http://starling.rinet.ru/music/index.htm - http://starling.rinet.ru/music/index.htm

 

 

What do you guys think of him? More specifically, what do you think of his reviews of prog bands? If you have never read him before, just check out the page and read about any prog band that has a rating and tell me what you think. I personally think he's the best album reviewer I've ever read, though a bit biased at times...then again, who isn't? And his objective insights definately overshadow any bias.

 

Mark Prindle's hilarious site is more concerned with punk/noise/weirdness but he's good on Yes and the Moody Blues and more often than not has me laughing out loud as he heads wildly off-topic.

 

A real labour of love for these guys - good luck to 'em.

 

A bit like the Jerry Springer of music reviews.

 

He won't mind if I call him a conceited assh.le because he's dead.

 

Her favorite phrase: "Pure pop Perfection".

 

i read a lot of her reviews she's is a clever writer but she doesn't like prog.

 

and BTW is SHE.

http://starling.rinet.ru/music/personal.htm - http://starling.rinet.ru/music/personal.htm

 

also, not liking prog does not immediately discredit his/her reviews. the reasons for liking/not liking it would. and I have to say I'm undecided. because if you look at the broad spectrum of rock music, prog is really just a small part which did NOT influence anything other than other prog. the rock aspect gets its stuff from true rock and also from the rock aspects of more mainstream rock bands like floyd, yes, rush, and genesis.

 

that said, not a fan of his/her reviews where there is overt bias. i like reading crits on the falls of prog, because its usually very interesting and ultimately true, but when there's too much bias, such as: "there is no melody this is a horrible song", and not considering the intentions of the artist then its just best to ignore that part.........................

hahaha  not at all Roger

What I want to know:  Is the really dead?  Maybe by dead you meant not posting anymore, therefore as good as dead.  I really hope the guy hasn't really passed on.....probably my fault for cursing him to hell over his scorching review of Crimson's Islands.

Going by the wikipedia entry, he's very much alive. Whoever said he's dead probably meant that he's not looking after his website anymore due to personal commitments, I guess, so he won't notice if you diss him, which he won't anyway if you diss him in here.  

 

really?

He's better than some other 'general' reviewers, especially Mark Prindle, and particularly in his approach to prog. I got the impression that he is actually a lot more sympathetic to the idea of making long rock songs with keyboards and jazz/classical influences than you'd expect people who are not hardcore into prog to be.  He's one of the few who has said that punk replacing prog was not a good thing in rock's development and I am not sure even I would agree with him about that.  Sure, his understanding of prog would not be as sharp or comprehensive as say yours, but I don't think he claims to be anything more than a casual prog fan.  The casual prog fan is a rare breed and we should be happy such a breed even exists, it's better than the usual love-hate circle jerk.  

I am afraid I don't quite follow you in that first sentence.  What sort of guy would hate me because I liked prog and he hated it?  What I meant anyway was that people either love prog and have listened to tons of it or they outright hate it and refuse to entertain the thought that some prog might be good music.  Starostin is a little more open minded in that respect; actually even though his understanding of metal too seems rather feeble, he has gone and tried a few bands..interesting!  

 

yes you sound like one

 

For one I stand his bias towards the "pioneers" and against newer rock music.

 

He's not too biased against prog and even defends it from it's harsher critics a lot of times so that I can appreciate. I'm more bothered by how obsessed he is with a band's originality and he seems to equate originality with creating a new subgenre, as in if a band hasn't created their own genre then it doesn't matter how unique they are, they aren't original at all.

 

And also giving Yes a 2 in diversity and The Rolling Stones a 5 is pretty ridiculous. Oh and I'm a Uriah Heep fan.

 

Still he is one of the better music critics (not saying much). A hell of a lot better than Prindle that's for sure, that guy is a lunatic and his reviews always devolve in ridiculously incoherent rants and what I assume is an attempt at humor. Why is that guy so popular? His reviews are absolutely terrible.

 

Love how he bashes Uriah Heep

 

"I really like his reviews, I generally agree with most of them. too bad his site isn't updated anymore (or at least no new band bio's or new albums are added anymore). "

 

 

Not true.  He's doing all of his writing now in a new format linked from the main page.

 

I also hate his rating system and disagree with a huge portion of it. Giving Black Sabbath a D and ABBA a C? Wuh?

 

 

ABBA is wonderful.

 

I'd agree about ABBA. Hardly ever listen to them any more though. Good music is good music, regardless of whether it has 17 minutes of guitar solos or not. Example: I bought five Kraftwerk albums, four Miles Davis albums and two Todd Rundgren albums (Runt and Todd).

 

Diversion: Todd gets no respect.

 

Though really, he doesn't bother me too much, his arrogance is compensated for by at least not being stupid, I can't say the same for the great majority of people who post comments on his site, they're just arrogant AND stupid.

 

His biases against certain bands are very evident too.

 

What do you all here think of Piero Scaruffi?  He's a pretty tough critic, favoring mostly experimental records, although he does hold some Prog on a high pedestal (mainly Krautrock and Canterbury.)  He's never given an album a perfect 10/10 and only a handful of others have garnered 9-9.5/10's. The album he considers to be the all-time greatest rock album has always remained Trout Mask Replica, branding it the only rock album of the 20th century worth hearing (which is strange considering the money he must spend on Rock CD's to write all those reviews.  He's extremely influential on the internet, with some user-made lists on Best Ever Albums and Rate Your Music pretty much copying his and arranging it a little bit.  I also think he is the cause of the resurgence of Trout Mask Replica's and other experimental rock bands' popularity.  He's also famous for hating the Beatles and refuting their influence on Pop music.

 

Personally, I think he's a little pretentious, but he does offer some interesting insights that can change the way you view Pop music.  It does annoy me that other than the albums in the 7.5-9.5 range, almost all the others are between 4-6, which puts some phenomenal albums among some real stinkers.  His website is mostly in Italian, though, so for the most part you can only see the ratings unless you know the language.

 

A little pretentious?

 

I really can't stand that guy at all.

 

Though NO critic is as bad as Christgau or Sheffield.  No one.

 

At least his reviews can qualify as actual reviews. The other big internet music critic, Mark Prindle, just makes a bunch of incredibly unfunny stupid ramblings that have absolutely nothing to do with anything. His writing skills are identical to that of an ADD aflicted Chimpanzee.

Exactly. I have read his Carpenter reviews and there are in fact a lot of references to Richard's role. I don't know if that is exactly what he thinks, but I'd personally agree with an assessment that Richard's arrangements are quite sappy and mushy and it's Karen's singing that breathes life into them.  This comes out even on comparing their versions (er, many of Richard's 'compositions' were simply rearrangements of Paul Williams songs) to that of other artists; often the latter have better arrangements but Karen's singing just makes a much more distinct impression.  And common sense dictates that a singer needs a composer and arranger to put together albums but there's no need to double-triple emphasise the arranger's role and 'distribute credit' evenly between the two because the mark of a great singer is to make mediocre arrangements appealing or at least to make the listener ignore them and focus on the singing.  I had a similar argument with some Dunford fanboy (who was also a Carpenters fan) and given the tone of his (enzando) post, I wonder if it's not the same person.