House Is A Feeling

Last week Jeremy Armitage and Tami Fenwick resigned as editors of Resident Advisor, on what was a sad day for the site.

You may read RA regularly without ever having heard of J and T. Equally you may have only barely noticed the slow but very steady improvement in the quality of the writing at RA. There was no sudden lunging overhaul, but the general tone of the site over the last year or so has been tightened considerably. Both Jeremy and Tami were well able to edit and instruct writers, and did a great job making the site more credible.

Regardless of whether you agreed or disagreed with their decisions as a writer, they were consistent and pursued an editorial policy, which any site needs. There were plenty of times where I disagreed, most often with Month to Month, but usually the rows ended with a flurry of emails and me trying to find another way to say what I felt it was obvious I meant anyway! For the most part, any changes suggested by J and T helped articles and I was almost always allowed to make those changes in my own way.

If you want to know why Jeremy and Tami have left you can read this thread here, and draw your own conclusions. I’m very unhappy at this as I know other RA writers are. After initially feeling I was definitely going to quit RA due to this, I’ve decided to stay writing for the time-being and see how things go. Though I worry about who will now edit the site, and am waiting to hear an explanation of what happened from the owners too.

The reason I’m staying is that I hope the site can retain credibility and I felt if I left it would mean another person who has worked hard for the site would be gone. RA is currently one of the only outlets for dance music writing so for now I want to stay with it. I’ll be speaking to one of the owners this week and for whatever my say is worth I’ve already outlined how important I feel it is that the right person is made editor, someone who values good writing and music and someone who will continue the good work. The wrong decision could mess up the site for good. If anyone has any suggestions for possible editors I’d love to hear them. It’d be nice to hear how other writers feel too.

For the RA readers, you can thank (or blame!) Jeremy and Tami for the presence of plenty of the site’s current crop of writers. One great idea which they employed frequently was to hire people who were openly critical of the site. This is how I started. After casually lambasting a Michael Mayer interview on ILM (I think I said “like when you write an essay entitled ‘my holiday’ when you’re a 9-year-old schoolchild”) I was basically asked if I could do better.

There are a few other writers who joined in this way. Similarly, when somebody said, often rudely: “why isn’t RA covering X/Y/Z?” they often responded by hiring that person, if they could write. Or by commissioning someone to cover those acts.

In short, if you liked RA and were enjoying the writing more in the last year or two, then you may not have known it, but it was probably down to Jeremy and Tami’s work from a small vinyl laden flat in Berlin.

Meanwhile I know that both J and T will be back with a new project very soon, and I hope to be involved, as I’m sure other  writers do. I had a long chat with Jeremy last week and he had some really fresh ideas which should blow the cobwebs off some of the dusty dance-crit that’s knocking around lately.

Personally I’m also very keen to bring something new and irreverent and youthful to dance music writing (and some new audio stuff too) and the more I discussed this the more I realised how important I feel it is right now.

So I look forward to working with both J and T again. Keep your eyes peeled here for more details of future stuff.