(Here follows 17 rules for living in the music business, written I am not sure when, by my father, John Lomax III. Dad — please fill us in via a comment.)
1. Encourage the lunatic fringe!
2. Don't hesitate to skewer the biggies when they issue trash!
3. There is *always* a humorous way to say things; but brevity *is* the soul of wit.
4. No one will *ever* give you serious shit about honest critical opinions.
5. Compromise your integrity even once and you'll end up writing liner notes for Dave Rowland LPs.
6. Always remember that *yes*, you are an authority, *no*, this is not a dress rehearsal, and *yes*, this is as big time as you can currently get.
7. You are not on TV, this ain't no hit-and-run, you'll have to live with your remarks 'til the paper fades from the acid in it. (About 100 years.)
8. Take yourself too seriously and you'll get to go to the zoo everyday.
9. Life's too short to have a heart attack over a bad record.
10. The transition from the sound you hear to the paper your audience sees and back to their ear can be a perilous journey.
11. If you aren't any good the *Hook* will appear.
12. You are poorly paid to do a hard job -- if anyone gives you any shit, offer to trade places.
13. Don't take acid and expect to take notes too.
14. In the long run, who gives a shit? Most of these egomaniacs you're writing about would send you roses for putting their names on an F.B.I. poster.
15. The world has about 4,500,000,000 people. 4, 999, 999, 912 don't really care about what you have to say about Conway Twitty's latest LP.
16. Good journalists have no shame!
17. In two to six years reading will be a lost art.
Well, thanksfor rescuing these , not sure if I still have them. THey were written in the mid-'80s when I was in the thick of country journalism, chronicling Nashville for various publications here and abroad. Looking back I fear the lunatic fringe has been booted out of town or maybe they left because t hey could not afford to live here. Radio has since consolidated thanks to Clinton's 1996 Telecommunications act so wwe have far less choices, satgellite radio has taken some of the slack but no everyone wants to pay for radio. I would say #4 no longer applies as the "cheerleader school of journalism" here now rules and you will catch heaps of S**t if you criticize any of country's biggest stars, especially if they are female.
Alas #17 is ow partly true but worse yet is that people's attention span has shriv3eled to sound bite length. Remember when people used to sit down and listn to an ENTIRE album? Now they can barely get through a song. And, speaking of songs, whatever became of story songs, novelty songs, Cajun music and bluegrass on the radio? Now, I've been told "it's all about the bounce, not the words. And co-writing has spiralled out of control. Lady A (formerly Lady Antebellum) has a new 7 song release coming which credits 19 separate writers as contributors, it took 5 writers to create several of the selections!. Oh well, glad i've moved on, doubt I could think of 17 rules now. It's so sad, Nashville has become an assembly line of soulless co-written songs with little substance, delivered my mostly mediocre singers but backed by many of the world's greatest musicians.
#14!