The last set: Sad news comes today via the LA Observed blog: Los Angeles Times pop music critic (and, actually, pop music editor) Robert Hilburn is calling it quits after 35 years on the job. His first review appeared in the Times in 1966, according to LAO, and he was hired on as the paper's first fulltime pop critic in 1970. I believe he was one of the first, if not the first, fulltime, newspaper-based pop critics in the nation.
While many have criticized his age and taste in music over the years, the truth is he always kept an open mind to fresh music, and he always brought fresh talent to the Times. He had me writing about techno in 1992. And soon he had me reviewing DJ shows as if they were rock concerts -- certainly a first in the newspaper world. He also brought many pop music writers -- Steve Appleford (CityBeat editor and Rolling Stone contributor), Dean Kuipers (CityBeat Deputy Editor, former Times Calendar Deputy Editor, and Playboy contributor), Natalie Nichols (CityBeat arts editor), Cheo Coker (hip-hop author), P. Frank Williams (former Source editor and current NBC producer), Richard Cromelin (Times staff writer) and Steve Hochman (longtime Times contributor) -- into the paper's pop music world. In the early '90s he wrote about Nirvana before they broke, in 1996 he suggested I write about the Chemical Brothers, and today he continues to feel the cutting edge, with a particular liking for M.I.A., for example. All the while, he's remained one of the world's foremost experts on Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, and he has scored rare interviews with the latter.
Hilburn was a model for many pop writers. He's detached, respected, serious, but always loving those artists who blew speakers, minds and boundaries. He tought us to respect the ethics of journalism and protect our ears (with plugs). Many of us aspired to have the juice he has. When Hilburn writes, the industry listens. When he goes to a show, the velvet ropes part. The pop world will miss him, but he will continue to contribute to the Calendar section.
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5 comments:
Nice tribute to a talented writer...
He only had you write about the Chemical Brothers in '96, though? By that time they had sold 500,000 records in the U.S. and were a well-known underground phenomenon.
Lame. Tell me who else in America was writing about the Chems in '96? I had most of the vinyl they had put out by then, and Hilburn let me write about them at a time when few in mainstream journalism were paying attention to electronic dance music. Hindsight is 20/20, but back then writing about EDM was a lonely pursuit that Hilburn supported.
BTW, I highly doubt that the Chems sold 500g records in the U.S. by 1996. They had Exit Planet Dust and the Loops of Fury EP as their main products here, and the market and the media didn't go gaga for the Chems until 1997 with Dig Your Own Hole (which was inferior than Exit but nonetheless got more play from the critics come lately).
BTW, I highly doubt that the Chems sold 500g records in the U.S. by 1996. They had Exit Planet Dust and the Loops of Fury EP as their main products here, and the market and the media didn't go gaga for the Chems until 1997 with Dig Your Own Hole (which was inferior than Exit but nonetheless got more play from the critics come lately).
BTW, I highly doubt that the Chems sold 500g records in the U.S. by 1996. They had Exit Planet Dust and the Loops of Fury EP as their main products here, and the market and the media didn't go gaga for the Chems until 1997 with Dig Your Own Hole (which was inferior than Exit but nonetheless got more play from the critics come lately).
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