Hey, asshole! This website is supposed to be fun, okay? So, to make sure we’re all having fun, please pay mind to these guidelines.
Guideline #1: Seven is a damn good score!
I’m not spending my time writing about bands I don’t like. I like ALL these bands to some degree.
I’m using a simple 10-point scoring system to describe how much I like a given album. Somehow society has decided that 7 out of 10 means that something is average, which therefore means that it’s actually bad, and I don’t adhere to that stupid logic. A 7 out of 10 is GOOD! It’s DAMN GOOD! But it’s just not as good as an 8 or a 9 or a 10, okay?!
If this concept is unsatisfactory to you, please enroll in my algebra class where we can adjust these scores to your liking.
In this lesson, the score I give is x, and the adjusted score is y.
(x + 10) / 2 = y
Let’s say I gave some album a 6 out 10 and you are baffled, appalled, outraged! Well, just pop that 6 into the formula.
(6 + 10) / 2 = 8
There, it’s not a 6. It’s an 8. Do you feel better?
Guideline #2: Scores and reviews reflect my tastes only.
You know what’s really pretentious? When people try to assign objective value to any form of art. What the hell is objective value anyway? That stupid thinking leads to Crash winning an Oscar and Milli Vanilli winning Grammies.
It would be wrong to say I’m scoring based on my opinions, because even that’s kind of pretentious. That leads to me trying to think through how good something is; I’d rather just tell you how much I like it.
Here’s an example: In my opinion, is U2 a good band? Sure they are. But do I like them? Fuck no!
I’ll try hard to be honest with myself about how much I like these albums, score them accordingly, and you’ll read them and sometimes disagree. Sound good?
Guideline #3: I don’t like fade-outs.
My pet-peeve is songs fading out. When I listen to music, I like to pretend the band is trapped inside my speakers, playing for me. In that context, a fade-out makes no sense. Bands don’t fade out when they perform live, do they?
I heard once that fade-outs were formed in the 50s as nothing more than a crafty, shameless marketing tactic. The psychology is that a song is more likely to get stuck in your head if it doesn’t finish, making you want to hear it again.
So, either the fade-out is a shitty marketing move that doesn’t belong in my beloved rock ‘n’ roll … or, more likely, as the history of music went on, it’s lazy ass songwriting. Endings can be hard to come up with, and it’s pretty easy for a band or a producer to just settle on, “Ehh, let’s just fade this one out, huh?”
This isn’t to say that I dismiss any song or band that does fade-outs. Zeppelin does them, Sabbath does them, Metallica does them, Hendrix does them. “Hey Joe” is one of my favorite songs ever and it fades out. But I certainly appreciate when bands put a solid ending on their songs. Nirvana and Tool are two of my favorites, and they have zero fade-outs.