Blog On Blog: The Skyline's Ryan Clark

Name: Ryan “adr” Clark
Blog: The Skyline Network
URL: www.theskyline.net
Started: Late 2006, early 2007
Typical Topics: Local music – concert reviews, album reviews, gossip
Day Job: I do marketing and communication for an oil gas company.

Hair Balls: How did The Skyline Network enter the blogosphere?
adr: It started out as a parody news site. I was mostly just taking inside jokes about music in Houston and extrapolating them out into ridiculous full-length articles. At some point, writing that way gets really old and never as funny as you want it to be, so I just started writing about music in Houston, instead of just trying to be funny.

Hair Balls: There are a lot of interesting additions to The Skyline you don’t see on other blogs like Scene Wiki (a Wikipedia page dedicated to the local music scene). Do the add-ons ever make it overwhelming?
adr: No, what’s great about things like the Wiki is it generates its own content. It is a lot to do and it is probably something where it would be helpful if I had other people doing it with me. But the fun thing about a blog is you only have to do as much of it as you want to and that you have time for.

Not adding other writers is a conscious choice, because, for me, I feel like that would take the fun away.

HB: It also seems like it would be difficult to give up the distinctive
voice of The Skyline, your voice, like it would be hard to compromise
that with another style.
adr: It’s a hard voice to explain and it would be a very hard voice to
try and get other people to write in. So that’s definitely a barrier,
too.

HB: Speaking of that voice, there’s a definite tendency to ramble,
sometimes even off-topic when reviewing or discussing bands or shows –
but not in a bad way, it works. For example, in your review of the News
On the March EP, you spend most of the introduction talking about your
childhood summers in Wisconsin. And you seem very conscious of it –
even calling yourself out in your own writing. Where did that style
come from?
adr: I guess what’s fun about a blog is that you can kind of ramble on
about whatever you want. When you’re very conscious of it and you tell
people, “Yeah, I don’t know what that was either, but it sure was fun
to write.”

Blogs are just – it’s vanity and maybe I want to talk about the
idea, maybe I’m fascinated by the fact that “The Charge of the Light
Brigade” is a poem about the first total war where the industry and the
economy were more involved in warfare, more than any conflict before
that and it also happened to be a war where people started wearing
these things called “balaclavas” which actually happens to be the name
of a local band. I think that’s funny and ridiculous and I just like
going down rabbit holes like that.
HB: I like how you’re answer to my question about rambling was a ramble.
adr: Yeah, exactly. And I knew I was doing it, too. [Laughs.]

HB: You’ve also used The Skyline to put on local awards (The Sammies)
and concerts (Hootenanny). It’s almost as if you’re turning your blog
into an enterprise.
adr: That’s fair to say, I would agree with that.
HB: Did that just come naturally out of being so involved in the music
scene and wanting to do more to help it out? Has the decision to keep
up blog about local music made you more active in it?
adr: It certainly makes me more interested in it. Part of it was doing
things that I think are really fun – again, going back to the vanity
concept. But having a brand to do them under makes it seem like The
Skyline is all these things where really I just wanted to see “Oh, a
Wikipedia page, is that hard to set up? How does that work? Or it would
do a lot of fun to do a show where bands cover other bands
(Hootenanny).” Having the blog is a good sort of cover, I guess, for
having other things and trying them all together.

HB: Do you have a memorable post? One where maybe you rambled at your best?
adr: I can’t really think of one.
HB: Do you have a post that you wish you would’ve done differently?
adr: Yeah, I recently reviewed the album Get Down by the band
Woozyhelmet and it’s a great record and I had trouble writing a review
of it – I couldn’t find the right ramble for it. So I tried something
fun and different and it just flopped.
HB: In what way?
adr: Well, what I did was, I put the record on – I was in Las Vegas for
work – and I asked if it was a lucky record. So, I put it on and put
$20 in a nickel slot machine and gambled and took notes of where I was
with that 20 bucks throughout the album. And in Vegas, you’re never up.

I put the review up as a chart of how much money was in the slot
machine at the end of every song and I thought it was kind of fun and
something different but, in retrospect, it looked like this line graph
of “this album is making you lose $20.” And there was just a little bit
of paragraph at the end where it was like “Yeah, this is fun, good time
record and it’s all good.” But in retrospect, it’s one of the better
records that came out last year and it looks like I spent 15 minutes
listening to it once, wrote a paragraph and made a line chart in
Microsoft Excel – I think that was probably the worst post I’ve done.

HB: How would you describe your relationship with your readers and commenters?
adr: I actually know, in the real world, about half the people who
comment on the site. There seems to be a lot of one-off comments from
people whose album got reviewed and their fans are usually agreeing or
disagreeing with reviews.
HB: How do those “real world” relationships – both with your readers
and the musicians and bands you’re discussing – factor into your
reviews and posts?
adr: That sucks. It’s the worst, it’s horrible. Good guys, bad bands – that’s the worst thing in the world.
HB: Yeah.
adr: It’s really hard and I really struggle with it. I really try to go
out of my way to find bands that I don’t know anybody in and they don’t
know who I am.

Blogs are supposed to be fun – especially The Skyline is supposed
to be “woo hoo, party, good time.” But some people make bad records and
you have to be honest about it and it’s hard to do.

HB: Is your method more to go ahead and say that, or just not review records that you don’t like?
adr: I think there is so much out there that I try to just write about
the ones I enjoy and the flipside of that is there is so much out there
that sometimes even records I do enjoy I don’t get around to reviewing.
Indian Jewelry is a perfect example of that – put out a phenomenal
record; it was on several critics Best Of lists – never got around to
reviewing it.

HB: Are you surprised at the attention The Skyline has received?
adr: It’s surprising. Especially, when someone you don’t know comes up
to you and says “Oh, you do that.” That’s always weird. That’s another
reason to keep it on the posi-tips, because you don’t want strangers
angry at you.
HB: [Laughs] I’m sorry, to keep on the positive? I thought you said posi-tips?
adr: I did, on the posi-tips. Keepin’ it posi. P-o-s-i. The posi-tips.
HB: [Laughs.] Speaking of slang, you seem to use a lot of it on The
Skyline. Care to explain any of it – like where did “whips” come from?
adr: I think it’s a shortened version of “whip’s ass.” I don’t remember
where it came from, but it was sort of a throw away thing someone said.
So I was like, I’m going to keep that going.

Also, the phrase “Party. Call me.” comes up a lot, which is
actually a reference by [my friend] Carrie Murphy who was in the band
Awesome. It was a reference to how great it is cook with crock pots
because you just put the vegetables in there and then the meat and
eight hours all day – Party. Call me – when it’s all done, call me and
we’ll all eat crock-pot food. It was just a lot of enthusiasm for crock-pot cooking.

If I was ever to add a second writer to The Skyline all they would
do would be “Cooking with the Stars” and they would go make bands cook
food and share the recipes, because I’m really into cooking.
HB: Is that what you do when you’re not blogging? Cook?
adr: Yes, and be interviewed by other bloggers.

HB: Any reasons you would stop The Skyline?
adr: It’s a time thing for sure. There’s a big list of things that
would make it go away. If I had a family, that would not leave enough
time for it. If I decided to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band again, that
would probably take away from it. If I decided I always wanted to have
clean laundry or mow my yard.

HB: As involved as you, what are some of the biggest misconceptions
people – both in and outside of it – have about the local rock scene?
adr: For people outside the scene, I think I would tell them there is
really quality music going on in Houston right now. I get worried
because I don’t see a lot of kids at shows right now and I wonder
“where are the cool kids?” Even at touring shows. Kids these days: what
are they doing? And I think part of that is that there are not a lot of
under-21 clubs to go see that.

And for people inside the scene: Why so serious? I think inside the
Houston music scene – I mean the part I write about, not the hip-hop
community or some of the other communities – it’s ridiculous, there’s
nine blogs who write about the same bands.

HB: You think there’s too
many blogs?
adr: I mean, there’s good music, but there’s not that much good music
and it seems like all the blogs write about the same small section of
bands.
HB: Is a question of quality, diversity or repetition?
adr: I just hope we don’t get carried away. Houston has a really,
really, really good noise scene and it’s known for the people who come
out of it and do really experimental things like Jandek and Future
Blondes and Insect Warfare – bands like that who were known for those
things. People in other cities know that about Houston, but there’s no
blog that writes about it [in Houston], you know?

Like it would be more awesome if [instead of] nine blogs writing
about indie music, there were five writing about indie music and one
that wrote about noise and maybe a good hip-hop one. I think there
should be one that writes about all the Navy rock bands that play at
places that I don’t go to (Editors note: adr describes “Navy” bands as
those who play “the music you hear in recruiting commercials for the
Navy – you don’t hear Sufjan Stevens!) I would be interested in
hearing about what’s up with Thee Armada and bands like that – there’s
a scene there, it packs up Fitz all the time. Where do you go to learn
about those bands? It’d be cooler if there was more diversity.

HB: [Laughs.] Well, my last question is what other blogs do you think are worth checking out?
adr: My favorite blog right now is You Can’t Be Metal and Be
Comfortable and it’s
a blog about the Houston Rockets, Heavy Metal and love and
relationships. Long format posts, very personal, very entertaining –
this guy has got amazing slang.

— Dusti Rhodes