Paper Cuts
Colourful, self-deprecating memoir ... In-depth analysis ... Music journalists tend to be square pegs of one shape or another, and Kessler’s is a rip-snorting account of a misspent youth well spent; a background full of secrets and lies, French skinheads and sticky fingers. You’ll feel for him ... Rich in musicianly colour ... This is recounted with self-deprecation and dry humour, listing wrong turns and cringes as well as detailing the absurd, joyful surreality of being behind the curtain, seeing the pop levers move.
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While there is no shortage of books that celebrate the glory of music journalism, Kessler’s book is arguably one of the first to offer a post-mortem of sorts ... In a smooth blend of the personal and polemical, he maps out the co-ordinates using moments from his own music career ... The book’s sense of place is admirable ... The reader spends a beat too long in the Parisian banlieues with Kessler ... Ultimately, Paper Cuts reads as a Valentine to an industry and magazine that, far from burning out spectacularly, faded away at the hands of British publisher bigwigs.
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After reading Ted Kessler’s account of living through the last hurrah and the slow decline of the music press, you would have to conclude that what starts out as a dream job is apt to dissolve into a nightmare ... It adds up to a funny, colourful, occasionally tragic trawl through the challenges of making a living from writing about music ... I would take issue with Kessler claiming he destroyed the music press, given that it is still alive. Really, he’s talking about the death of a mid-Nineties to early-2000s golden age when music journalists and the bands they wrote about were essentially in the same club.
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