On Reviews
I’ve recently started submitting reviews to Soundlust.com, a new music review site started by someone I knew back in the days when I was a contributor to Blogcritics. There’s already an amended version of my Cambridge Rock Festival review online there now.
As readers of this site will probably have noticed, the vast majority of my reviews are strongly positive, simply because I am first and foremost a music fan, and tend buy tickets and albums by bands I actually like in the first place. I’m a complete failure at the sort of jaded cynicism that seems to be the default setting for too many professional critics.
And since the British prog scene is quite small and very incestuous, and I get to a lot of gigs, I’ve got to be on first-name terms with a quite a few members of several bands, and one or two have even become personal friends. I simply won’t write strongly negative reviews of those bands. In the rare cases of gigs being shockingly bad, such as one or two in the declining years of Crewe Limelight, I find it better to say nothing at all. Saying that, I do try to be as honest as I can; writing a glowing review of what was actually a rather mediocre gig does the artist a disservice. Sychophancy just leads to Axl Rose…
September 4th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
“Sychophancy just leads to Axl Rose…”
I think I want this on a t-shirt!
September 5th, 2010 at 8:56 am
I do enjoy reading your postings Tim and the MA forum is the poorer now that you are no longer contributing to it.
September 5th, 2010 at 9:51 am
Harold - while a lot of people keep telling me they appreciate my postings, I’ve had others telling me I’m a disruptive influence who doesn’t respect the valid opinions of other posters.
Whether it’s just that my willingness to speak my mind gets up the noses of a very small number of self-important sycophants, or whether a significant part of the MA online community has a problem with my attitude, I don’t know. But I’ve concluded it’s better both for the harmony of the forum and my own sanity that I stay away.
September 5th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Hi Tim
As someone who was actually at the Reading festival and saw at least half of G’n'R’s set (or Axl and his band anyway) I have to say that a lot of the criticism being thrown at him kind of misses the mark. Musically it was pretty much what I expected, no scratch that - the vocals were better than I expected. Axl’s voice was never the greatest but he could belt out tunes and he still can. The rest of his band were shadows of G’n'R (and having seen Slash in Mcr earlier this year I knew I was going to be disappointed in the Axl band). Yes, he was stupid and arrogant to turn up so late but really what did the organisers expect??? To be fair to him he did seem genuinely gutted when the power got pulled, hence the farcical coming back with acoustic instruments + megaphone.
Bottom line - I got to see songs being sung by the original singer (who still has a decent voice) that I never thought I would see. It certainly wasn’t G’n'R in all their pomp, but it was still fun (and not the awful show that many seem to have labelled it).
Mike
September 5th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Hi Mike,
My Axl Rose comment was a cheap shot, I know, but it was aimed more at his prima-donna attitude that the quality of his performance. Wasn’t at Reading so I can’t really comment.
And anyway, I don’t know him personally
September 9th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
This reply should have been days ago but I wanted to think about it rather than post at haste and regret at leisure…
I got into MA in 2002 and am into them enough to go once or twice a year but not multiple times per tour. This makes me a fan but not a Trekkie - and I say that as someone who once held a commission in Starfleet
Fairly early on a friend who’s a bigger fan than I explained that the official forum was alright as long as you accepted they were all cheerleaders and had a strong element of groupthink.
One of the downsides of prog being a fairly small pond is groupthink and the tendancy to praise everyone to the skies. At this years Progeny there were a couple of bands whose performances were pretty substandard, but you wouldn’t know it to read the reviews. Every act was described as great. This is same hype that allows Sky Sports to describe every football match as far down as non league as being desperately important or a classic.
Your blog is somewhere I look forward to reading positive but not uncritical reviews, mainly of bands I’m into. So keep up the good work.
September 10th, 2010 at 8:22 am
I’ve can think of one or two occasions where I’ve held back from saying what I really thought because I didn’t see it as politic to say it at the time.
Case in point being the Wishbone Ash gig with MA and PR supporting at Shepherd’s Bush Empire back in May. MA themselves played a blinder (See Jerry Ewing’s review in Classic Rock Presents Prog - yes, they really were that good). But Wishbone Ash themselves were quite disappointing - lack of fire and passion, dreadfully weak vocals, and too many uninspiring blues-rock jams. MA completely blew them off stage.
But since WA invited them as support, and gave them full PA and lightshow, it didn’t seem right to post any negative reviews of them.
September 14th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
The reviews that anger me are ones where the reviewer doesn’t like the type of music so blasts the band/record/etc. Whether or not I like a particular genre doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate talented musicians and recognize when they are doing what they do well.
On WA - saw them with the original lineup around 1973 or 74 - I can’t imagine that they’d ever match the energy of that period.
October 1st, 2010 at 12:06 pm
@Mike S:
Hate that as well - Whenever that happens I smell music biz politics at work - Band refuse to give an interview or buy enough advertising, so their album gets given to someone the editor knows hates the band.
Or it’s just blatant posturing - like Sounds Dave McCulloch giving Pink Floyd’s The Wall one star to boost his own post-punk hipster credentials.