Reviews: Opinions Change

Hi,

This is such a scary thread!

I am not a machine, and neither am I a person that does not think and update/upgrade his internal knowledge of himself, or the world ... so to speak.

I write reviews, over 500 film reviews, over 100 record reviews (almost none here on PA ... don't ask me why!) and a lot of book reviews, and a lot of concert reviews. That said, ALL OF THEM, were a very specific feeling in that moment of time, and that feeling has absolutely nothing to do with today or tomorrow or further back in time.

So would I review KC's 1st, better today, than I did yesterday? Or vice versa.

TRIVIAL .... totally TRIVIAL.

I have been replacing the majority of my LP collection with CD's. And I made the decision, 600 LP's ago (almost 3 years), that I would re-listen to ALL OF THEM in its entirety. My opinion of any of the music has not changed. In fact, I would say, that my appreciation of a LOT OF THE MUSIC has been re-kindled ... I hadn't heard most of Goblin soundtracks for 30 years, for example, or Cluster, or too many other things, and all of a sudden, they sound just as neat as they did then when I got excited enough to spend money on the LP at the time from 1968 all the way to today.

Has it all changed? I think we believe we changed more than anything, but for me, the only thing that changed is that some folks then were too damn stoned to even know what music WAS!!!!!

yeah. I don't think a second about the reviews I did, they were the work of a complete amateur who had zero talent, not like some of you do. Some of your reviews are simply pleasures to read.

However if I was to change any of mine .. I'd have not given that DT album 5 stars.  Oh how I was proud of that one. God how the furr flew and the reports of review maleficence came in to the admins when I did that.  However I think I nailed the album in my review.

bhikkhu wrote: micky wrote: yeah. I don't think a second about the reviews I did, they were the work of a complete amateur who had zero talent, not like some of you do. Some of your reviews are simply pleasures to read. However if I was to change any of mine .. I'd have not given that DT album 5 stars.  Oh how I was proud of that one. God how the furr flew and the reports of review maleficence came in to the admins when I did that.  However I think I nailed the album in my review. Yeah, but it was a statement. The reaction to it was the whole message. I especially loved the head scratching from people who missed the point entirely. Agree or disagree with the act itself, the resulting conversation it sparked was the true value.

Indeed. People are way too used to fanboy reviews (and this site is not the worst offender, in spite of what many may think) to appreciate a controversial yet thoroughly honest review like the one my better half wrote of DT's Scenes from a Memory. On my blog I don't give ratings, so I have often written positive reviews of albums I didn't particularly care for, but whose quality could hardly be denied. When you have to give a numerical rating (as on most reviews sites), it is very hard to separate our personal tastes from a fair-minded assessment of an album's strengths and weaknesses.

micky wrote: yeah. I don't think a second about the reviews I did, they were the work of a complete amateur who had zero talent, not like some of you do. Some of your reviews are simply pleasures to read.

Don't shortsell yourself, Micky...

I bseem to remember a few brilliant Steely Dan reviews of yours....

You have it in you, you just have to apply yourself at it... Practice makes , if not perfect, at least better.

micky wrote: yeah. I don't think a second about the reviews I did, they were the work of a complete amateur who had zero talent, not like some of you do. Some of your reviews are simply pleasures to read. However if I was to change any of mine .. I'd have not given that DT album 5 stars.  Oh how I was proud of that one. God how the furr flew and the reports of review maleficence came in to the admins when I did that.  However I think I nailed the album in my review.

 

tuxon wrote: I don't think one should change ratings after their given. Those ratings reflects an honest opinion at the time. If your opinion has changed one should just make an additional review with the than correct rating.   Don't burry the past or try to rewrite history, it was an other you that you kill with changing, and his opinion is as valid as yours now is.

micky wrote: ... When I was doing my reviews here my life was in turmoil and the reviews were a product of my state of mind.  Extreme sadness and destruction of what little self confidence I had at the ugly end of a unhappy marriage, and the hope of having found love and happiness through Raff on this site.  ...

I will admit that I'm not the happiest person in the world, and never been married. But I found out 25 years ago, that I was married to my work, and no woman has ever been able to show me any better, or otherwise.

I know that sounds pathetic, but in the end, I am not into the "social" and "political" ideas that the media tends to bring out to ensure that you are just another person out there, just like everyone else, with 2.1 kids and a house and a car, and in debt for the rest of your life!

Another example of this social nothingness, is people that went to college and not a single course they took is helping them, or how many of them look at college just because of a girl or some fun, and not the education! I can quote lines from just about all the professors and studies I did, and the plays I directed.

AND ALL OF IT, has taught me a few things.

Mainly ART, be it whatever discipline we call it, is an internal expression, and it might mean something that we can discern or not. The problem is (here is a perfect example!), that we don't believe in art anymore, and have replaced it with top ten, because we're too lazy to learn and study how someone else sees things.

We don't understand, what the theater world calls "eccentric", for example, and we only look at many of those folks as anti-social, but in the end, they are not ... they are illuminating their inner vision ... and that is ALL THAT I DO. I concentrate on that and what folks say, is not important ... I know my inner paints and colors ... they don't!

Sorry about the .... long article. It's hard to explain the depth of feeling, regardless of who you are!

richardh wrote: tuxon wrote: I don't think one should change ratings after their given. Those ratings reflects an honest opinion at the time. If your opinion has changed one should just make an additional review with the than correct rating.   Don't burry the past or try to rewrite history, it was an other you that you kill with changing, and his opinion is as valid as yours now is. I must admit I did write a completely different review for Vangelis -Mask. I didn't get that album at all initially and then grew to love it. I could have left my original review intact but I don't understand what that achieves if I'm honest. The whole leave the original review alone carries very little logic. Its not about second guessing its about simply updating your feelings and thoughts about something.

It's a long time ago I've last reviewed music, but I do still occasionally write book reviews on GoodReads. I know that music and literature are very different media, however one constant re ains: If a book is a work of fiction I only change my opinion upon a re-read, with non-fiction it's a bit different since criticism from other readers is much more objective in nature as it's often a simple matter of fact-checking.

When I radically change my opinion on music, the latter sometimes happens if I read a critique of a record or genre or whatever that's exceptionally convincing and well thought-out but that does not happen quite as often as it used to. It's more when I revisit a record I haven't listened to in a long time and my entire perspective or at least frame of reference has changed so much that I'm evaluating it from a completely different set of standards.

Of course, this brings in the complication that music is - just like works of fiction etc. - much harder to criticize objectively than a biography or a documentary.