RTP-area local music and culture

[Matthew Tomich <matt AT novia.net>]

http://www.gapersblock.com/detour/archives/the_vagaries_of_contemporary_rock_crit.php

You too may not agree with his doctrine that one of the points of record
reviews should be to educate people with a bunch of formal music
terminology, and it suffers from the fact that nobody but a critic whings
about how nobody takes criticism as seriously as critics do, but it's
worth reading for observations like this:

"I don't know about you, but I love reading record reviews. They seem so
erudite, so witty, so carefully crafted to impart what? Well, in a word,
cleverness. The author wants to show you just how witty, well-learned, and
clever he or she truly is. That's all well and good -- art for art's sake
and all of that -- but it's utter bullshit when it comes to helping
consumers make decisions and educating a listening audience in the
descriptive language that successfully describes the music the reviewer is
attempting to review.

...

Most music critics are fans, primarily, and their enthusiasm or lack
thereof is more evident in their work than any discussion of structure,
meter, tone, etc. Consequently, the average rock review comes off like the
excited and/or snide writings found in an erudite college student's
journal -- essentially telling a reader in ornate terms that he or she
thinks something rocks or sucks. It all boils down to this: music
reviewers are even less successful in evoking the very sound of a piece of
music than an art reviewer is in evoking the visual elements of the work
they're reviewing."