The Groove Music Life

Two weeks ago, I saw a review of Horehound, the newly-released album by Jack White’s new project The Dead Weather, at this link. I had already enjoyed the album, and was not surprised to see nothing but nice reviews about it so far because, well, it’s a good album! However, I was surprised when I checked the above-linked review and saw that the reviewer had given the album two-and-a-half stars and spent most of the review bitching about the fact that Jack White was mostly playing drums instead of guitar on the record, and thus accusing him of not having any real impact on the project. From the looks of the review, I have the feeling that the hack behind this particular review only half-listened to the CD once while doing things around his house before dropping the disc in a pile marked “Sell at used CD store”.

That particular kind of reviewer – the one doing it only because it’s a job and it gets him a few bucks for writing about the record and a couple more for illicitly selling the played-once CD at a local used store or on eBay (either way, such a move is technically illegal, since promotional copies are considered by law to be still the property of the record company) – is one I don’t have much respect for, as they don’t really seem to care about what they’re writing. Many music bloggers (myself included), on the other hand, do their writing because love the music they write about. I might be nitpicky about how some of them describe what they’re writing about – a prime example that comes to mind was how some of my younger colleagues in the J-Pop blogosphere mistook Morning Musume’s funk-heavy 2008 single “Resonant Blue” to be disco instead – but they still like the music. (Just as a side note, the disco genre is more befitting of “Love Machine” and a few other early MoMusu tracks, rather than “Resonant Blue” with its heavy 70’s funk influence.)

[I don’t even have to bring up the age-old adage about opinions being like assholes (i.e. everybody has one, etc.), except in passing. Which I just did. And because I don't want any of my peers to think that I'm dissing them - I'm not. Moving on…]

Reviewing records is one of the easiest and the hardest things to do, and while it’s something I’ve tried to make a focal point of on this blog and its predecessor, other things tend to delay my attempts and desires to write more reviews. One is time, which is a factor for everyone and thus not worth devoting further time itself to. The other reasons are more, well, life-involved. Many has been the time when I’ve needed to review a current or recent release only to find myself wanting to listen to something else instead. Does it mean that the album I want to review sucks? Usually, no. The reality is that I have so damn many different musical interests that whatever I feel like listening to at the time becomes more important than dissecting a new CD.

Another factor in my not doing as many reviews as I should is the approach. Most of my reviews are usually track-by-track affairs, and this is fine for the J-Pop material because I try to write those reviews for a general audience and I want people coming across this blog to get a good idea as to what the record sounds like before they search out a copy. For the Western stuff, it’s harder to write about – the artists usually have more established sounds and perhaps a more encapsulated approach is needed. I would also blame a lifelong habit of writing more than the minimum amount of words needed, most likely out of the concern that I want the reader to understand. And then of course, there’s other projects that some people may have on their mind or their schedule or both. In my case, there’s the manuscript that I’ve been working on for close to two years now; I am only recently just starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel there.

The final factor – which goes with everything I write, and with those who care about their writing – is quality. A well written review, even if it’s not a glowing one, and even if the writer might not know Jack White from Jack Black [sorry for the bad pun] without a scorecard, will go a long way. It doesn’t have to be agreed with, but it should be respected. As far as non-professional reviews go, a well-written review in an age where anyone can post what they think about a particular CD is practically a rarity outside of dedicated music blogs. Browse around RateYourMusic.com (where I’ve been occasionally been re-sharpening my reviewing skills on some albums in my collection that are way out of the chronological and stylistic boundaries TGML covers) – or the comment areas of Amazon or iTunes – sometime. See how many well-thought-out reviews written by average Joes are in place (especially for more well-known artists), and how many reviews are actually the product of trolls, attention whores, and people who couldn’t spell a word correctly, control their shift keys or capslocks, or structure a sentence if their life depended on it.

It probably would not surprise you – and it definitely wouldn’t surprise me – if the latter category of “armchair reviewers” never actually listened to the record or artist they were gleefully bashing. Those “armchair reviewers” are more good reason why I’m going to try to keep doing reviews here, and I’m going to be getting quite a few out of the way over the next month – because the music deserves it. And because quality always perseveres.