American music critic, web designer and former software developer
Tom Hull
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Occupation
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- Music critic
- web designer
- blogger
- software developer
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Period
| c.
1975?present
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tomhull
.com
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Tom Hull
is an American music critic,
web designer
, and former
software developer
. Hull began writing criticism for
The Village Voice
in the mid 1970s under the mentorship of its
music editor
Robert Christgau
, but left the field to pursue a career in
software design
and
engineering
during the 1980s and 1990s, which earned him the majority of his life's income. In the 2000s, he returned to music reviewing and wrote a
jazz
column for
The Village Voice
in the manner of Christgau's "Consumer Guide", alongside contributions to
Seattle Weekly
,
The New Rolling Stone Album Guide
,
NPR Music
, and the webzine
Static Multimedia
.
Hull's jazz-focused database and blog
Tom Hull ? on the Web
hosts his reviews and information on albums he has surveyed, as well as writings on books, politics, and movies. It shares a functional, low-graphic design with Christgau's website, which Hull also created and maintains as its
webmaster
.
Education
[
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]
Hull attended
Wichita State University
before transferring to
Washington University in St. Louis
.
[1]
Career
[
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]
In the mid 1970s, Hull accepted a job offer from lead critic
Robert Christgau
at
The Village Voice
in New York.
[2]
His first assignment was to review the 1975
Bachman?Turner Overdrive
album
Four Wheel Drive
. "Unfortunately, the [album] was their worst to date, but Christgau and I had sort of a working class bond over the band", he recalls. While he says Christgau had "welcomed me to New York, and further extended my ears … by 1979 or so my desire to write rock crit was flagging, and everyday life was moving on", citing in part the limited workload afforded to him by the
Voice
.
He left the newspaper around 1980, but would later serve as a resource for Christgau's decade-encompassing "Consumer Guide" collection
Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s
(1990).
[4]
Beginning in 1980, Hull worked in
software engineering
and
design
, which would earn him most of his life's income.
He also worked on
free
and
open source software
, such as
Linux
.
In 2001, Hull created Christgau's website ? robertchristgau.com ? at the latter's apartment in New York, where Hull's trip from Wichita had been prolonged by the
September 11 attacks
and the death of his nephew's wife in the
World Trade Center
.
[6]
The website made the majority of Christgau's published writings and reviews freely available for public viewing.
The idea for the site was conceived by Hull and went into development after Christgau embraced it in mid 2001. Hull's background in software lent him the expertise to create the website, adhering to a minimalist aesthetic favoring text over graphics.
After robertchristgau.com went online, Christgau called Hull "a computer genius as well as an excellent and very knowledgeable music critic", and said that "the design of the website, especially its high searchability and small interest in graphics, are his idea of what a useful music site should be."
Hull remained involved with the site as
webmaster
, a role which author and
Oxford Brookes University
music lecturer Dai Griffiths later applauded. "Anyone who studies Christgau is indebted to Tom Hull for his magisterial work on Christgau's website", Griffiths wrote in 2019 in the academic journal
Rock Music Studies
.
Hull also created his own online database tomhull.com with a similar design. The site has hosted his past and contemporaneous writings as well as a catalog of primarily jazz-based records and reviews, which adopt the grading schema from
Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s
(2000).
[8]
The jazz focus originates from Hull's personal collection, gradually built from reading jazz critics
Gary Giddins
and
Francis Davis
in the 1970s and 1980s, and from more thorough research of the jazz canon when Hull lost interest in rock during the 1990s, citing the period's domination by
grunge
and
gangsta rap
.
In 2003, Hull was enlisted by
Rolling Stone
editor Christian Hoard to contribute entries for
The New Rolling Stone Album Guide
(2004). In February of that year, Hull also began writing "Recycled Goods" ? a "Consumer Guide"-style column on archival music releases and
reissues
? for the Chicago-based
webzine
Static Multimedia
at the behest of its editor Michael Tatum. In 2005, Christgau asked Hull to replace Giddins, who had been
The Village Voice
'
s longtime jazz columnist before quitting. Although Christgau was dismissed from the
Voice
by new ownership the following year, Hull's "Jazz Consumer Guide" continued to be published in the paper for the next several years.
During this period, he also contributed to
Seattle Weekly
.
Hull's "Consumer Guide" reviews encouraged him to survey more jazz records for his own website, which was later expanded as
Tom Hull ? on the Web
to include blog writings on movies, politics, and books. As he explains in 2014, "I've written several million words since 2003, expanded the ratings database from about 10,000 records to 23,000. I've tried to write a bit about everything I've listened to since 2006, so I have at least 10,000 notes on records ? some can be called reviews, and some don't quite rise to that level."
Christgau, who finds it personally difficult to review jazz in his own writing aesthetic, has since recommended Hull's website for readers seeking advice on jazz albums.
In a commentary of Hull's jazz album reviews, Patrick Jarenwattananon of
NPR
writes:
His picks reflect a remarkably eclectic sensibility, where the
mainstream
players (
Houston Person
,
Randy Sandke
) swim freely among with the modern
progressive
cats (
Kenny Garrett
,
Donny McCaslin
) and the
post-modern
rearrangers (
Rudresh Mahanthappa
,
Nik Bartsch
,
Mostly Other People Do the Killing
). Seeing as how jazz criticism has historically been dominated by people pushing agendas ? e.g. the
DownBeat
writer who called
John Coltrane
"anti-jazz" in 1961 ? it's nice to see a professional listener with tastes across the spectrum.
Hull has written for
NPR Music
and worked with Francis Davis in compiling ballots for the project's annual jazz critics poll.
He has also voted in
DownBeat
'
s annual international critics poll.
Information and data from these polls are hosted on his website.
See also
[
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]
References
[
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]
Bibliography
[
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]
- Anon. (August 2019). "67th Annual Critics Poll - The Critics".
DownBeat
.
- Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian, eds. (2004).
The New Rolling Stone Album Guide
(4th ed.).
Simon & Schuster
.
ISBN
0-7432-0169-8
.
- Christgau, Robert
(1990).
"Acknowledgements"
.
Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s
.
Pantheon Books
.
ISBN
0-679-73015-X
. Retrieved
February 11,
2020
– via robertchristgau.com.
- Christgau, Robert (2002).
"Answers from the Dean: Online Exchange with Robert Christgau"
.
RockCritics.com
.
Archived
from the original on December 30, 2018
. Retrieved
August 21,
2018
– via RockCriticsArchives.com.
- Christgau, Robert (September 18, 2018).
"Xgau Sez"
.
robertchristgau.com
. Retrieved
March 12,
2020
.
- Davis, Francis
(December 21, 2015).
"The 2015 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll"
.
A Blog Supreme
.
NPR
. Retrieved
June 16,
2020
.
- Davis, Francis (December 21, 2016).
"The 2016 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll"
.
WBUR
. Retrieved
June 16,
2020
.
- Griffiths, Dai (November 19, 2019).
"Rock Criticism's Musical Text: Robert Christgau's Writing about Words and Music in Song"
.
Rock Music Studies
.
6
(3): 198?216.
doi
:
10.1080/19401159.2019.1692501
.
S2CID
213809313
. Retrieved
June 16,
2020
– via
Taylor & Francis Online
.
- Hull, Tom (April 30, 2014).
"Tom Hull Answers a Bunch of Questions About Tom Hull, Music Criticism, and RobertChristgau.com"
.
RockCritics.com
. Retrieved
February 13,
2020
.
- Hull, Tom (b) (n.d.).
"Book: Introduction"
.
tomhull.com
. Retrieved
June 14,
2020
.
- Jarenwattananon, Patrick (May 27, 2009).
"Grade Inflation and the Jazz Critics"
.
A Blog Supreme
. NPR.
Further reading
[
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]
External links
[
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]