Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes (Part Two)

(A version of this was posted to my Tumblr )

I’ve officially expanded my blog writing to things not music-related.

(If it isn't obvious enough by now, I unofficially did this months ago, but updating the description in my profile made it official-official.)

I’m loathe to admit it, but I really don’t want to be a 38-year-old music blogger. Uh-huh, I’m subscribing to some pretty ageist standards set by the largely white, male, twenty-something indie-rock music blogosphere — but I really don’t want to be a 38-year-old music blogger. At least, I don’t want it to be my primary gig.

I still love writing about music, but it’s hard to fill up a week’s worth of posts about it. I’ve been doing it in some capacity for the past five years, and I actually do have a life outside listening to music. But first the backstory. I resurrected Five Dollar Radio after getting axed from my paying blogging gig. I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't, at least in part, out of spite, but I really, really wanted to be a better blogger. I turned in a lot of half-assed articles. I cringe when I think what I passed off as content, but to be honest, I didn't feel as though I belonged there. I did the rounds of being a personal, diary-type blogger who occasionally wrote politically-charged posts, to an unknown music blogger, to a paid pop culture pundit. Even if I'm not being paid anymore, I'd like to find a way to combine the three without feeling scattered. I don't mind being niche-less.

However, politics -- personal and capital "P" politics -- largely inform how I think about the world and my love of popular culture. Those things are not hard to combine. I'll still focus on music, but being nearly forty, I have no place writing about Kesha or Katy Perry. Or whatever faceless indie band is the current critical darling. It feels weird and forced and like I'm borrowing a teenager's sense of cool.

Then there's also this: I tend to approach everything as a fan -- which I think is still a good thing. If girls' fandom is seen as silly and superfluous, women's fandom is... nonexistent. There simply aren't enough women writing about fan culture. But the last thing I want to be is this kind of fan:

People who aren’t music critics are allowed to take the usual path of how music was so much better when they were teenagers and has clearly declined ever since. (a grammar)

Okay, I do have a couple problems with this: for one, it's not too hard to make the stretch from "people who aren't music critics are allowed to take the usual path of how music was so much better when they were teenagers, " to "people who aren't professional critics maybe shouldn't be writing about music in the first place." I know that's not being implied here, but I've always gotten the impression that professional music critics often think bloggers are indulgent and lazy. (I mean, what are personal websites if not vanity projects?) Fan narratives are important, and it's a little reductive to think that many fans can't look at music critically, but man, that's a hard stereotype to overcome: the aging rock fan who refuses to listen to anything new because it's all been done before and nothing will ever be as good as the Stones. (Or the Ramones. Or Dylan. Or the Beatles.) I refuse to be that, but this ain't my scene either. When I find it, I'll tell you.