Loos lived in New York City for a while, making a starvation living as a freelance music critic for one of New York's many German-language papers, the New Yorker Bannerträger. Before leaving Europe, a wise old man had advised him that whenever Americans asked whether he could do this or that, he should instantly reply, with a beaming smile, "Why yes, of course, that's my specialty!" Loos had asked for work from the Bannerträger, but it was only when the paper's regular music critic suddenly got a new job that the paper's desperate editor turned to young Loos. Did Loos know anything about the "Great Melba," the fabulously popular Australian soprano Nellie Melba? Or Carmen, the opera she was starring in? "Of course," Loos responded, "that's my specialty!" The skeptical editor had no choice; he handed Loos a standing-room-only ticket and sent him off to review melba's performance.

Loos had never written a music review in his life. He frantically ran off to the public library and read every review he could get his hands on. He began to memorize what he assumed were the key terms: "counterpoint"; "dynamic"; "crescendo"; "after three hours," he later wrote, "I knew enough."

Then he dashed off to the Metropolitan Opera, where he met a friend. The friend was actually a minor player in the opera, a soldier, but tonight the opera was short of soldiers, did Loos know anything about Soldiering? Marching and so on? "Why yes," Loos replied, "that's my specialty!" So the opera hired him on the spot, dressed him up in a soldier suit, and marched him on stage. That, Loos joked, was the time he appeared on stage with the great Melba.

But he still had his review to write. He dashed home and packed it with all the disjointed jargon that he had memorized; the paper printed it as written. His roommate thought it was a spoof and laughed uproariously; Loos was terrified that someone would actually read it. The next morning (so Loos told the story), another German-language paper, the New Yorker Staatzeitung, reported that its rival, the Bannerträger, had published a hilarious satire of a music review. The 'Bannerträger's regular reviewer was awful, the Staatzeitung wrote, but the new satirist was terrific! And later (Loos swore) the New York Music Critics Association made him an honorary member!

—Robert Weldon Whalen, Sacred Spring: God and the birth of Modernism in Fin de Siècle Vienna