Your opinion of George Starostin

Although I do like reading his reviews, because they're possibly the most comprehensive on the 'net and you don't have to shuffle through tons of crappy, generic reader reviews, I really, really disagree with the guy on many points, especially prog. 

First, his definition of prog is EXTREMELY narrow.  Seriously, the guy really only acknowledges a handful of bands as actually being prog rock.  His most conspicuous absence is Pink Floyd, whom he categorizes as "art rock".  Now this in itself isn't bad, but he says they really only did ONE prog album (Atom Heart Mother), then focused on more simplictic song structures.  So, let's see....

-One Of These Days, a pure instrumental, building jam
-the 23-minutes, multi-part Echoes
-the Dark Side Of The Moon, originally conceived as one 40 minute piece
-the nearly half hour long Shine On You Crazy Diamond, with reoccuring themes and all
-the 3 song Animals album

... are apparently, to Mr. Starostin, simplistic and un-progressive.  Really? 

Second, as much as he wants to keep an open mind, he really has a stimga towards prog.  I mean, two of the five criteria he judges music on are resonance (which to him is emotional resonance, and that is purely subjective based on the person), and another category.... "adequacy".... and I really don't even know what the heck that means except every prog band seems to get a horrible score in that department. 

Third, he has a very pessimistic attitude towards music in general, basically saying rock has run it's course and that there is nothing left to do with it.  When it comes to prog, he feels that prog had given out everything it could give by.... wait for it.....

.......................1973!!!!!!!!!  Dude, 1973?  So several great Yes, King Crimson, and Pink Floyd albums are just thrown out, along with neo-prog, nu-prog, prog-metal, etc etc etc. 

Basically, he takes originality and puts such a ridiculously high value upon it that the natural process of bands influencing one another, which most accept, disqualifies him from even giving a chance to 95% of rock bands in existence. 

Overall, I like the site and his opinions are interesting at times, but the guy is too pessimistic, and overall, I don't care what he says, he doesn't GET prog and he never will. 

rogerthat wrote: ^^^ 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.

But would you really want someone who hated you to partake in that circle jerk?

Anyway. I like the guy's reviews. I could say he has influenced my reviews, somewhat. He and I have completely opposite feelings toward hard rock, though. I disagree with what he says quite often.

Always been a big fan of good old George: he really got me into a lot of cool music. Say what you will, but he is really extensive on his site about all aspects of rock music and not just progressive rock. I got into Budgie, Caravan, Renaissance, the Left Bank, Procol Harum and PFM through his site. I also got very interested in Jethro Tull, Yes and Frank Zappa as a result of his reviews. The fact that I own every Jethro Tull, Yes and Frank Zappa album (give or take a few with Frank) shows how helpful he's been to my taste. I actually can't count the bands I've gotten into because of him. I don't always agree with him but I think he's always intelligent in what he says. And HE IS A HE and he's not dead but his father did die recently, one thing that kind of stopped his reviews from coming. Any man that speaks as many languages as him (read his bio again) has to have some intelligence going on upstairs. He's working on the Babel Project aka the language project that is attempting to find the ORIGINAL LANGUAGE from which all languages originated.

SonicDeath10 wrote: Sorry to sound like a raving "fan boy" of the guy but I've been reading him for nine years and I honestly can't imagine what my taste would be like if I hadn't started reading him. Probably a lot more like Mark Prindle: as it is, I'm a mix between them and John McFerrin.

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).

I like George, so much so I was often accused in years past of being a "George Clone."  Our music tastes synch up about 80% of the time, and I'm not going to lie and pretend my writing wasn't, at least in the early stages of my site, very heavily influenced by his style (I've tried to purge the more blatant George-isms from my writing since then, though I still think "Banksynths" is a hilarious word and I've tried my best to keep it alive).  I don't read him much nowadays, though; there's really not much point at this juncture, mostly because I consumed his site so heavily in the first half of the 00's.

George doesn't like his old rating system much anymore either.  In his new reviews, he's just giving everything a "thumbs up" or a "thumbs down."

I wouldn't rate ABBA over Black Sabbath, but I don't necessarily find George doing so so objectionable too.   I don't really know why rock fans are obliged to hate ABBA or something, but that's the feeling I got from reading some of the comments on his ABBA page. On that note, I do think he is a little impatient and harsh with metal, but it's not a beast everyone comes to terms with so that's not so surprising.  

Yeah, he doesn't pretend to be a know it all on metal or that people who like it are daft. He admits honestly that he is not a specialist and doesn't really dig it but can still find some albums to like in it.  

I like his reviews (and I'm pretty sure it's a guy.)  It's obvious that he has biases, but it's still nice that there is a critic out there who puts Prog on a high pedestal.