Spinning a yarn...

I’ve always shied away press releases. This aversion is partly due to my news journalism tutor’s over-arching disdain for those 500 or so words of corporate propaganda and my willingness to dine on his every nugget of knowledge. But, mostly, it’s to do with the likes of this:


Not only does this read like the hyperventilating, pant-pissing of an American pre-teen who’s just been asked to join Corey what’s-his-puss in a Mickey Mouse Club boudoir, but it actually has the gall attempts to connect The War in Iraq™ with a music industry puppet who’s happy to espouse: “young people on the streets need to stop fightin’ and just be enjoying’ music cos that’s how we get down.” She really did say that. Those quotation marks prove it.

Essentially, someone else’s viewpoint, such as the above PR garbage, should never muddy your own opinion, particualrly when composing a review. The claw marks of a press officer’s prose is all too easy to spot and, with it, so is that often overused slight, lazy journalism. The whole point of this writing lark is to have an authoritative stance and use it as a clear, unaffected vantage point. You need to have your own voice and not someone else’s. Otherwise, you might as well give it all up.

Funny thing is, now I’m working in comms, I’m seeing it from the other side. The whole process is a cat and mouse courtyard of verbs, adjectives and nouns. It’s a question of who you can trust to tell a story right, and who you can trust to tell a story the way you want it told. A press office win is having a verbatim reproduction of well-oiled copy wangle its way into in the inky pages of newspapers. A hack’s victory is the exact opposite: cutting through the foliage of spin and hyperbole to get to the trunk of truth lurking beneath.

So what of that truth? Well it’s always there in some form. It can be dolled up to the nines like a spinster at a school reunion, but it will always exist. And that, I suppose, is half the fun of the whole charade. To think of it as a duel seems a little far-fetched, but I’m sure there’s scores of press and comms officers who see it exactly like that as they spend countless hours conjuring up more and more unique ways of filtering their messages through the media. Of course, the most effective way of doing this would be to buy up your own media company but I guess we don’t all Rupert’s money, do we?

Mission statement

So. Here it is. Another blog that will no doubt be abandoned in the next month. Perhaps week. Who knows, who can say.

This is probably going to be a pretty inane, pointless blog but it might finally get me out of the wretched cave that is music journalism. Don't get me wrong, I love writing about music, but I'm sure I pigeonholed myself a little too quickly back in journalism school.

Those were the days that everyone seemed to be fighting to find a voice in their writing, fighting to find some interest to pick up on and do something, anything with. Christ knows they were dark times. Walking into a £5,000 MSc course and being told that jobs were an impossibility unless you were the elite in your field doesn't exactly illuminate that darkened doorway of ambition that is your future.

So there was my chance: music journalism. And how I seized it. Over the past four years I've penned words for a multitude of rags and 'zines; ripped the shredded wheat out of fibreless bands; stacked superlative upon superlative on a flush of chancers with synths and a penchant for abstract lyricism. Oh and had the crap kicked out of me by a few who have taken offence at my less than favourable missives.

Of course, it's been and still can be a whole lot of fun, but the early zest has dissipated over the years, weighed down by the same stagnant responses the same god damn questions and those excruciatingly feeble comments from an anonymous 'community' of critics' critics. Add to this marriage and subsequent 'responsibilities' and you've got to the crux of my vexation with music-based pensmanship.

Words by Billy Hamilton, then, may very well contain references to music. It may even make explicit gesticulating hand signals music's way. However, it will, with any luck document the progress of someone trying to find out just what kind of a writer he actually is.