Welcome to REPLY ALT
Dan Ozzi's email meltdowns about music and other stuff for alts, goths, punks, and sweaty teenagers.
For over five years I worked as a writer for a music website called Noisey and then one day I quit. I don’t talk about why I did this very often because 1. who cares?, 2. media drama is intensely pathetic to me and I pity those who engage with it, and 3. I prefer being forward-thinking to nostalgic.
That third point informs why I’ve started this newsletter, called REPLY ALT (ha ha get it?). I’m sorry to break this very obvious news to you, dear reader, but your favorite websites are dying. They are not long for this world. There are like three of them left and most of the ones that were once halfway decent have been bought out by incompetent media conglomerates, laid off its beautiful lunatics, and have begun their downslide into 24/7 Stranger Things coverage.
You can pinpoint this downfall in any website’s history as the day its parent company hires two guys named Josh who seemingly do the same job (their title is something to the effect of Senior Director of Digital Analytics and Brand Partnerships). The Joshes have never read the website they’ve been hired to oversee, or any website for that matter, but they wear that dumb bubble vest every tech bro owns. The Joshes subject the website’s writers to weekly meetings about pageviews and growth and say things like “as you can see, Gen Z user engagement across vertical visibility was down one and a half percent this month” as if that means anything to anyone. Then The Joshes will advise the writers who get paid half what they do to cover more trending topics and avoid using words in headlines that could be deemed “SEO killers.” Look, Joshes, I understand that the phrase “blasting ass ham” is not going to be Google-friendly but it’s just fucking funny ok and people like reading funny things on the internet so fuck off!!!
Woo boy, I got a bit carried away there and I apologize. Where was I?
Right, so as I was saying, traditional publications are not the future—curated resources like personal newsletters from your favorite writers and personalities (me!) are, which is ironic since that is very much the model of past, before the blog era boom. So I guess you could say we’re going… back to the future, which is my favorite movie about a guy whose mom tries to diddle him.
So I’m starting this newsletter to circumvent the rigamarole that goes with being a freelance writer in a dying industry, where I have to repeatedly email some editor to explain why a weird esoteric punk/emo/hardcore band is worth them paying me $150 to write about before getting a response about how they blew their monthly budget on magic web traffic beans. I’d rather send it directly to you, the reader, because I know you’ll, like, get it, maaan.
This newsletter is free but I’m also set up to accept payments. If you’d like to tip me for the work I do, that helps me pay my rent, and that is greatly appreciated. But maybe you’d rather hang out for a while and see where this thing goes before opening your wallet. I get it. That’s fine too. Whatever.
Also, as I’ve mentioned, I’m currently writing an absolute monster of a book, the most daunting project of my entire life save for that time I assembled two IKEA bookshelves in one day. The last book I helped write ended up hitting #42 on a list of the 100 Greatest Music Books of All Time. There’s a humble side to me that feels grateful to even be included on such a list, but I’d be lying I said there wasn’t also an arrogant side that thinks the other 41 books best get the fuck out the way for this next one. My publisher has repeatedly asked that I not say this for legal purposes, but I can 100 percent guarantee that it will be the greatest music book ever written. It will be a better music book than the Bible, which I’m pretty sure had music in it? It will make Bob Dylan’s book look like Dumbfuck Magazine. I’ve been collecting a gigantic trove of material for this book and after I finish it next year (unless it kills me), I plan on selling it off in piecemeal. That might not make a lot of sense now, but this newsletter will provide periodic book updates and reveal more about the immense project. So to quote the guy from the mom-diddling movie, “I guess you guys weren’t ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it.”
I’ve truly lost the thread of what the fuck I was talking about when I started this email and this career, so I will leave you by saying: Thank you for signing up. I plan on using this space to post band interviews/short features, music recommendations, things I’ve been working on, unnecessary industry shit-talk, random rants that will probably get me in trouble, sassy thoughts better kept to myself, gossip, “advice,” weird crap I’ve found online, and photos I’ve taken of the Very Cool Famous Bands that let me hang out with them. Hey, speaking of, here’s a terrific photo I took of the rock band PUP this summer. Wow very cool!:
Thank you for joining me as I flail confidently off the cliff of music journalism.
Dan Ozzi
America’s Only Music Writer™
www.danozzi.com
Got something you think I’d be interested in for REPLY ALT? Send it to me. My email address is dan@danozzi.com