Tell me what you want, what you really really want
Reflections on Wordsmith at one year old. Some fun polls. And a request for feedback of the non-tinnitus kind.
I launched my Substack account, Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith a year ago this weekend, on Friday July 14, 2023, with a post entitled Digital Conversion Therapy. It went out to a few friends I approached personally, and those people who signed up from a short pitch letter I sent to a very old database of contacts, some of whom were kind enough to become paid subscribers purely on faith.
That alone confirmed that I was doing the right thing by following the example and encouragement of just a couple of Substacking friends who, like me, were driven to write words; believed stubbornly that there were people who wanted to read them; were tired of futilely trying to place such (primarily first-person) articles with media outlets that were no longer paying properly for the work involved even if they issued the commission; and yet could no longer justify posting them on a little-seen blog or, especially, Facebook, where people prefer to scroll than read, and the platform itself promotes pretty pictures over and above any form of literary content.
And here I am a full year later, having kept to my stated intent of posting a long weekend read and a Midweek Update every week, 52 times over by this point. Along the way, I also launched a monthly subscribers-only podcast with one of the two friends who convinced me to take the leap in the first place (that would be Crossed Channels, with
) and evidently must have offered up a few other additional articles or announcements, given that this appears to be post number #115.I set myself that twice-weekly goal because I knew if I didn’t promise something to my readers, I wouldn’t deliver it to myself. Still, in typical complicate-your-life-Fletch fashion, I also put out my first post in the middle of summer, despite the knowledge that I was about to go on a first foreign trip with my girlfriend; I did this knowing from experience that having been talked into launching a Substack, I would talk myself back out of it if I waited too long to hit “publish.” My partnerPaula’s patience as I stayed up late and got up early to keep the articles coming while we were in Costa Rica might explain why we moved in to a rented home together this last month - a process of frantic packing, strenuous moving, and rather more lenient unpacking that has also failed to derail the posts.
There must be non-monetary rewards for all of this or I wouldn’t do it. Primarily, it’s about a sense of community, of connection (including with other Substack columnists), of feeling like my words and thoughts are not being sent off into the void of the cyber-ether as when I formerly sought to post something of merit on Facebook, but that they have a permanent, beautifully designed home, where they can easily be found today, tomorrow and hopefully a few years from now too. And whereas my wordy posts on Facebook were met with crickets, I can now rest assured it wasn’t my writing at fault, given the number of view most articles receive, while the subscriber base has multiplied ten-fold over this first year, for which I am very grateful to you, dear readers. The last few weeks have been particularly active on – my Why I Quit Spotify having lit a fuse that has kept going all the way through to my latest Midweek post, How I find “new” music.
I am especially grateful to every new paid subscriber, knowing full well that there are smarter people who are also better writers than me here on Substack and that there is always eternally free content to be found elsewhere in the 21st Century. Then again, if none of us support the creative types (and yes, I dare to call myself one) by either going to their gigs or readings or openings, buying their records or magazines or artwork, or subscribing to their platforms, we will all end up as zombie slaves to AI, lacking the energy even to scream, “I am not a number! I am a free man!” as we sink deeper into the sofa because AI will be giving us free backrubs as long as we promise to watch the latest Amazon TV series about an Amazon-style behemoth that does everything for us, including delivery of our food and other supplies such as those automatic back-rubbing machines, and none of us will interact with each other anymore in person because we don’t need to work because AI is doing it for us, so we stay in our homes consuming crap in perpetuity leaving the great outdoors to the feral human mammals (and birds and reptiles) in some dystopian 21st century update of our caveman roots…
…If that’s not the world you want, be sure to support someone off in the corners of creativity today, with encouragement and moral support if you are flat broke yourself, which is perfectly likely in this gig-economy environment where, more than ever, we all seem to be working to enrich The Man, rather than ourselves or our community.
On the subject of numbers, and AI, and technology, Substack allows me to dive way deeper into the data than is healthy, and though I’ve kept a spreadsheet of my posts and their impact, I’ve stayed away from some of the potentially less savoury aspects of a platform that veers closer to social media with every new “innovation.” For example, I quickly detoured away from those who place behind a paywall their articles on how to make money from Substack (after all, the answer is already in the first half of that sentence). Nor do I drill down to see how many of you make it to the end of every article, because it’s not why I write them. I look on my posts as I did on any magazine I’ve ever either edited or purchased: some articles will be more popular than others, some will be longer than others, some will twist some peoples’ melons (man) and others will turn other people on. You may start reading one of my columns and decide it’s not for you. Or that you will come back to it. Or that there’s a shorter piece by another writer that appeals more at this moment. And that’s okay. Not all content is created equal.
Nor should every contribution to culture require feedback. In the early 1990s I wrote regularly for New York Newsday, which had around 300,000 sales in the metropolitan area every day (and way more on Long Island). I lived in New York City at the time, in the heart of Manhattan. Yet I could go a month without someone commenting in person on something I wrote. And in 2019, I wrote, co-edited/co-produced/co-hosted It’s A Pixies Podcast, the first episode of which made Number 1 with a bullet on the UK music podcast charts, had 14,000 views on YouTube when launched there months later, and yet to this day, I have only had a few souls ever talk to me about the show. It’s the way of the world. (The episode below is my favorite: the narrative wrote itself, though I take great pride in the editing, and I invite you all to listen, if you haven’t already, on your preferred streaming platform.)
As such, I am satisfied that pretty much everything I post here on Substack appears to have some impact, that there is always someone commenting, if not here below at the post itself, then via text, What’s App, Facebook Messenger or e-mail – or, believe it or not, when I run into them at the supermarket - and likewise, amongst that feedback is always some indication that at least one of you made it to the end of a long article. I feel loved and blessed, and despite the well-earned British reputation for sarcasm and cynicism, I mean that most sincerely.
Of course, like anyone who grew up fanatically obsessing over chart positions, I have kept tabs on what I consider the most popular posts. There are many ways to determine that popularity… Is it straight-up number of views? Views per subscriber at the time it was posted? Is it the number of comments generated, or how many subscriptions elicited? By all of those criteria, the following handful have led the pack:
What do they all have in common? They are all about music, and they all have a snappy, even click-baity headline. But in amongst this Top 10 are less overtly attention-grabbing titles like the following pair, which suggests that writing about cult artists can prove every bit as popular and powerful as writing about mainstream ones.
It’s a delicate balance, always. As with almost every musician I have ever met, we all do what we do primarily to please an audience of one – ourselves – but we also do it in the hope that in pleasing ourselves by being true to ourselves, our authenticity can connect with and please an audience at large. And so, in the interests of maintaining that balance, then as I celebrate this first birthday, I want to hear from you about what works for you on Wordsmith and – I’m a big boy now, I can take it – what does not. Comments are open to all comers.
My own sense is that the long weekend reads are serving their purpose and as already noted, enough people are reaching the end so as to justify the means. The flip side of this apparent success is that while I initially intended for my Midweek Updates to be brief recommendations of cultural items I genuinely just want to share and promote (Podcast! Substack! Song! Video! Book! Film! Live show! Fanzine! TV show!), they have become increasingly unwieldy, in part because I seem incapable of recommending something in a simple single sentence. Certainly, not enough people follow through on the links (yes, I have that info at hand) to suggest that my altruistic intent is bearing fruit. Here’s a good example of a recent Midweek Update that met my goals but appeared to fall short for most readers:
I can’t help but feel that what you may prefer is that when something cultural interests/excites/annoys me, I jump right on it, write about it before I forget about it, and post it before the article becomes too long and I second-guess myself into submission, per my recent R.E.M.-related bonus post:
So to my first poll question, andthe polls are open to all subscribers, free or otherwise: Do you agree?
I also sense that despite my true, truly heartfelt, passionate intent over the years to write successfully about running, travel, veganism, the environment, football, politics, and more - to be an all-round columnist and author – my actual readership is here for the music first and foremost. Again: Do you agree?
Not to negate your answer to this second question, but… I do plan to keep posting the non-musical articles. The subject of running in particular seems to have its adherents (is it the shared obsessive aspect?); the other subjects less so. But although on all these other fronts, there are people who handle the subject matter better than me – or at least more devoutly and with readers dedicated to the cause – I reserve the right to keep going there. Especially, a failure to occasionally discuss the politics that govern and may all too literally soon dictate our lives is an abdication of individual responsibility to help make our collective lives more caring and culturally valuable. And given that I’m writing this in the middle of what is again an unprecedented heatwave, or heat spike, or whatever you want to call this latest example of global boiling and climate change, and that I know these problems cannot be solved by wishing them away, I will continue to highlight them and suggest possible solutions large or small.
But back to the music. I planned all along to post transcripts from my many interviews over the years, a process that began with some of the core content from my Keith Moon book, such as the Oliver Reed interview above. I intend to keep digging out various transcripts, retyping them (which is time-consuming, but quicker than scanning and working through inaccurate text recognition) and posting them for paid subscribers. As I wind up these key Keith interviews, I don’t mind asking you which subjects you would like me to dive into next for interview content:
If you have specific interviews, especially from the Jamming! days, that you would love to see reprinted in full, please pipe up in the comments. Please also note this is one area of content I intend to keep placing behind a paywall.
I have toyed with the idea of hosting some chats here – which, as far as I understand from Substack’s relentless new bells-and-whistles, could be conducted via video, for paid subscribers only; for everyone via an online no-video-button required old-fashioned Internet V1.0-style coffee chat; or from some combination thereof. Another poll question, then:
Also, especially if you have made it this fat are you interested in becoming a paid subscriber while the rates are still this low - $5 a month/$50 a year - thereby ensuring that the second year of content here is even better than the first year? (You also get the Crossed Channels podcast, exclusive posts including the interview transcripts, and access to all the archives, which disappear behind the paywall after four months as you may have found if you followed through on some of the above links.)
[If you chose the middle option two based on a presumption that I’ve got enough people on board already and that this must be my/a paid gig, a) How I wish that was the case!, and b) You may want to rethink that Amazon or Spotify subscription, because billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Daniel Ek see you as a mere number, not a free man or woman. But thanks for being here all the same: I will continue to post a considerable amount of content for free, regardless.]
This is probably the perfect moment to advertise myself and say that while I may overwrite, I am a damn good reader/editor, and that I see far too many well-meaning amateur authors out there going through all the hoops of self-publishing a potentially decent memoir or novel without investing in outside review/editing/proof-reading. It’s like recording a song and not bothering to get it properly mixed or mastered, services that I pay for my in my musical endeavors. In turn, I am a good person for you to hire for the written ones. Should you be interested in any of these editing services, use the message button below assuming you don’t otherwise know how to find me. (For those who may be new here, I’ve written a book or two along the way.)
And in parting, to hand something over to you in the comments, I was aware when posting How I Find “New” Music this past Wednesday that every Substacker I recommended is male. I wish that was not the case. I subscribe to a couple of female former music journalists – hi Penny Kiley and Sharon Liveten – but Penny only posts only her (excellent) original articles from post-punk Liverpool days and Sharon writes primarily about her life as it stands nowadays, including horses. I did subscribe to Caryn Rose here but she took her Substack elsewhere and was not diving deep into anything but the artists we know she loves already. I am, evidently, caught in a niche/trap of my own creation.
I suspect some of this speaks to certain male tendencies towards musical obsessiveness as successfully and at times hilariously articulated in Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity, which is another way of saying that the many, female, columnists I subscribe to on Substack write about much more diverse and arguably more important subjects. But please, I don’t want to live in a male-only music journo bubble any more than I wanted to as Jamming! editor in 1983, so, I welcome your guidance below to lead me out of my dark corner and into a brighter world.
Meantime, elsewhere in my life, I continue to host and produce podcasts (like the Fanzine Podcast and previously One Step Beyond), direct Rock Academy shows, record with the Dear Boys and Hudson Palace, run marathons and mountains and mountain marathons, and I have one more year to go as a student before I can finally say I too am a Bachelor of the Arts. The day may come soon when I have to step back from this considerable output to focus on a new book. But I’m not there yet, so I hope you will continue to make the most of me and my Wordsmith while you can, and I’ll keep putting the most I can into it. Happy first birthday. Thanks for joining the journey.
Happy One Year! 🍾
Congratulations. (I need to read my copy of your Wilson Pickett biography I have in my library so I can review it...).