Dear Everett True
I grew up in Lismore, NSW in a family with a lot of women. My mother was one of twelve, the eldest, and a Large Music Lover (LML). I remember piles of records, photos of mum vomiting into a bucket the night after a
David Bowie concert, and my first seven inch record was WHAM. I was 4.
Somewhere along the way (I know where: Mum read the Daily Telegraph every Thursday for the music section, and it was the only newspaper mum ever purchased, otherwise it was TV WEEK and WD) I found music I liked, and I ended standing before grunge, age 14. Or more accurately, sitting; I discovered Nirvana through Video Hits. I found it all a bit man-heavy and unappealing, although I thought I might like Courtney because she appeared as if she could be an aunt of mine. The week Kurt died, I asked my mum to by me 'Live Through This' to see what she sounded like. I played it once while Mum mowed the lawn, and I told her it was "very scream-y", and then I played it again. I still listen to it near daily.
Live Through This > Lollapalooza > Kathleen Hanna > Tell Me So > Your Name.
If I read about a band in a thank you note or a review, I would write it on a list to investigate next time I was in Rocking Horse Records. And somehow, in life before the internet (which I managed to avoid after it's debut through much living until earlier this year; who knew it was so big?) I sought out lists of yours, and I read BUST in BORDERS and took photos of your lists with my failing lomo, and I stumbled across Loose Lips somehow, also. To hear that you were in Brisbane made no sense, but that was fine.
And Hello Collapse Board.
Your name has always been a guarantee.
The music you love is the same music that I get excited and saddened by, that I love and LOVE.
Your writing has always been distinctly yours: real/emotional, fact/memoir, and so joyous (vs.The Rolling Stone reviews that my father read years ago, or the referential/hilarious Clem Bastow, or whatever Pitchfork is).
Your writing, for me, conveys the blind love and power that a belief in music can give someone, which I guess could appear as flat if you were mistrusting reader, but it is always made multi-faceted by a sentence or link that seems to jar, and/or be at odds, and then somehow, completely appropriate.
Your writing gives me the same sense of clarity and understanding that I get from Joan Didion.
And when you write about feminism and punk rock and privilege and class and scenes in ways the are accessible and relevant, or you write that you don't remember, or don't know, or that a "haters gonna hate"... it never feels false. It feels like a superpower.
I believe your writing is awesome.
I know that your review of a YYY show from an early LOOSE LIPS is one of The Greatest Pieces of Music Criticism And Writing of All Time.
And I wanted to say thank you.
Leeroy.
But as to what this says about the role and weight of a music critic in this day and age, I am unsure; I don't really read anyone else.
