Reviews reporting thread

http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=108277

Edited by Zappa88 - January 21 2007 at 17:35

This guy, jasonpw., has just submited four reviews which IMO say almost nothing about music - very short and uninformative (especially HILLAGE, STEVE - Rainbow Dome Music and STARCASTLE - Starcastle). He mentions how much money he spent on each album - who cares?

I find parts of the following revierw to be unnecessarily abusive.

YES — Yessongs
Review by hawkbrock (Alan Bragg)
"And that happens a lot, as frankly Yes decided to ruin every good musical intetion by stretching their ideas too long, overdubbing pointless instruments (yay, a coral sitar, my favorite) or letting Jon Anderson write the lyrics. There is a fool. Jon Anderson, surrounded by ugly musicians he had to fit in by being ugly in the extreme, but boosted his image by being the band's hippy, strumming an acoustic guitar, as if adding acoustic guitar to the horrendous noise of Howe/Wakewman/Squier combined could create a good musical sound. Chris Squier ladies and gentlemen. He played every fret on his Rickenbacker bass about four too many times, and people think that's tallent.

back to the album. Top marks to Steve Howe, he didn't get his guitar to sound good once. Patently lacking in what us axesmen call "gain", when a good thick distortion is in order, Howe finds the limpest, scratchiest sound ever, then manages to magically reduce the sustain of his hellishly expensive Gibson to nought. Not even putting it on a REALLY short guitar strap could save Howe from a wetting. Conversely, lets take the opening to Roundabout. On the original studio album Roundabout's intro is played on an acoustic, an instrument Steve Howe should ONLY play, as everything he does on electric is garbage. Come Yessongs, micing up an acoustic guitar for the intro seemed to get the better of Yes's roadies, so instead Howe pulls out a Gibson switchmaster. For some PERVERSE reason his guitar sound is now totally distorted and too heavy, ruining the subtlty. Good work.

Of course Bill Bruford was in this band, but hell he joined King Crimson. He would rather have Robert Fripp torching his hair than have 4 ugly men, some analogue synths and some dodgy vegan cooking under his nose.

So over all, don't approach Yessongs. I barely like their studio output (and trust me, I am a proghead) so their poor sounding live effort just makes me vomit."

This review showed up on the main page today. It seems to me to be way more abusive than called for. If the reviewer doesn't like Yes (and he clearly doesn't) thaty's fine. he can say so without being abusive. if he doesn't like the album, he has every right to review, but not every right to be abusive in his comments. It is just uncalled for.
    

Edited by Trademark - January 22 2007 at 17:39

http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=108612

Zappa88 wrote: http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=69474   Gosh I'm starting to feel like a review cop. All it does is bash the Beatles...

New Neal Morse is up and the first inevitable 1 star rating has been posted with no review.  Can't they wait to hear it before the ripping begins?

It's been fixed.  Thanks

As soon as I saw your post IPOF, I knew who the reviewer would be. I think M@x made a special arrangement in the early days of the site to use Keith's reviews. They were written for another site, hence their generic nature which does not really lend itself to the way individual albums are listed here.

Dealing with, Tuz...