Mark Richardson

Wow, how touching that you would go back and read those. I was thinking recently: this year marks the 10-year anniversary of Resonant Frequency. The first one ran in July 2001. Though I’m not always happy with the results, the column means a lot to me. For better or worse, it’s a decade in the life of one guy who likes to think about music.

On to your questions:

1) I assume this is in reference to the RF I wrote about shopping in the dollar bin, and how it functioned as my Napster, kind of. I had dial-up Internet at the time, so my way of gorging on music was to buy as many interesting vinyl LPs as I could. I lived in Richmond and Plan 9 had a dollar bin in the basement that was second to none. I do still shop in dollar bins, but not nearly as much as I did then. I still buy a lot of used vinyl, though. I’m in the record store near my apartment (the wonderful Laurie’s) probably three or four times a week looking through their used bin’s new arrivals. I don’t buy dollar records as often because I now prefer LPs to be in really good condition. Only so much space. But I have the same sense of discovery. I never go in looking for anything in particular, so I wind up with a lot of records that are completely new to me and that I can learn about.

 2) I always feel weird giving advice about writing because my own path was pretty haphazard. I started writing about music around the age most people stop writing about it. I feel like I did everything backwards. But for what it’s worth, my main advice when people do ask is to focus on reading as much as listening. Find writers you enjoy, follow them, and think about how they do what they do. Read books about music, lots of them. From the way I’ve been asked this over the years, I get a sense that a lot of aspiring young music writers think the field is more about cultivating a certain taste or digesting as much music as possible. But nothing else will matter if the writing part doesn’t work. And reading seems like the best way to get better at writing.

3) From the way you phrase this I think by “new age” you mean “new music”? In any event, it does seem very common for people to stick with the music of their youth, and my take on that has always been “whatever works,” basically. But it’s interesting to me that you are trying to connect with your father through music. If he’s got three decades of music that he likes, that sounds like a lot to me, to be honest.

I think about my age and listening a fair amount, especially in relationship to my writing. And my take is that it evens out perfectly. I have experience and reference points at my disposal that someone 20 years younger may not, but then there are some things that I won’t get in quite the same way, too. One example is that I’ve never watched Nickelodeon in my life, and I notice among a lot of people in their early 20s that it was a big part of their childhood. Sometimes references from things like that seep into music and I may not comprehend it completely. But I like learning about how people from a younger generation absorb and process music and how it fits into their lives, so that helps.

Thanks a lot for these questions and sorry for clogging up everyone’s Tumblr feed.