I think it's unfair to lump them all together. In my experience there are 3 types of reviews.

1. Reviews that give you a general idea what to expect without being overly detailed.

2. Reviews written for fans of a band where comparisons are usually made to the artists back catalogue and are usually very thorough written by someone who's extremely knowledgeable.

3. Self publicising bullshit where the reviewer just wants to show off he went to university.

I don't mind people doing No 3. Just keep it on a fucking blog nobody wants to read & don't pretend it's objective journalism.

...back to metal machine music, did lester bangs mention that it was a lot of white noise and junk? If so he didn't pull the wool over anyones eyes.

If someone described coprophagia as the greatest thing in the world,people still know what eating **** entails...and if they take advice to eat it it's their own fault.There shouldn't have to be a "subjective opinion" disclaimer.

I like Metal Machine Music, but greatest album ever? Nah, that would be "A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die."

All of the reviewers from Pitchfork are total fannies.

I've being trying to find it pretty much everywhere but no luck yet.

That's kinda like looking for someone to willingly stab you in the ear with a steel dildo.

I like sick stuff...listening to it at least.

I'll send you a link.

The problem is that you have this hostile and bitter attitude towards all music journalists, that is based off a few you seem to personally dislike. Which blinds you to anything they actually do well. You're painting them all as elitist ****heads, but I just don't see it.

Better than 90% of the bands formed by highschool kids that never make an album or play a gig perhaps, or the legions of cover bands and god awful pub rock that plague Australia. Anyway, I don't think jumping art mediums makes a decent comparison here.

I find that the majority are just a description of the music and then saying how much they liked it, which is dull. But sure, I could try harder - there's plenty of good stuff out there.

...it's fascinating...it's not any worse than bagpipes, and I like bagpipes on occasion.I'm sure lester bangs was just amazed by how atrocious it sounded.
It takes genuine talent to make something that ugly. Do you listen to any whitehouse?

Been meaning to get into some, but I've been focusing on other things.

Robert Christgau without a doubt.

Does it now?

Because give me a guitar, bass, a keyboard and drum machine and I can make you something far far worse.

Pitchfork will love it.

No you can't.

Metal Machine Music is just a big fuck you to the music industry. And it succeeds in doing that. That's why it's remembered and that's why it's so infamous.

You couldn't make a statement like that to save your life.

No I could make something worse and more inaccessible, please don't underestimate my total lack of talent.

The thing is MMM isn't all that inaccessible. I'd even go as far as to say the weird textures are soothing.

.......yeah,almost. There are these things--I think they're called buddah boxes or something--they're these little plastic boxes that look like a kids toy, and it'll just make a one or two note drone that you can meditate with...metal machine music kind of reminds me of that, but just a tad too harsh.

....as far as critics go, I think lester bangs was one of the only ones that didn't hate it.

George Starostin is just terrible. I mean, I sorta respect the unmeasurable amount of work he puts in his reviews but his opinions are just crap.

I mean:

Ridiculous statement.

Oh, he is a big Police fan alright:

Yeah man, one of the most unimpressive new wave acts IS also the most original one. Screw you Joy Divison.

Classic Rock Elitism at it's best. But he follows it with:

Hahahaha.

Tell me about it George.

Sarcasm... I hope so.

Let me give it a try: Yes, No, Yes, and Yes.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

No.

I'm pretty sure that's not how it goes.

I hate this guy.



Not to mention the absolute god-awful ranking system. Nick Drake is a class D artist apparently. His essays are also cringeworthy. I'm sure he's a great linguistic but man is he a bumbling idiot.

^ What a knob! I really can't stand that kind of elitism. I count myself lucky for not having read any of his essays before.

Eh, I don't mind music critics that much. Some of them are right tossers but as long as you don't take them too seriously, there's no harm done. After all, Christgau is a completely biased elitist douche, but that doesn't mean I don't get amusement from reading anything of his.

If I want to read reviews to get an idea of what album in a discography I should first check out, I usually head for allmusic or RYM... allmusic is really inconsistent at times but can be sufficient for this purpose.

I read through George Starostin's reviews and found them charmingly straightforward. He's a classic rock facist, and a rude a#shole..but not a pretentious c@nt like christigau, and he called clapton's "pilgrim" the worst album ever which is right....is this just a leisure activity for him or do they actually publish his reviews?

That's actually one rare moment where I agree with him, I love The Police. But the rest of those comments are on a scale of stupidity I've never seen from a critic before.

His anti prog and anti punk bias is pretty over the top, especially because he reviews so much of it.

Calling Pink Floyd unoriginal and then saying Rolling Stones was one of the most original bands of their time, that's some good sh*t.

Self reminder, imitating black people is original.

Sorry, I'm with him on this one. No, no, f*ck no and no.

Yeah it's still stupid to say there is no original rock past the late 60s, but when people call The Fall one of the best bands of the late 70s/early 80s, I can understand the pessimism.

Opinions are opinions.

But to go on an say originality in music ended somewhere in 1975 is not only ignorant, it's downright insulting to alot of musicians.

I am one of those people that does listen to a lot more music from the 60s and 70s than any other decade, but I don't know how anyone can say there is no original music anymore.

The more music there is, the more diverse influences bands have to blend together in order to create something completely different.

Lester Bangs didn't know **** from shinola, slamming Kick Out the Jams in his first review.

All of these fellows are incredibly stupid, yes. But I really wouldn't call it a stupid profession, Boo Boo.

I don't think you should have to go to school for this kind of thing, but I think it is very important that we have music critics. The general public is far too diverse and varied for an aspiring musician to recieve feedback from. Sometimes we need people from very specific backgrounds to rate and review music. The trick isn't finding one you trust, but using their opinions collectively.

"Blur without the serious guitarwork is like Jethro Tull without the flute, like the Mothers of Invention without the horns and chimes, like Gong without the pot, like Britney Spears without the tits"

I thought he had some pritty good analogys :laughing:

Gong destested drugs, or at least that's what one guy told me.

My response was "are you f*cking kidding me?"

Rolling Stone sucks hard

This thread is silly, you're just jealous your not held in such high regard. I, on the other hand am god and know 101 times more about music than you ever will. Plus a million.

omg hiu is back. Wait...have you been active all this time?

I just remembered my password lol

ah. they just unbanned me like, a month ago.

lol, cute

Nevertheless, I experience George (the anglisized version of his forename, I can´t spell the "genuine" Russian version) Starostin as being a fascinating read. He has interesting opinions (and I agree that they are only opinions).

I really enjoy visiting and revisiting Starostin´s (first) site!

He's name is Georgiy Sergeevich "George" Starostin. "Georgiy" is a homophone of the two English words "gay + orgy." In other words if you say "gay orgy" real fast that is how you would pronounce his name.

No it isn't.

:laughing:

I'll take your word for it.

Pretty much agree with every word of the initial post of this thread.

I always enjoyed Mark Prindle's reviews, though, but just because I think he's an entertaining writer in general, and of course it helps that he didn't take his reviews too seriously.

Other than that, there have been some magazine-employed record reviewers who have been closer to what I ideally want from reviews. Downbeat (the jazz magazine) had some good reviewers, and so did Option (a magazine that focused on more "outside" music, including avant garde/experimental stuff).

All I really want from reviews is a more or less factual description of the music (and who is playing on it, etc.) along with some similarity comparisons. That's all I need to know to tell me if something is worth picking up for me. I couldn't care less about the reviewer's opinion usually, and I definitely don't want them to talk about lyrics, or the artist's personal life or politics, or the record's broader cultural or historical context, or use the review as an outlet for their frustrated creative writing ambitions, or anything like that . . . which, given how folks typically write reviews, is another way of saying that in my opinion, most reviewers have sucked.

I've read through a lot of Starostin's reviews in the past and found them interesting, but more in the way in which one finds a trainwreck interesting.