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Send Me Music to Review

Back in the '70s I wrote music reviews for Robert Christgau at the Village Voice and briefly published a zine called Terminal Zone. I gave this up around 1980, but started again in late 2002, and currently write three major consumer guide-type columns:

  • Jazz Consumer Guide: an every 2-3 month jazz guide published by the Village Voice.
  • Recycled Goods: a monthy reissues/vault music column published by Static Multimedia. (This column ends in January 2008. I am still interested in world music and old music, but will take a break for now and look for another forum in the future.)
  • F5 Record Report: a weekly column with 6-8 CG-style reviews, covering recent releases of both new and old music; these appear in F5, an entertainment-oriented tabloid distributed free here in Wichita, KS. (This column ended with the demise of the paper in December 2006.)

I also publish a blog, which has postings on all of my music writings, including my Jazz Prospecting notes. I also keep a fair amount of reference information on my website, including a ratings database of over 12,000 records.

It would be impossible to do this in any systematic way without the support of record companies, publicists and artists, so I've found myself writing many letters with rationales and pleas why people should send me records. This page is meant to provide a brief but comprehensive introduction to my research and writings, and as such to justify why I'm asking for records to review.

Here's a priority list of what I'm looking for, and why:

  1. New jazz records (good ones, plus the occasional dud). I write the Jazz Consumer Guide for the Village Voice, similar in format and purpose to Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide. Each column review 25 (more/less) jazz records: two pick hits, more paragraph-sized reviews with grades, including a "dud of the month," and briefer lists of honorable mentions and duds. The Jazz Consumer Guide will focus more on new jazz releases, but will include notable reissues and vault discoveries.

    I've also published other pieces in the Voice recently:

  2. Reissues, compilations, vault music: I wrote a reissues column for Static Multimedia (Recycled Goods), every month (or so) for 51 months. These were extensive: usually 9-10 paragraph reviews plus 30-40 "briefly noted" one-sentence reviews. These columns cover most genres: my original plan for Recycled Goods was to balance jazz, rock-r&b-rap, roots (country, blues, folk), and world, roughly one quarter each. Past Recycled Goods columns have been archived on my own website. The last column ran in January 2008.

    I've also written a reissues column (Rearview Mirror) every third week for Seattle Weekly, usually consisting of 3-4 short chunks (800 words total) covering 4-6 records. Due to space cutbacks, this column is being suspended. The Seattle Weekly Rearview Mirror columns are online:

    • June 2, 2004: The Hip Hop Box, The British Invasion, The Roots of Rock 'n' Roll.
    • May 12, 2004: Bob Dylan: Live 1964, Dave Edmunds: From Small Things / Rockpile: Seconds of Pleasure, The Rolling Stones: Singles 1963-1965, Stomp and Swerve.
    • May 5, 2004: Eddie Gale: Eddie Gale's Ghetto Music / Black Rhythm Happening, The Essential Earl Scruggs, Television: Marquee Moon / Adventure / Live at the Old Waldorf
    • Mar. 31, 2004: Duke Ellington, Paul Desmond/Gerry Mulligan, Saucy Calypsos
    • Mar. 10, 2004: Augustus Pablo, Sam Rivers, Jaki Byard, Mal Waldron, B.B. King
    • Feb. 18, 2004: Anders Gahnold, Kid Creole & the Coconuts, Art Tatum
    • Jan. 28, 2004: Best There Ever Was, Blues Story, Big Horn, Nyahbinghi, Cedric Im Brooks & the Light of Saba, Poor Man's Heaven

  3. World music: I originally wanted to devote about 25% of my Recycled Goods column to world music, almost all of which has been recycled in some form by the time it reaches the US. But having had trouble meeting this quota, I finally decided to include the world music I received regardless of whether it was new or old. World is, of course, a big category. My main interests are the musics of Africa and the Afro diaspora, although anything with a good beat is likely to be of interest.

  4. Select new releases: I try to keep up with the current music, and sometimes I manage to review some of it. At the very least it factors into my extensive year-end lists.

    For example, 2003:

    I didn't do anything more than Pazz & Jop Comments for 2004, but I covered many new 2005 releases in my January 2006 Recycled Goods (see above), and will probably make an annual habit of that. Just looking for exceptionally good new releases there, in a broad range of genres with a slight bias towards alt-rap and alt-country.

    But starting in August 2006, I'm also writing a weekly column for F5, a local (Wichita KS) entertainment-oriented tabloid. This column is 600 words, good for 6-8 short record reviews. Probably half of these are recycled from Jazz Consumer Guide or Recycled Goods, often re-edited for a more general readership. But other reviews, especially of new records that don't fit into the other columns, will appear first in F5 -- most likely the year-end Recycled Goods roundup will recycle these reviews. (F5 suspended publication on Dec. 18, 2006, effectively ending the column. 21 columns were written; 19 or 20 were published.)

    • F5: I won't bother listing links for each piece here, but the latest should be available through this link, and you can follow links from there to previous columns.
    • Archive: All columns and indexes are kept in my archive here.

  5. I wrote a batch of artist entries for a new edition of [The New] Rolling Stone Album Guide. The original drafts were written in Spring 2003, then updated in April 2004. The book was finally published in November 2004. Click here to see my original drafts and notes for my entries: Blackalicious, Buck 65, John Cale, James Carter, Ani DiFranco, Dave Edmunds, Holy Modal Rounders, George Jones, Fela Kuti, Nick Lowe, Willie Nelson, Pet Shop Boys, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, St Germain, Matthew Shipp, Donna Summer, Hank Thompson, Waco Brothers, Bunny Wailer, Loudon Wainwright III, Hank Williams. Also two compilations: Tougher Than Tough and When the Sun Goes Down.

  6. I'm working on a series of major career-spanning survey pieces in the Consumer Guide format. The first one, originally published by Static Multimedia, covered a constellation of artists centered around William Parker and Matthew Shipp. A second one will focus on Ken Vandermark. (These projects have been proceeding slowly.)

  7. I keep a lot of additional writing and reference information online. I have a database which lists and has ratings for 11,000+ records, and lists another 21,000+ records which I haven't heard but which are regarded highly by other sources. I also keep an online notebook, which has over 1,000 notes (some review quality, some not) on records. (The better notebook reviews these days appear in publications or the blog.)

  8. I have a project with Michael Tatum to produce a music reference website/guide, which will pull much of the above data together into a more usable form. (My preference for writing Consumer Guide-type reviews should make it easy to reuse much of my writing in this new context.) A prototype now exists: Terminal Zone. (Again, work on this has gone real slow.)

In general, everything I receive gets catalogued, noted, and rated. Anything old gets reviewed in Recycled Goods. All jazz gets at least a prospecting note, but I get a lot more jazz than I can fit into the space the Voice gives me for Jazz Consumer Guide. Anything else better be good -- the best will make it to my year end wrap-up. When I first wrote this file, I had more time than records, but that has been shifting and eventually will reach a tipping point, where I won't be able to do all of these things for all of your records.

Note that I don't review DVDs, and I almost never take the time to watch DVDs that record companies like to package with CDs.

I previously wrote about music from 1974-79, mostly for Robert Christgau at the Village Voice. These old writings are also online, including some parts of a magazine that Don Malcolm and I published in 1977, called Terminal Zone. I spent the intervening years as a software engineer (there's a resume on this site somewhere), eventually becoming convinced that free software is the only software worth using. But it also occurred to me that beyond free software we also need free data. Having spent 30 years of my life listening to music almost nonstop, I felt that this is one area where I can apply my expertise to contribute something worthwhile. Thanks to Bushonomics I've had some time to work on this lately. The website I built for Robert Christgau has made his 13,000+ Consumer Guide reviews easily available. I've also built a website for Carol Cooper, and have projects in the works for other music writers. This here website is due for some serious rework, too.

As I'm sure you know, there is a lot more music produced these days than any human being can listen to. In this environment it is all the more important to have multiple filters to help people find good music. I'm just one datapoint in that process, but I've worked hard over many years to establish myself as a dependable datapoint. If you send me CDs, they will go into the process above: the database for sure, the notebook if I find time to listen to them, some publication is that is warranted. The system is designed to sort out the most worthwhile records from all the usual run, so it works best to only send me good records. (I'm not looking for junk to resell.) Tastes vary, of course, and mine is just mine, but at least mine is broadly considered and amply documented. I'm also committed to keeping my reviews online, and making them more accessible.

You can send me CDs using the following address:

Tom Hull
747 Faulkner
Wichita, KS 67203

You can send me email.