How to write prog reviews

To be fair, there's a lot of truth to this too. Eventually you do settle into your own style once you do enough reviews; my 2009-2013 reviews (which were under a different account) look absolutely nothing like the ones I write now, so an evolution in writing style does generally happen over time. Plus, I've done some weird experimental stuff like writing "poem reviews"  

I don't know how to write a review, and I have to admit that I am not specially attuned to wanting to know. 

I write from my feelings about the piece of music, and how it hit me on the right, on the left, on the front and on the back, and it really has nothing to do with a format or an idea ... it's a true and honest reaction.

I think I have done only one review where I mention all the songs, and a lot of it had to do with a series of postings about that album, that was really sad and so completely out of TIME AND PLACE that the ability of anyone to "get" and "understand" the time and the place, and the reactions of the music in the album, is very difficult for folks some 40 or more years later ... they do not have the perspective that created the music. It's like saying that what had become the "psychedelic" thing that became "progressive" real quick, was just a bunch of low class street musicians playing a bunch of nothing songs. 

IT IS NOT TRUE!

And there is a reason why Neil Young screams ... because some folks in America were already in denial that anything happened and that it was all just a bunch of stoned crazies with nothing better to do than say something!

My take is, JUST BE HONEST AND YOURSELF, but specify and qualify your statements, so that the audience knows where you come from (hopefully!).

All in all, it's the same thing as literature ... hundreds of years come and go, and the whole thing continues and no one writes the way someone else did!

Got the hint?

Hi,

Thx ... although I don't like to do "concept albums", since in my own silly idea, most of these the whole thing is so loose and out of touch with literary (or other disciplines) reality of "concept" that the whole thing falls off the flat earth of the pop/rock era.

I'm not sure there is a single "concept album" that I would consider doing a review on, and that includes The Wall, which is also a bunch of vignettes and bits and pieces that ended up in one more album since some of the bits and pieces were already in the original The Wall, before it was cut down so it would fit on 2 LP's! The story and start in TFC is a part of The Wall, and its story makes sense within it. Separated, it just shows that RW was making another album just out of spite for the other folks! It has nice stuff, but it did not need to have any connection to TW in some of its bits at the start and in some lyrics. 

I suppose that some "concept albums" that are all music (and no lyrics) might be easier to accept and work on since it would be similar to classical music, when story goes that this is about such and such and Mahler's 3rd was for his wife ... and she still left without listening, I bet! (Or better ... she liked country music!)

The comment about the note or chord is another of my silly comments about DD and his stuff, which is not very good, and is just another "favorite" and tomorrow another Iron Maiden or Dream Theater! Reminds me of Ry Cooder's comments to an author of a book on some of his songs ... "You can't publish this! It's all wrong. You don't even mention the different TUNINGS!" Guess what probably happened with Mr. RF when DD did KC?

Every reviewer has their own style (and thank God for that). When I started reviewing music I just wrote what came into my head, and my early reviews are really not that great as a result of that. Then I started to think about what I like to read when I read a music review, and I came to the conclusion that I like structured, objective, to some extent researched, and overall desriptions of the music that a release features (which means I seldom do song by song reviews as they often bore me to tears). I´m personally not interested in reading reviews which are highly subjective (although all reviews of course feature subjective opinions). I try to keep my reviews from being too long, and again that´s because I don´t have the patience to read through long reviews myself.

...so the conclusion is I write reviews the way I like to read them, and I think that´s valid advise for anyone who wants to write music reviews.

Slightly off topic, but I thought I would add this. I AM, at this time more than half way through on a book on improvisation in the arts. And it includes writing, of which, I am probably more familiar than some of the others except acting in theater and film, and directing it.

I like to say, weirdly, that I don't write. I merely translate the pictures in my head, and I never worry about their "meaning" whatsoever, until I am finished. Let's say that this is a sort of channeling, but pausing it, or stopping it to take a bathroom break, or change a nappie, or some other __________ (anything) is the one thing that stops me ... why? The "movie" kinda gets interrupted and it is rather difficult to get it back on track. Getting it back on track is not hard ... however ... it is a factor of how well you were involved in it, since the deeper you were with it, the easier it would be to continue it if it was possible. IF, your dreaming, or otherwise is kinda slapp happy, then this will not continue and you end up with hundreds of bits that you don't know how to use. This is the issue with the majority of "musicians" that are afraid to invest time and effort in a true meditation and improvisation, because they do not know that they can play without knowing the circle of twenty thousands, or the chords and notes ... it just states (to me!!!) that they are not listening to the material itself and are concentrating on the knowledge of their keys and hands in order to play something. 

YOU GOTTA LET GO!

Music, and most of the arts for me, is a visual medium. It explodes into everything and anything that you can imagine. Thus, the trick for me, is to grab as much as possible before there is none left. This is normally not an issue, as lately I have been writing NOVELS and they seem to pick up and continue just fine the next night or in a couple of days. Originally I thought this weird, and off, but in the end, the continuity of the material is not suffering and the characters seem to walk their life just fine ... it's like nothing is missing and nothing has been lost. Needless to say I was surprised, but I have been working on my attention in dreams for almost 50 years, and I am not surprised that this happens. WHAT is surprising, is that I am so "free and easy" in these things and they they have a natural continuity that is considered off and unusual.

In the world of acting/directing, one of the things we tell actors is that they have to learn to TRUST THEMSELVES, and what this means is that they have to learn their lines and not be afraid that they will miss a line when the time comes, and they can adjust if they need to. This is something dreams do naturally, anyway, even though we do not notice it, mostly because we like to say we don't remember anything, specially when what the person is telling us is that they don't like some of their dreams and they scare them! It's almost like saying that your body does not have an inner life that you can easily see and look at ... which to me is very weird!

Thus, writing for me, is something that "happens" when it does, and I don't worry about it. There are times when the continuity or something else is not working and that means it's time to go play a little tennis, have a smoke, read the paper, go watch I Hate Lucy ... or a football game! To me, this merely states that your "conduit" to that space is not open, and you should not "force it". You have to trust that it will come back to you at another time, although in my case it does but as a part of something else!

My biggest suggestion is to take notes and write down as much as possible when the "muse" is there. You won't get a "2nd chance" (so to speak) for that moment can only happen in that moment. Some folks (specially here) like to say that they have to listen to something so many times, and all this tells me, is that it has to run through all their filters until one inch of that album is finally reaching some semblance of appreciation at which point it gets very few points anyway.

All music, just like all arts, come to me (or I go to it) unknowingly and unexpectedly. I have never, for some bizarre reason taken on something just because someone said so, as it tended to interfere with my own seeing of it. So my older sister at UCSB had to read one Castaneda book (Tales of Power) and she didn't like it ... boom, I picked it up and read everything in the next couple of years and stuck to it all the to THE ART OF DREAMING  ... one of the best books on the subject, albeit its telling style gets on your nerves a bit ... it feels like we have to re-read the Book of the Dead again, and repeat all the passages, doors and dragons each and every time! But it is excellent.

Again, writing something, a review or not, for me, is a matter of vision, and appreciation for something that the "album" gave me ... and that can not be a comparative something or other ... see the difference? It has more to do with your appreciation than it does with anything you know or don't know!

Hope this helps ... it's a lot.

 ^