HT: It’s pretty tough nowadays to differentiate yourself as a writer given there is such a huge glut of content out there with there with the internet and all. Did you have a particularly philosophy or approach you employed early on as to how to go about differentiating yourself as a music writer?
RH: I can’t say I ever really thought much about this. The Internet was not quite so fearsome a thing when I started (late ’90s), which undoubtedly helped. By then my love had transferred from RS to Spin, which mixed humor and intensity, authority and frivolity so well. That was the blueprint. I wish I had a creed more official and credible-sounding than Amuse Thyself, but, well.
HT: Taking the big seat at the Village Voice, while obviously an amazing experience on so many levels, must have been a little nerve-wracking at first given that has been one of the penultimate roles in music journalism courtesy of legends like Robert Christgau and Greil Marcus?
RH: The Dark Years, as my dad calls them. It was a pretty ugly situation here, replacing such a beloved figure in Chuck Eddy, serving for some as the public face of a pretty awkward/contentious changeover in management here. Plenty of folks wrote me off, plenty of those for good. Tough all around, but my new coworkers were extremely friendly/receptive/understanding given the circumstances (“I thought you were a spy at first,” one told me, upon leaving a year or two later). I’ve never thought of it as actively trying to live up to Chuck/Bob/etc., as that’d just be lunacy, but hopefully over time I’ve established enough of my own thing here that not everyone still wants to kill me.
HT: Did you look up to those guys?
RH: Absolutely. My obsession for years now is digging through the old Pazz & Jop polls at robertchristgau.com, a great way to immerse yourself year by year with both the music and the ways critics reacted to it, to follow those twin arcs. And you don’t see many books like Mystery Train these days.
HT: Do you have a band or perhaps even an album that you think people kind of identify with you? For example, Bangs had Lou Reed, Derogatis the Flaming Lips, Greenfield the Stones, etc.?
RH: Nobody on that scale, certainly. Though I’ve got my obsessions, who I’ve gassed on about for years now: Grandaddy probably the biggest, completely at random. I brought up Janelle Monáe probably 500 times last year. The Cars, the Talking Heads. Nothing to touch the insanity of Bangs/Reed, sadly.
HT: To take it a step further, if you were to set out to write a biography about a musician or band, who would you choose?
RH: Thought about this but no one’s really sticking out for me. Man Def Leppard would be something, right? Hysteria? Photograph? The one-armed drummer’s space-age drum set? I’ve loved few songs the way I loved Pour Some Sugar on Me back in the day…
HT: Have you ever struggled with the internal conflict of thinking an album or show was a real a piece of shit, but also like you had a personal relationship on some level with that artist that made it difficult to speak your mind?
RH: I’ve done almost no backstage-hobnobbing of any kind, as much due to social awkwardness as ethical purity. The vast majority of my interviews have been phoners – not exactly the situation where you make friends. During my first job at a paper in Columbus, Ohio, it freaked me out to write about local music, whether I’d see these people in Giant Eagle or whatever, but even then it wasn’t really an issue.
HT: Not to pry too much into the financials or anything, but is the print version of the Voice looking sustainable for the foreseeable future?
RH: Can’t imagine anyone’s feeling super-confident at the moment but yeah, I have hope things are, if not turning around a bit, at least no longer plummeting. Obviously web is 95 percent of our focus these days, but we’ve been hiring lately, which is a bewildering and joyful feeling. There is no certainty but I have certainly felt way, way worse about this world and my place in it.
HT: Who are some of your favorite music writers amongst your peers?
RH: My immediate Voice cohorts Zach Baron and Camille Dodoro are both great. Tom Breihan is a blast – I read him on American Idol even though I don’t watch American Idol. Of younger freelancers I’m currently working with, Mike Powell has down some really great, pleasingly weird stuff. Anytime I can get a piece out of Greg Tate it’s like a national holiday – his Michael Jackson obit is probably my favorite piece of my putative reign.
HT: Mac or PC?
RH: Mac. Disconcerting how much Apple shit I own. Had a Dell for awhile though and I remain traumatized.
HT: This one is not writing related, but important nonetheless; what’s the best concept album of all time?
RH: While Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump, the source of my obsession, is not really a concept album, something about its mixture of video-arcade digital blooping and lush California nature-hike hippiness (song title: “Broken Household Appliance National Forest”) just bugged me right out for some reason. It’s just a full universe to me.
HT: Finally, if you were given the opportunity to write a skit for Saturday Night Live, what would it be, would be the host, and would your musical guest get to appear?
RH: Some sort of Ill-Conceived Songs I Put on Mixtapes to Girls thing might be fun. I sent a girl a letter once with all the lyrics to Sunny Day Real Estate’s In Circles, etc. John Cusack as host just for the High Fidelity thing. Erykah Badu as musical guest just because.
3 Responses
Big fan of these and this is my fave so far! Nice job on both ends.
Great work Ryan!
Excellent interview, keep em coming!