Rock ‘n’ Roll Vacancy
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Managing editor Larry Green declined to give an official explanation, but whatever it may be, it’s hard not to see the move as a face-saving opportunity for the editorial department. In her seven years writing about music for the paper, Kim’s approach has remained distressingly puerile and her reporting fraught with errors, which may be why it took the Sun-Times more than a year to decide that she was the right person to succeed Jim DeRogatis, who left in May 1995. DeRogatis proved that writing for the mainstream doesn’t necessarily mean writing pap, and as a result Kim’s focus on celebrity gossip (for which she was skewered in an unusually sharp Lumpen parody this spring) seems a smokescreen for the fact that she has virtually nothing to say about music. My predecessor in this forum probably critiqued her work with enough frequency and sadistic delight to last for perpetuity, but then the country’s eighth-largest daily should know better than to set out such an obvious target.
“You’re not necessarily out of luck if you have no connection to the music industry or can’t win any contests to meet your favorite group,” she wrote. “It just means you have to be wily. For instance, if you hang around the backstage area after a performance, one of the musicians may see you and come over to you.” With her all-access pass now revoked, Kim may just have to try out her own advice.
Looks like the quitting is contagious: Earlier this month, after the duo finished a new album (Camofleur, to be released by Drag City in January), Jim O’Rourke left Gastr del Sol.
