Pollyanna
Platinum Member
... I don't know about down under, but in the states college sports is HUGE business
We don't have the same college sports thing - not big enough - but in Oz it's all about sport. My Mum was an author and she used to go nuts about it ... kept on threatening to move to Ireland where she said people appreciated their writers.
It seems to me that the people that we have reviewing music are all too often not musicians, whereas sports retains ex-athletes at least as advisors. Instead of discussing drop D tunings, harmonies, 12 Bar Blues, syncopations, shuffles, riffs, etc, our music mag reviewers are too busy yacking on and on about Mick's lips, Iggie's (lack of) attire, or how many masks Peter Gabriel can wear in one show.
TRUE! I DON'T NORMALLY SHOUT ONLINE BUT THIS IS WORTH SHOUTING ABOUT!
It's so rare that they talk about the process of music and the focus on image and private lives and how many shows they've sold out etc is simply soulless. The best you get is a forensic analysis of lyrics - again no doubt because the reviewer knows little of music. They never seem to understand why musicians take solos and often take the superficial view that it's just "self indulgence", as though no listeners could possibly enjoy a solo.
It sure doesn't help ... people relate what they can understand and there's not a lot of light being shone on what goes on.
Jazz reviewers tend to be much better, though plenty of jazzers will beg to differ (and probably point out Stanley Crouch as a case in point).
I guess we should be grateful that there's any reviews at all when you can so readily find out the minutae of how some bloke throws a ball.