something that increases their profile as
a celebrity," Hunter says. But critics aren’t the only ones in the
industry whose focus has been skewed. The music labels have also
gotten greedy and upset the balance and the process that molded the
careers of artists in the 1960s and ’70s. And when the labels
themselves treat their bands like disposable product instead of
like artists, the media aren’t far behind. "I’d say it started some
time in the ’80s. The music business really exploded throughout the
’80s and early ’90s. And that’s part of it, too. You have a
mechanism of an industry that has gotten bigger than its britches
ever were, and the foundation never really settled. They got
bigger, but things didn’t adjust or change so much. The only thing
that really changed was that all of a sudden they were taking a
handful of bands and throwing them against the wall to see which
one would stick, instead of backing one band, knowing that that one
band was going to be a hit. It makes our job harder, and it makes
the artists’ and the record labels’ jobs harder, too," Hunter says.
This assembly-line production of bands isn’t healthy for the
long-term lifeblood of the industry. It also sucks the joy out of
discovering a potentially great artist whose lack of label support
and ability to develop will land them in the Wherehouse bargain bin
within two years. "To me what’s glorious about the art is that it’s
coming from people – somebody’s personal creation. It’s their baby,
and we’re doing our best in this society to dilute that. In the old
days they used to groom people. In the Elton John days, they’d take
a guy like him – and he wasn’t a star until his third or fourth
album – but they were grooming him and had a guaranteed success
there. "But what’s happening now is that the Bushes of the world
are becoming instant hits from the point of exposure just because
we’ve now got all these bands to choose from, and somebody’s got to
be the big star. Nobody’s allowed to build a career. And what
happens in building a career is that hopefully your second album is
better than your first, and your fifth album is better than your
second, and by the time that R.E.M. or somebody like that has 10
albums, they’ve really got it down. But, yeah, we don’t allow
anybody to get to that point anymore, because if you can’t show me
a 10th album on your first try, then screw you, you’re out," Hunter
says. But there is hope. Despite the fact that the market is
saturated with mediocre acts, or acts that just haven’t been
properly developed, there are true talents that may have staying
power. And Hunter is bound and determined to find them. "There are
a lot of great bands out there. It’s a question of sifting through
and finding them. And we’re here to say, ‘If you like alternative,
here’s what we’ve found in the alternative category that we like
and recommend. Go check it out. You’ll agree with some of it, you
won’t agree with other parts of it. And if you’ve not been a fan of
X type of music, like country or jazz or folk, here’s some of those
that we recommend and maybe we’ll open your mind a little bit,’"
Hunter says. Another positive sign is that the industry seems to be
realizing the dangers of signing anything and everything that
sounds like the hot act of the moment, though learning this lesson
a few years ago might have saved the industry from the slump it is
in at the moment. "I think people have woken up. I think the fact
that grunge/alternative could not sustain itself beyond its initial
impact as a viable genre going forward says that people are fed up,
because what happened – which I think they’ve already backed away
from with electronic music – is that grunge is the thing now and
this is what you must be and this is all you can listen to, and if
you don’t sound like Nirvana and Soundgarden … that’s all people
want to hear right now, and that’s not true," Hunter says. There
are millions of hip-hop, jazz and pop fans who have surely been
frustrated by the industry’s focus on and abuse of grunge rock. But
the rock bands and their fans have suffered, too. The bands are
fleeced and dumped on the curb, while the fans are left with clone
after clone of Nirvana. "The financial guys start taking over and
the music guys aren’t involved anymore in the running of the
business. I still have a problem with the fact that people are
touring in vans and sleeping on floors, and the VP just bought
himself a new BMW this week because of your record sales. But you
can’t pay your rent," Hunter says of bands abused by the system.
"But that’s part of what we’re here for – to help change that. If
there’s anything we can do to bring the artist and the fans closer
together and make people see that the industry isn’t this evil
devil, it’s just a business now, much more of a business than it
was 30 years ago, then we’ve done our job." Rock Love The March
1997 cover of Rock Love, which focuses on the positives in the
music industry. Related Links: Rocklove Web site