Regarding your question about Fantano and why he bugs me, I think the answer comes down to this:
I wanted to be a music writer — a writer who wrote about music, not a reviewer because that’s only a full time job for like five people anymore — since I was very wee indeed. I went to college on a writing scholarship and tried to generate interest in entertainment writing and zines among my friends and fellow students, but nobody was into doing it. Spent a few years at it before deciding I needed to be more practical with my education. I basically started my bachelor’s degree again in a science, graduated, went to grad school, damn near killed myself, crashed, burned, dropped out, got a few joyless accounting jobs that sucked up about 6 years of my life, finally said fuck that and tried my hand at journalism again, spent a good year freelancing before landing an abusive pair of part-time gigs that barely paid the bills, and then turned that eventually into a job that is actually pretty solid with a decent salary.
In short, I’ve spent most of my life working to be in a place where I would even be in a position to write about music professionally.
So, to recap: Compromise after compromise... roughly 25 years of dreamin, trying, failing, quitting, starting over, struggling, etc.
Meanwhile there’s some fat bald version of me who didn’t bother with education or taking the “official” approach, and simply picked up a phone, pressed record and decided he was a music “journalist.” And he KILLED it, and people love him... or hate him (doesn’t matter). That’s his full-time job and he probably makes more than I ever will and never has to leave his house or manage freelancers or prooof pages of work with publishers or give presentations to disinterested local high-school newspaper classes or jump in his car at 3 a.m. and follow sirens so he can take photos of dead people at crash sites.
...
So long story short, I’m bitter. Not too proud to admit that.
Not that I want his life or anything. I HATE being filmed and looked at. I HATE being the center of attention in my actual day-to-day life. But I certainly wish that someone lucky enough to hop into a profession on a whim would have the good sense to NOT FUCKING RIP ON “RIVAL DEALER.”
