Frank Kogan

I'm gonna make a defense for "gatekeeper," which I think I swiped from Christgau's introduction to the Best American Music Writing book that he edited. He was talking about writing, not music. (So he gatekept that word for me? Maybe I could go either way.)

"Gatekeeper" DOES have negative implications, but for me that's sort of how music works--I want to hear EVERYTHING, and since that's not feasible, I rely on people who have already heard more, or other, stuff. In my fantasy of how, say, Christgau or Jody Rosen works, they get a bunch of CDs in the mail from label PR departments, hear stuff through various media outlets, and write reviews. (We probably wouldn't dispute that record labels and radio stations are gatekeepers.) Critics who don't work for big print media outlets are a little bit further down the chain, so they have to depend on a series of gatekeepers--Columbia sent this to Rosen, who wrote about it for Slate, which was read by somebody on ILX, who bought it and talked it up, so I checked it out from the library, where the buyer had heard about it through a different source, etc etc.

If all our gatekeepers disappeared, it's not like their recommendations wouldn't exist; we'd just hear different music. We'd trawl through myspace or spend way too much money at stores or go through every CD at the library (which I am SO going to do this year). And while unlikely, it's possible we'd stumble across the same stuff. So while there's a positive sense to what the people on our lists are doing--guiding us toward this music that we love--that music would always be there anyway, as part of the overwhelming crowd with pitchforks bursting to get inside the gate of our ears. If that makes sense.

(Hi Chuck! Thanx!)