Something for the round file

Posted: Monday, June 18, 2007 3:52 PM by John Roderick

The Bonnaroo Guide
Wow, why didn’t I look at this thing sooner? There’s a wealth of information in here that would have enabled me to represent like a real music journalist. For instance, many of you probably already know that Maynard Keenan from Tool is also in A Perfect Circle! Scintillating!

The fact is, and I speak from experience here, both as a musician and a reporter, that the fixation on trivia, arcana, timelines and pedigree, while making up the lion’s share of the conversation about music in the world, have nothing at all to do with music. It’s all glorified baseball-card collecting. I’m as guilty as the next guy, and will bore you to tears talking about George Harrison’s guitars, or which Judas Priest records are the good ones, but more often than not, too much information gets in the way.

Although music can be broken into pieces and categorized a million ways — think of all the old floppy discs, full of primitive spreadsheets cataloging collections of 45s, now lost to time — there is always someone, somewhere, listening to your favorite song for the first time.

So I’m glad I didn’t report from Bonnaroo with guidebook in hand. There were enough reporters there from other media outlets all copying their coverage from press releases, and all pretending to like bands they don’t.