Music Ramblings: The First 10 Reviews

In only two months I was able to write ten fully fleshed out, not rushed, non-contrived (hopefully) reviews of actual music albums that actual musicians wrote and produced and distributed for the actual public. This is an extremely huge deal for me for exactly two reasons:

1. I've been wanting to write album reviews ever since I discovered George Starostin's website back in the summer of 2005 between high school and college, but I've been deathly afraid to do so.
   
2. I initially would have predicted that writing ten reviews would have taken me 30 times longer.

--Let me expound upon Point #1 for the moment. George Starostin is absolutely one of my biggest influences of all time, as far as people I don't know personally, when it comes to my interest in popular musical. I discovered his site back when the only real bands I listened to were They Might Be Giants, Talking Heads, Oingo Boingo, and I was just getting started dipping my toes into Frank Zappa's discography. Reviews of all four of these artists and bands were available on his website, and was bowled over at how intelligently Starostin's thoughts on all these albums actually were. It was as if he was involved in their production. It made me want to branch out to other bands in his "Smart Pop" category (in which TMBG, Talking Heads and Oingo Boingo resided). I wanted to intimately know all these bands as much as he seemed to. I wanted to be able to have my own intelligent thoughts about this music. But, and especially at the time, I knew nothing of the history of modern music whatsoever. Intelligently writing about music requires actual knowledge about music itself and its modern history, of which I still to this day have very little confidence about. I'm getting better each day.

Starostin never claims to be musically trained. He even had his own hangups about starting a music review page back in the late '90s. Hell, English isn't even his first language. The guy was born in Communist Russia. He has a degree in linguistics, though, which made me feel even less able to do what he does. Who the hell am I? I can barely tie my damn shoes, son, how can I describe the emotional, or lack thereof, nuances of Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy? But, above all else, Starostin pulls no punches when it comes to his brutally honest opinions. He also never pretends to be anything he's not, or to know more about something than he actually does, and I find that immensely respectable.

Also, part of my fear is that I feel like I need to know nearly everything about the band and its full history before even attempting to review their albums. This is why I'm starting with the bands I've loved since high school. I may love Nick Cave, but I've only been listening to him for five years. I'm terrified to write about him even though part of me knows that once I try I'll surprise myself. I may love David Bowie, but I've only listened to about 12 out of his 25 studio albums so I'm not qualified yet to make generalizations on his whole career. Don't even get me started on genres such as hip-hop or black metal, which are so new to me at the moment that it would be completely irresponsible of me to even attempt reviewing any such band or artist. How can I review Immortal or Bathory without any semblance of knowledge about why they sound the way they do at that moment in music history? How am I supposed to review Earl Sweatshirt without even a passing understanding of east coast vs. west coast hip-hop, or a complete sociopolitical understanding of the evolution of black culture with respect to and because of their music? I may enjoy it all, even immensely, but I'm in no way ready to talk about any of it yet.


--Point #2 is more straightforward. I've been writing on personal websites, personal blogs, and message boards in some capacity since my family hooked up the Internet in our house back in 2000, so for more than half my life I just want to write write write. The problem is that I can't think of any topics that hold my interest and drive me to actually write consistently lately. I mean, look at the rest of my sad, sorry little blog. I've written one "Goosebumps From Memory" so far. That didn't last long, did it? "Sucky Comics Sunday" is my most popular feature, but I only made four of them and the last thing I want to do these days on a Sunday morning is scan for that very day's shitty comic strips and type up an entire thing. I won't even go into the "RASP Files". Therefore, I figured I wouldn't be driven to actually write up album reviews as consistently as I have been so far. And that may still change someday, of course, but right now I'm thrilled that I was able to get to ten in such a relatively short time. And, if anything else, I'm more driven than ever to keep doing this.

Here's to another 10! Woo!

Because my OCD requires a picture in every post, here is a photo of Waldo's dad from the '90s Little Rascals movie: