Since I was fifteen, I’ve wanted to write about music. Now I’m eighteen, and I am working hard at making that dream a reality. VZ Magazine is a blessing, as far as I’m concerned. I tried writing reviews for Sputnik a while back, but that’s practically pointless. Like any major internet site, the most you’ll get there is people criticizing your writing without explaining why they didn’t like it. So, after a few reviews, I stopped.
I began writing for my town’s local newspaper last October, and that’s been pretty great. People I don’t even know tell me they enjoy my writing, so at least it’s a step above Sputnik. But, VZ is the best writing experience I’ve had, because their audience is made up of music fans, big (at least bigger than my audience with the newspaper), and polite. I’ve loved writing for them, and I will continue to do so, at least until their audience becomes more like Sputnik’s (which I hope it never does).
But, the main writing project I’ve been working on is a list of the 1,001 greatest albums of all time, which has been in production since about a year ago. This project is a follow up to Dave Marsh’s 1989 book, The Heart of Rock and Soul. In the book, he lists the 1,001 greatest singles, which he believes to represent the heart of popular music.
I disagree with this idea. To me, singles and albums are both completely necessary, and to put an artist like Television on a lower scale than James Brown just because they excel at different formats is ridiculous. So, I decided to make a list of the greatest albums of all time and, to give singles artists their due, I’ve decided to include many compilations from artists like Sam and Dave, Manfred Mann, and The Shirelles.
This project has been in the making for a long time, and I am thinking it’ll be ready to be posted in April (I hope). It is more about the writing than the list, so I’ll be posting it as a blog series: ten albums a day, every day, for a hundred days. Since VZ has been my primary way of getting my writing seen, I’ve decided to inform their readers of this.
My blog can be found here: http://www.hyperstation.net/ (It’s very incomplete; I haven’t had much time to work on it.) I will be posting updates about the project, articles, and reviews that I decide not to post on VZ, before ultimately posting the list.
I’d like to thank everybody for reading.
