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8/25/2003
EAR PLUGS
A week or two ago we got a press kit via email packed with pretty
pictures of Jillian Ann, former southern girl now living in New York.
[START RANT] If you're in a band and you want us to review your work
DO NOT SEND US AN ATTACHMENT.
I don't want your pictures, I don't want your mp3,
I don't want your show announcement packaged as a PDF or JPG or GIF,
I don't want your virus, I don't need more worms than I've already
got, and I don't need your lengthy treatise explaining your
influences, motivations, or traumatic childhood. Instead, post your
stuff on a web site (you can get 'em for free these days) and send me
the URL.
Better yet, mail me an old fashioned CD. Yeah, I know it's postage
and a few quarters for the CDR. But I'm on a slow and sporadic
dial-up connection at the DP HQ and I ain't got all day trying to get
your attachment to fuckin' download!
[END RANT]
As I was saying, this cute young thing sent me pretty pictures of
herself and an artist's statement and asked if I wanted to talk. I
was momentarily taken aback - was she flirting or what? So after my
nerves calmed I emailed her back and said I wasn't interested in
talking about her work before hearing it and pretty girls have a way
of turning my normally intellectual, clever, sometimes charming self
into a babbling, charmless moron so I'm not sure I should meet her
for any reason.
She offered to send me her CD then maybe we could hook up for an interview.
"Interview? Oh. Yeah. I guess some writer and journalist types still
do those things," I thought.
But no, it's a busy as hell week here at the DP HQ in preparation for
whoring our game, Identity Crisis, around at Drag On Con, followed by
the weekend frolic at the Drive Invasion. I don't have time to let a
cute "artist/model" distract me from my own creative efforts. Her CD,
"neverland," arrived a few days later, complete with a super
glossy press kit. Then came a follow-up call from her agent or agency
asking to set up an interview time. I started to feel less like I was
being flirted with and more like I was marketed at.
But no, a pretty press kit, phone calls from Steve or Gary or whoever
the hell agent in NYC, or even semi-nude photos don't get you good
reviews in my publications. Not for music, anyway.
I gave the CD a listen. It starts out with some Kate-Bush-on-valium
kind of atmospheric, ethereal stuff. Jillian's voice is like her body
in her photos, thin and pretty but overproduced. The music is more
like background noise, thin and pretty too but lacking in structure,
volume, melody, hooks, or any of the other things that might get me
interested. It would make great background music for a new-age
dentist office, but this stuff puts me to sleep faster than
anesthesia. It's cotton candy, without the sweetness. And it only
barely picks up and registers a weak, inconsistent heartbeat by the
end of the CD when it dies the death you've been waiting for.
So you can add her to the ever-growing list of women I'd love to see
more of, but don't want to hear more of. Now if we could only get
these pretty pop divas to lay off the lousy music and soft-core
imagery and get Brittany, Christina, Jewel, Shakira, Shania, Mariah,
The Dixie Chicks, etc. to shut up and do hard core porn...
Take me to Degenerate Press' home page!
There's no place like home... no place like home...
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