My Aversion to Album Reviews and Drum Gear Reviews

Scott K Fish

Silver Member
My Aversion to Album Reviews and Drum Gear Reviews
by Scott K Fish

In my career I've written album reviews and drum equipment reviews. I don't like doing it. Both types of reviewing rely on written words to describe sounds that change, listener to listener.

I'm imagining sitting in an theater seat. Onstage is a standard five-piece Gretsch drumset: 20-inch bass drum, 8x12 and 9x13 rack toms, a 16x16 floor tom. It includes all Sabian cymbals: 20" Ride, 18" Ride/Crash, and 14" Hi-Hats. All drums are double-headed with Remo coated Ambassador drumheads.

Tommy Lee walks onstage, sits down at the Gretsch drumset and says, "I'll play these drums and cymbals so you can hear what they sound like." And he does.

When Tommy Lee finishes, Brian Blade sits down at the Gretsch drumset. He says, "I'll play so you can hear what these drums and cymbals sound like." And he does.

Do these Gretsch drums and Sabian cymbals sound the same when played by Lee and Blade? Suppose my style is closer to Brian Blade, and only Tommy Lee shows up to play so I can hear what these drums and cymbals sound like?

How drums, cymbals, and all drum gear sounds and functions is, from where I sit, totally subjective. And in my example I'm using out of the box equipment. Add to that the almost limitless personal sound touches drummers add to their gear: tape, cotton, foam rubber, car keys, tuning, drum heads, on and on.

I have friends who excel in writing drum gear reviews. T. Bruce Wittet, Chip Stern, and Bob Saydlowski are three. But I have little aptitude and enthusiasm for it. Caveat: I love and appreciate well-made, great sounding drum gear. My challenge is translating my love and appreciation using words.

My aversion to album reviews is easier to explain and clarify. I can write, in brief, about albums I like. No sweat. But writing negative album reviews? I am unable to shake the axiom: If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything.

Here again, music is subjective. My musical tastes are changing all the time. It took me awhile to appreciate John Coltrane's Ascension. At first, I didn't like it at all. But I loved Coltrane's earlier work and his work with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Red Garland. My introduction to Coltrane -- and to Elvin Jones -- was Coltrane's Africa/Brass album.

I took a methodical approach to Coltrane's later works. Coltrane was a music master who played brilliant, unique mainstream jazz. Unlike other avant garde players, I never questioned Coltrane's mastery of music. So, I wondered, how did the John Coltrane playing Monk's Mood with Thelonious Monk at Carnegie Hall evolve to John Coltrane playing One Down, One Up at the Half Note?

I listened chronologically, to almost the entire Coltrane discography, and I read as much as I could find about Coltrane's evolution. And I'm not finished with Coltrane. I am still wrestling with his band with Rashied Ali on drums and Alice Coltrane on piano. Stay tuned.

I follow that same process with most music and musicians. Sometimes I hear a musician play one song and I'm sold for life. That happened to me with singer songwriter Guy Clark after hearing him perform, Desperados Waiting for a Train. Other times, it takes awhile before I understand music. And there is plenty of music I just don't like.

All that's a roundabout way of explaining my aversion to writing album reviews. I understand what it means to be a musician trying to earn a living. There's no point in my publishing a bad review of an album someone else loves, that I may love another day.

Scott K Fish Blog: Life Beyond the Cymbals
 
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My aversion to album reviews is easier to explain and clarify. I can write, in brief, about albums I like. No sweat. But writing negative album reviews? I am unable to shake the axiom: If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything.
I think this gets to the heart of your problem. It's not a reviewers job to promote or undermine the sales of an album, or to say nice things or nasty things. It's about educating the reader so they can make their own decision. A good review makes the reader say "I think I'd like that" or "Doesn't sound like my thing." Whether the reviewer enjoyed it or not is irrelevant, the question is whether the reader would enjoy it.
 
Magazines like Drum! Have yet to write a negative review of any drum or drum kit. Why bother reading them?
 
I used to really look forward to and enjoy the reviews in Modern Drummer Magazine. For that matter, I used to enjoy the magazine itself. Now, not so much. A long time ago, with Rick Van Horn, Roy Burns, Hal Blaine, etc. writing columns, and so forth. But it's been a long time. Now I get my copy on my ipad and spend a few minutes reading it. But I digress.

I used to love the equipment reviews, and if there negatives I wanted to know about it. I remember negative reviews, and then the manufacturer getting upset sometimes and writing in. It kinda seemed like a conflict of interest sometimes...they advertise in the magazine, and the magazine is going to say something unfavorable?

I remember Bob Saydlowski's reviews. No offense but his term "it works just fine" used to be irritating. He used the term over and over again, "just fine." Even when he reviewed a CB700 kit. I wasn't interested in "just fine." I was interested in an objective, and critical review to give the consumer the best review possible in the pre-internet days.
 
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Magazines like Drum! Have yet to write a negative review of any drum or drum kit. Why bother reading them?

Right, they don't want to upset the advertisers. How can there be an impartial review in a magazine with ads?
 
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Right, they don't want to upset the advertisers. How can there be an impartial review in a magazine with ads?
This is part of the reason why I've given up on magazine reviews, but there are other reasons too. We don't have the advertising budget to carry any leverage, & no matter how much magazines plead independence, there must at least be a hesitation when considering a big negative on a product presented by a key advertiser.

The other aspect is the inherent impartiality of the reviewer, or more accurately, their ability to think beyond their own needs / likes / biases. Then there's video reviews. Most of the resultant recordings are either processed to hell & back, thus rendering them pointless, or the capture & tuning ability of the review team is so poor it's not worth bothering with. I currently receive a number of review requests each week, & I'm wondering honestly if we should just say no to everything. It's a tough call.
 
Right, they don't want to upset the advertisers. How can there be an impartial review in a magazine with ads?

No different than Sterno Review or some computer trade rags..

J Gordon Holt used to just send back a piece of equipment he found below par as opposed to reviewing it.

I remember one computer magazine awarding product of the year to a Microsoft product that hadn't even shipped.

There's an old joke that I read in Playboy a while back that went like this:

Three ladies at a card party get in a conversation as to how their hubbies get them in the mood:

First one,my husband is a florist and brings me a dozen roses.
Second one ,my husband is a jeweler and he brings me a single white pearl.
Third one ,my husband works for Microsoft and tells me how great it's gonna be.
 
Scott. I believe that its up to the reviewer to play the kit. We need to know how easy it is to tune, what the bearing edges are like, how good the finish is, what playing it feels like. Only the reviewer knows how it compares to other kits of the same price they have played.

Also,I believe British mags are fairly un biased so reviews are worth reading. It must be difficult trying to discern differences between top end kits, but If a reviewer is impressed by a starter or mid range kit then it must be worth a try.

If a cheap starter kit gets a rave review from a trusted reviewer then whats not to like?

I tried Dream cymbals cos they got a good review, years ago. I have eight of them now, chosen because I love the sound, not cos they got a great review. The review merely triggered the desire to give them a try.
 
Magazines like Drum! Have yet to write a negative review of any drum or drum kit. Why bother reading them?

I know. It strikes me as obvious payola, or at least an attempt to not piss off any potential advertisers.
 
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

But a music critic has a potentially important job to do. As others have pointed out in this thread, criticism has to be more informed and more informative than "I don't like" or "I really like". A good critic (of music, gear, film or anything else) has to have the knowledge to place the subject of criticsm in proper context, so you don't have reviews like this: "This week I played the Pearl Rhythm Traveller, and you know, it's not as good as the Ludwig Classic Maple set I played last week."
 
I think critics are mostly a bunch of pompous buffoons. Read The Fountainhead.
 
I think critics are mostly a bunch of pompous buffoons. Read The Fountainhead.

Why would I want to read that?! If I wanted to read Nietzsche, I'd read Nietzsche. He does a much better job of writing.

A good reviewer should be able to contextualise what they're reviewing. After all, it's a (largely) comparative process - that doesn't make them 'pompous', it makes them 'informed'. A good critic should be able to accept their preferences but also see past them and find some kind of aesthetic 'truth' in the work. There's a lot less subjectivity than many would be led to believe...
 
I'd rather visit forums for review from people who aren't monetarily tied to the product in any way.

But people tend to love the gear they just plunked down a bunch of dough for. Still, if you read enough POV's you can formulate a working concept of what you're considering.

Drums can be made to sound so different. There is simply no standard to measure against. It's still like the Wild West, every man for himself when it comes right down to it.

If you are in the game long enough, you eventually learn by trial and error what you prefer, and tend to get more tunnel visioned.
 
Why would I want to read that?! If I wanted to read Nietzsche, I'd read Nietzsche. He does a much better job of writing.

Do you read German? If not you're reading translation, which means you're not actually evaluating Nietzsche's writing.

Also, Nietzsche was not a novelist. He was a philosopher. I like Nietzsche (less than I did before I actually tried reading him) but his prose is tortured, and he wasn't constructing plots or character arcs. His books are essentially tracts.

I'm not a fan of Ayn Rand but she primarily wrote stories with philosophical elements rather than tracts. So you're comparing apples and oranges, probably because it's so vogue to trash Rand.

If you can suffer through "Pride and Prejudice" without bashing Jane Austen, surely you can just say you don't like "The Fountainhead" (an admittedly obtuse and overwritten novel) rather than just say Rand was a terrible writer. I imagine if she wrote about the joy of taking other people's money for your birth control she'd be quite the modern hero.

There's a lot less subjectivity than many would be led to believe

Gee, sounds a lot like 'critical theory' to me.

In reality criticism is almost entirely subjective. There's little value in a critic writing about truly objective things, such as whether or not the lighting in a film is adequate to see the subjects or the director didn't drop the camera or a musician can actually play the right notes. Most people can figure that out for themselves and it doesn't let critics feel smug and self-important.

The rise in 'criticism' is part and parcel with the rise of narcissism in our society: here's what this means to meeeeeeeeeeeeee. Here's how I felt while watching/listening to this.

I would argue this is the nadir of any developed society, the current level of navel-gazing and self-obsession; it's certainly destructive to creation (note how many more critics there are now than creators). And as you illustrated, it has led to a very dangerous mindset that art - of any type - can be boiled down to an essence which can be 'objectively' judged as good or bad. This is the first step in determining 'acceptable' art, and the death of free expression.

In my opinion, critics are an artifact of a time when content was not universally accessible. It was difficult 30 years ago to always get the latest new releases in books, music, movies. And people had less disposable income. So you would turn to a critic (of which there were few) to see if it was worth your time. Now you can go to YouTube and see a video game being played and decide based on that. You can watch previews, listen to tracks, etc., etc. You can go to the music store and TRY the gear, or order it and return it if you don't like it (either for free or a minimal trial cost).

The 'critic' concept is elitist nonsense. You don't need third-party validation of your taste.
 
The 'critic' concept is elitist nonsense. You don't need third-party validation of your taste.

Well that's just flat out wrong.

I enjoy listening to people who are more knowledgeable than I am about a topic discussing it. Whether it's a movie, music, the written word or TV, a well informed critic brings an interesting point of view and an entertaining - in the broadest sense of the word - way of imparting that point of view. I'm not looking for validation of my taste, and I am quite prepared to enjoy a good positive review of something that is not to my taste.

And if you "suffered through" Jane Austen, you're probably not qualified to pontificate on writing.
 
This reminds me of something I wrote last year about critical thinking in General Education at my university.

---------

First, there is the popular idea drawn from the word criticism, which involves arguments built around the discovery and/or perception of fault. .... However, the foundation of critical thinking is critique, which involves a systematic and detailed process of analysis and evaluation based on the integration of both pertinent and peripheral information.

“Critical thinking therefore becomes essentially a constructive effort and a person who has been trained to think in this manner is always dissatisfied with mere isolation or recording of facts. He always seeks to go beyond the bare data presented to him. He looks for the unity of things or of ideas, and by extension, the unity of the world as such, for it is a part of the assumption of science or of knowledge that the world is an integral world, that there are certain invariant relationships which bring events or things together in one system.” (Armando F. Bonifacio, “Critical Thinking and General Education”?in University College Journal number 1, First Semester (1961), p.169.)

.....It is not unusual for many to mistake criticism with critical thinking. So the distinctions between these formulations must be reiterated and clarified repeatedly to both students and faculty. The integrative view of critical thinking situates it as the conceptual hub in the process of interpretation, evaluation, and analysis which result in the generation of knowledge

From: Rivera, Robin Daniel Z. (2014). “Four Issues in the University of the Philippines Diliman General Education Program.” White paper dated 31 December 2014."
 
AllTheCoolNamesAreTaken said:
I imagine if she wrote about the joy of taking other people's money for your birth control she'd be quite the modern hero.

Why the personal attack? Was that entirely necessary? What's your goal? What's your objective? I wish I could say that it was an original insult that I got some entertainment out of but alas not. Surely as a Libertarian, you should just say what you think rather than acting by the rules of the board? You know, when you're dying of heart disease, or cancer then I'm sure the free market will help you out from their strong sense of moral obligation.

If you can't behave like an adult then I'm not even going to bother addressing your post. If you can't get past ad hominem attacks on other posters then you clearly have no idea what critical appraisal actually is and there's no point in discussing it with you. Have a fun life.

Just found a really interesting review of Nacho Libre you posted elsewhere. Good reading. Seems that you disagreed with a critic and then threw all of your toys out of the pram.
 
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Attention Drumming Persons.. Go and criticise your own drumming it would be far more productive.
 
This reminds me of something I wrote last year about critical thinking in General Education at my university.

---------

First, there is the popular idea drawn from the word criticism, which involves arguments built around the discovery and/or perception of fault. .... However, the foundation of critical thinking is critique, which involves a systematic and detailed process of analysis and evaluation based on the integration of both pertinent and peripheral information.

“Critical thinking therefore becomes essentially a constructive effort and a person who has been trained to think in this manner is always dissatisfied with mere isolation or recording of facts. He always seeks to go beyond the bare data presented to him. He looks for the unity of things or of ideas, and by extension, the unity of the world as such, for it is a part of the assumption of science or of knowledge that the world is an integral world, that there are certain invariant relationships which bring events or things together in one system.” (Armando F. Bonifacio, “Critical Thinking and General Education”?in University College Journal number 1, First Semester (1961), p.169.)

.....It is not unusual for many to mistake criticism with critical thinking. So the distinctions between these formulations must be reiterated and clarified repeatedly to both students and faculty. The integrative view of critical thinking situates it as the conceptual hub in the process of interpretation, evaluation, and analysis which result in the generation of knowledge

From: Rivera, Robin Daniel Z. (2014). “Four Issues in the University of the Philippines Diliman General Education Program.” White paper dated 31 December 2014."

Superbly put. Absolutely superb.
 
Drum reviews: I find many more informed, knowledgeable reviews on this board and others than from any single printed drum review I can remember. As noted, the Brits far outshine the US when it comes to doing magazines the right way. Whether the subject is drums or motorcycles, our cousins get down to the nitty gritty when it comes to reviews.

Music reviews: I've stopped reading them. I honestly don't understand them anymore. They are so pseudo-intellectualized with obscure references that I come away knowing less about a work than I did before reading the review. The last review I read that I thought crystallized what a review should be went something like this: Artist: Jellyfish; Album: Bellybutton; "If you like the Beatles, Queen, and Beach Boys - style pop music, you will love Jellyfish." That review went on to discuss more specifics, but the first sentence told me everything I needed to know to purchase that album - and the reviewer was right on the mark: clear, concise, simple.

GeeDeeEmm
 
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