\n| Add caption<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n But RJ has been a startlingly cool cultural journalist for decades now:\u00a0 <\/span>When I moved to town, in \u201997, he was one of a very few bylines I already knew, from his work in the Voice and his decamping for the LA Weekly during an early-90s heyday during which it employed \u2013 I think I have this right \u2013 Jonathan Gold, Lynell George, John Powers, Tom Carson, Steve Erickson and many other luminaries. (Manohla Dargis arrived, I think, near the end of that period.) My now-wife worked as an intern around this time, and picked up the phone one day to find Arthur Lee, of the band Love, calling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When I met him years later, at the old Knitting Factory at what may\u2019ve been a New Pornographers show, I was a bit starstruck. And for all the journos laid off during the dark days of \u201908 and \u201909, RJ\u2019s dismissal may be the most inexplicable. \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He\u2019s written about death of Elliott Smith for Spin and Steve Martin\u2019s art collection for the New York Times magazine, and recently penned a line (involving Iggy Pop) in his Los Angeles magazine piece on artist Chris Burden that nails a cultural phenomenon I\u2019ve been trying for years to describe half as well. He\u2019s about as perceptive a reporter as I know, with some of the outsider’s perspective you see in everyone from Carey McWilliams to the late Huell Howser.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n RJ is an elusive cat (\u201cRJ? We don\u2019t even know his real name,\u201d a mutual friend told me the other day), but we managed to become friend over the last few years here. I\u2019ll miss him personally and professionally \u2013 he\u2019s been a valuable source of advice on my own book. And I know I\u2019m not the only Angeleno who will miss his decoding of the complex culture of the Southland. With just about every piece, RJ tackled his subjects in a smart, off-center way that never would have crossed my mind, but still made it clear in the writing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n Here at the Misread City, we\u2019re wishing RJ well at his next gig, at Cincinnati magazine, in a city he got to know through the record label that put out some of James Brown’s earliest (and finest) recordings. Angelenos\u2019 loss will be Ohioans’ gain. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n Though part of me wonders \u2013 what\u2019s happened to the journalistic scene in Los Angeles if it can no longer hold talent like RJ Smith? Here\u2019s hoping his exile might not be permanent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n Here\u2019s my Q+A.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n When you came to LA in 1990, it was before the riots, before Salonen, before Beck\u2019s breakout, and so on. How did the city strike you then: Did it seem wide open in some ways? Culturally sleepy?<\/p>\n<\/span><\/i><\/div>\n <\/div>\n I came to Los Angeles in 1990. Jonathan Gold had famously just been fired as music editor at the LA Weekly, and Kit Rachlis, who I had known at the Village Voice before he became editor of the Weekly, brought me in to rebuild the music section.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n <\/div>\n I thought I would be here a couple of years and then head elsewhere, but LA has a way of redefining your suppositions. We stayed. The early 90s were an amazing time to be here: You could see Beck in a Star Wars helmet playing a vacuum cleaner in a bowling alley; painters were fighting to reclaim downtown inch by inch; Pocho was this heresy of a zine. The coolest stuff was weird, out, then, and when you stumbled onto something good you really felt like you had discovered a treasure.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n <\/div>\n Hard as it is to imagine today, there was a time when people talked about attacking the citadel of the Music Center. \u00a0Or maybe it was the LA Times. These days there is no death star to conveniently focus on; the Times and the Center are just flavor-bringers, their monolithic status long gone. <\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n <\/div>\n There\u2019s a feeling that a lot of stuff is going on and not much feeling of a target worth hanging your ambitions on. (Other than New York, always an inviting target to LA: I think why the fate of MOCA is crucial to watch is not tied to the idea of \u201chigh culture\u201d vs. \u201cpop culture\u201d but to the question, who will define the LA art world: New York or LA money?)<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n <\/div>\n Your James Brown book, The One, got better reviews than just about any non-fiction book I can remember. What was the best thing about writing that?<\/p>\n<\/span><\/i><\/div>\n <\/div>\n Connecting with the south in a way I never had before. It was amazing to be traveling across South Carolina and Georgia just as Obama was getting elected the first time. That, and getting invited over to Bootsy Collins\u2019 house for dinner.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n <\/div>\n You wrote incisively about the press for LA magazine. When you arrived here, the city had three alternative weeklies, one with a whole research and fact-checking department. There were other reasons to think our publications might compete with those in New York. How does the print journalism scene compare these days? Are there fewer forums for serious or personal work than when you arrived?<\/p>\n<\/span><\/i><\/div>\n <\/div>\n To speak the obvious, there are as many or more outlets today, they\u2019re just not paying what they used to. Or, just not paying. The LA Review of Books is a still promising project, and Arthur is up and running again. KPCC and KCET have been hiring journalists, and Slake showed what was possible with literary journalism at least until a better paying job comes along. It did good stuff. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n <\/div>\n Hard to say if people are better or worse informed than they used to be. I\u2019m still waiting for somebody to call bullshit on Gangster Squad<\/i>\u2019s glorification of Chief Parker!<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n <\/div>\n You\u2019re headed back to your native Midwest. What attracted you to Cincinnati magazine?<\/p>\n<\/span><\/i><\/div>\n <\/div>\n Well, first of all it\u2019s nice to be living in a big city that has a football team.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n <\/div>\n I grew up in Detroit, and I suppose from a few angles Cincinnati reminds me of that place. A great editor is getting rarer and rarer, and in Jay Stowe, Cincinnati has somebody I was eager to work with. I\u2019ve known his reputation since he was at Spin, and from there the New York Observer and on to being editor in chief at Outside. I started talking to him when I would come to Cincinnati to research King Records for the JB book, and the more I saw of the city the more interested I got. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\nIt\u2019s a place with a mix of north and south, tea partiers and anarchists. Plus it has, in Wussy, the best band around right now, and I got to see them play in Over-the-Rhine last Saturday night. Working in a town with a humane cost of living gives me the chance to conceptualize, and write, the next book, and maybe the next one too.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n <\/div>\n What will you miss most about LA?<\/p>\n<\/span><\/i><\/div>\n <\/div>\n I would drag any stranger or friend I could to Watts Towers upon arrival in town, hoping they would see what I saw: an amazing upwelling, a monument to the individual and the community. <\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\nLA is a great place to build crazy stuff in your backyard without criticism orperhaps interest from your neighbors. Call it freedom or a lack of care, but LA gives you a lot of space to make stuff up.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SOMETIME during that hazy, gray zone around Christmas and New Year\u2019s Day, one of LA\u2019s finest scribes left town, maybe for good. I\u2019m talking about former Village Voice\/LA Weekly\/Los Angeles magazine writer and editor RJ Smith. He\u2019s also the author of two acclaimed books, The Great Black Way: LA in the 1940s and the Lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,30,47,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-journalism","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"category-media","9":"category-west-coast","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |
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