Rules Of The Game #16: Vaccine Protects Against New Ideas

[koganbot]

For some reason (there are glitches in the software) my column this week first went up without the final three paragraphs, making the title unintelligible. But it's fixed now.

The Rules Of The Game #16: Vaccine Protects Against New IdeasMy thoughts didn't quite coalesce this week, though as Jack Thompson once pointed out I can't do a "Hero Story"

Comments

Vulnerable to suggestion

[katstevens]

I don't read press music reviews (gigs, albums, whatever), as a general rule. This is mainly due to not reading music magazines or newspapers very often! But even I do read a paper with a 'reviews' section I skip past them UNLESS I've already heard the album/band/whatever and have formed my opinion. I suppose then it's mainly to see if the reviewer agrees with me.

BUT I have lots of time for features and interviews that go into more depth and length picking apart the music, or that tell me about the artist themselves. This isn't the fault of the writers but the editors - I'm sure you'd have terrible trouble summing up Ashlee's album in 100 words, Frank! 10 words or 1000 words = easy, 100-300 = absolute nightmare to do the music justice and say something substantial. But even relaxed editing or unlimited space online can't change the fact that any writing about the music itself is only hearsay until the reader has listened to it. An informative interview can tell me all sorts of interesting things about Fergie - why in particular she has written an entire new album about goat cheese, perhaps, and the goats she met and drew inspiration from during the recording process. As a fellow goat cheese lover that will get me hooked enough to seek out her album. But the review over the page will almost certainly read 'Fergie's dire new offering reeks of sheep cheese'.

And that's why I never made it very far into music journalism at university. I felt frustrated having writing about music I had no enthusiasm for, and even the stuff I did love, I felt my writing didn't do it justice and I was constantly calling goats by sheep names due to my limited musical vocabulary.

But back to the suggestible thought-train: the exception to my non-press review reading rule is Popjustice (I read the rss daily on my friends page). But even then I don't read the formal 'reviews', only the editorial/news blog written by Peter himself. I trust his opinion on most pop matters just like one of my lj friends - reasonable levels of intelligence and the poptimist receptiveness to all good music however it is made - and know his taste well enough to ignore him when he says 'this is AMAZING' about something clearly un-amazing. I did worry at one point that I was too forgiving towards song X just because Popjustice had been bigging it up. Recently our opinions have diverged slightly but I'm still willing to give the music PJ mentions a try. Has he infected me with plague? I dunno...