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April 19, 2000
Gail O'Hara
By Gerry Belsha
Gail O'Hara is everything you look for in a music critic. Her writing is biting, sometimes sarcastic, direct, colorful, non-pedestrian and most importantly honest. Her aesthetic is well-grounded in fluffy pop but always open for the new and vibrant. It is obvious that she is in love with the pop scene. Along with Pam Berry she created the legendary Chickfactor 'zine (available through mail order chickfactor, 245 East 19th St., #12T, New York, NY 10003.) and now, eight years later, with it's unique layout and fine photography, the 'zine is still as fresh as ever. It will soon be available online.
Gail O'Hara photos
O'Hara also puts on the occasional Chickfactor parties, featuring cosmopolitan music, people in fine gear and pumped with attitude. She also runs Enchante Records which has seen four releases including the latest Pacific Ocean album. And if that is not enough, O'Hara is a photographer in the same vein as the great Lee Miller. O'Hara recently spoke to Check This Out! about the pop scene and all it encompasses.
Check This Out!: Ok, first of all a little background check. I know you have been doing Chickfactor since 1992. How long have you been with TimeOut NY and what other writing have you done over the years?
Gail O'Hara: I got my first taste of journalism as the arts editor of my college newspaper, the Commonwealth Times, in Richmond, Va. Then I wrote about local music for the Washington City Paper. Then I worked as copy chief at Spin magazine, where I also wrote a little bit but ultimately found Chickfactor far more satisfying (the latter has a MUCH smarter, more sophisticated readership). I have been with TimeOut NY since it launched in 1995, and I've been the music editor there since 1996.
CTO: How are things going with your label Enchante?
GO: Things are going swimmingly with Enchante. We just released our fourth record, the Pacific Ocean's new album, which just received 3.5 stars in Rolling Stone. I wish other (smaller) magazines would review it too.
CTO: Do you enjoy putting together the Chickfactor shows you have done? Do you get the feeling that there is a sense of community out there or is that just unrealistic idealism?
GO: The Chickfactor parties are perhaps the very best part of it all. I always wear a jewel-encrusted gown and sip French champagne, the music is always ace, the audience is respectful and very good looking, the atmosphere lovely. I love putting on shows, and I hope to someday be the proprietress of my very own quiet music venue.
CTO: What are your earliest memories concerning pop music? What do you remember liking first, your first purchase, the first band you hated?
GO: I was completely obsessed with pop since the moment I learned of its existence. I remember being blown away by Kraftwerk very early on; I endlessly played several of my parents' records ("American Pie," Roberta Flack, show tunes). I listened attentively to the top 40 as a child and wrote down the whole thing. I think the first record I bought was "Killer Queen" (that's by Queen for you youngsters). I hated disco (but secretly loved Donna Summer).
CTO: Things have changed so much over the years with the way pop is and how everything is so fragmented. You can have brilliant bands out there that very few people, relatively speaking, will ever hear. How can bands ever have any impact? Brilliant bands like Sarge can come and go and maybe 50,000 people will have heard them.
GO: The size of an audience doesn't matter. It upsets me very much that many musicians basically give up because they aren't reaching the masses to which they believe they are entitled. It really is more important that you and your friends adore what you're doing than getting lots of strangers interested. My former Chickfactor coeditor Pam Berry has the right idea about music. She's totally devoted to it, yet she does it without making demands on the music to give her a living. Those who can make a living from it are in a position of privilege but music shouldn't be forced to give you things.
CTO: Do you think that fanzines play an important role in the pop scene now?
GO: Yes, I do because it gives more exposure to hard-to-find music. I wish there were more small magazines, though.
CTO: What are some of the things you have reacted to positively and that you've reacted to negatively recently, both musically and culturally.
GO: I abhor teenypop bands and Limp Fucking Bizkit and especially No Doubt, but there will always be such shite as long as there are 10-year-olds. What can you do? Ignore it! I loathe fad-oriented consumer music, and I hate no-talent hacks who get loads of attention just because they are "hotties". I really, really despise celebrity puff-piece journalism and the way it all revolves around the young and cute. It's vile. Still, I am happy that talented songwriters such as Stuart Murdoch and Stephin Merritt are starting to reach wider audiences.
CTO: How do you think rock criticism has changed over the past 10 years? There seems to be an influx of more and more women writing.
GO: I don't know that it has changed. I guess there are more women. I don't like it every few years when someone writes about the trend of women in music. I don't like entire books about women in rock. As with music, now there is too much rock criticism and with the web more critics are popping out of the woodwork daily. I'll be happy if I never read any rock criticism again, but it is necessary to get the word out I suppose.
CTO: Who do you read right now? Who are critics that you really enjoy reading and learning from?
GO: I am not crazy about long-winded music journalists and I often have access to the music they're writing about, so I just make up my own mind. I have to peruse loads of publications for my day job (Billboard, Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, New York Times, New York Post, New York Observer, Village Voice, etc.) and I read Salon. But as you may have noticed I am a bit music-ed out so I tend to read book and film criticism rather than music (for pleasure). I am inspired by the criticism of Stephin Merritt, Douglas Wolk, Camille Paglia, Peter Paphides, etc.
CTO: Have you ever reached a point where you get sick of music and don't think you ever want to hear another
record? How do you get out of that rut?
GO: I do indeed live a very music-intensive life and I have felt recently that the beautiful lifelong love affair between myself and music may be in jeopardy soon if I don't quit my day job. So I probably will, and then I will still live a music-saturated life but it will all be music that I am interested in and care about, rather than trying to cover all genres for every New York City resident.
CTO: What is the job of the critic? Greil Marcus said that the job of the critic is not to lie. do you agree?
GO: I do agree. Unfortunately I think there's this herd-like thing with critics though, and I don't think many of them do tell the truth. They all find out what the other is thinking before putting down their own opinions. I mean, I like Beck but I'm not afraid to say that his latest record is crap. But many of them won't say it because they like HIM, not the record.
CTO: Have you seen friends or fellow critics kind of lose interest or fall by the wayside over the years, sort of losing contact with what is really good. I find that a lot, and it is really frustrating because there was a time when they had similar tastes but now it is strange. Does it have to do with age? Growing up? Why do some people become old farts and some don't?
GO: I wish I knew the answer to this last bit. I guess it depends how much you care about it. I cannot write articles about things I don't care about, so I don't even try. But if you're a freelancer trying to make a living, I'm sure it's tempting to take on such assignments. It's very easy to lose touch with what's good because there is so much music and so little time to hear it all. A lot of consumers aren't willing to accept something unless it is presented to them in an MTV video or a slick radio hit.
CTO: There really isn't a feeling that can match the joy of finding a new group or new song that seems to come out of nowhere. Something that really wipes you out. Does that still happen to you as often as it did in the past?
GO: I'm happy to say that it does still happen to me. All the time. Again, it's not about finding a large number of bands. When I find something I adore, I tend to just play it continuously. I'm currently in mad love with a London trio called the Clientele, who are just the loveliest, most magical band I've heard in years.
CTO: How much music do you actually check out during an average week?
GO: I probably go out to see live music three or four times a week. I play whatever I want at home. I play things we need to assess and review at work, and every Friday I clear my desk of all the records that came in the mail that week. Most of them are terrible and I listen to about 30 seconds of track one. This is the part of my job I will not miss when it ends.
CTO: How did you start Chickfactor and where did you come up with the idea? What inspired you?
GO: I did an interview with the Wedding Present's leader, David Gedge, in the summer of 1992. I actually did it for Spin magazine but they ended up needing very few quotes so I decided to publish the rest of the Q&A on my own. So that is why the aforementioned pale blue eyed goddess with the gorgeous singing voice Pam Berry and I started Chickfactor (she chose the name). We became friends when we both worked at the Washington City Paper so for years that is where we did all the Chickfactor last-minute layout process and stat camera work.
CTO: It seems to have a cult following, although I know many people have just heard about Chickfactor and never actually seen or read one. How would you describe it to someone who hasn't seen it?
GO: It's laid out sideways like a calendar, stunning photography (if I do say so), clean and easy to read, a bit slick for a small magazine, completely in love with pop music, chatty interviews with amazing musicians, most of whom are making music on their own terms, and what music it is! It's a bit insidery, but genuinely enthusiastic. For those who love fluffy pop, bossa nova, melancholic baroque pop, Stephin Merritt, lite psychedelia, and Francoise Hardy.
CTO: Has anything really changed in the last 10 years for women in music. In some ways it seems to have turned
worse, considering the past year and the rapes at Woodstock and the shitty bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn.GO: Woodstock was for morons, and it is a shame anyone attended it. For every Woodstock there is also a YoYo A GoGo or a Ladyfest where women can go and feel safe and not deal with drunken idiots and rapists. Luckily lots of things have changed over the past ten years. Women are everywhere, and in some cases we're even in charge. I think the American underground is as healthy as it's ever been; women can map out their own tours, record cheaply, run their own labels, etc. Even Courtney Love seems to have fallen off the musical earth! Things are great!
CTO: How is your photography coming along? I read somewhere you wanted to be the next Cecil Beaton or Erwin Blumenfeld.
GO: At the risk of sounding conceited, my photographs are da bomb. I have taken some divine portraits of some of the most exciting people in the world. Cecil and Erwin are favorites of mine because they create magical, fantastical portraits of women, but I also admire the work of Francesca Woodman, Sally Mann, Man Ray, Lee Miller, Humphrey Spender, Brassai, and Lewis Carroll. I'm not as good as these folks yet, but I hope to have an exhibition up sometime soon.
CTO: What are some of your favorite fanzines?
GO: Papercuts, Cha Cha Charming, Beikoku-Ongaku, Plotz, Beer Frame, Boa, Circumstantial Evidence, Dagger, oh there are many others!
CTO: What's on your turntable/cd player these days?
GO: The forthcoming Belle & Sebastian LP, 69 Love Songs, Bebel Gilberto, The Clientele, Billy Nicholls, Louis Philippe, Martin Newell, glo-worm, Dionne Warwick, Plush, and as always Nick Drake.
CTO: What have you been reading?
GO: Lately lots of French poetry and British fiction and Daniel Handler's new book.
CTO: Who would you like to interview that you haven't interviewed yet?
GO: Tracey Ullman, Jennifer Saunders, Isabella Rossellini, Francoise Hardy, Astrud Gilberto, Catherine Deneuve, Lynda Barry, Sally Mann, Lauren Bacall, Gal Costa, Neneh Cherry, Kate Bush, Jeanne Moreau, Stuart Murdoch, Stevie Jackson, Maira Kalman, Lee Hazlewood, Terry Gilliam, oh god how much room do you have? I could go on all day.
CTO: Will Chickfactor be going online soon?
GO: God, I hope so. We've been trying to wrangle Chickfactor.com away from its previous tenant. It should be up by autumn. Really!
CTO: What do you plan to be writing five years from now?
GO: I really like doing interviews, so I imagine I will continue to do them, only they may be on TV or on a website rather than in print (or as well as in print). I may write a screenplay, that's what they all say, huh? I have one in my head, so we'll see. I can tell you that I will not be a full-time writer/editor at a fancy glossy magazine.
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