All Music Guide: Classic or Dud

Well no actually, I've never used it. I think the impulse to catalogue everything is a bit....dry, really, no matter how talented the writers.

I'm sure the AMG is excellent as these things go and I surely won't deny its usefulness to people without access to groovy mailing lists for personal-touch information ;)

Oh yes, and thanks to Otis for the kind words. :-)

As for the misleading criticism, perhaps Simone was alluding to the fact that the first 2 Live albums get the same ratings as the first 2 Pere Ubu albums, among other bizarre ratings blunders.

verdict: CLASSIC

The other advantage is (oddly enough) the use of the same writers eg. because John Bush and Sean Cooper have pretty much done all the dance stuff, it was fairly simple to work out my tastes in relation to theirs. Ditto with Jason Birchmeier for hip hop. Ned, of course, I already knew.

This kind of thing is partly why I don't like consumer guides (as a database of raw information AMG is terrific, if raw info is your bag). I'll try and write more when I have more time.

Now as far as ratings are considered, it's a no brainer that Pere Ubu have much more artistic value than Live. However, we base the ratings on the quality of the recording in relation to their own catalog or their general peers. Britney might have made a four-star record to her capability, and Nick might have made a four-and-a-half star record to his capability. If we went by artistic credibility, the ratings would be skewed. If we start with the Beatles, John Coltrane, Public Enemy, and Sam Cooke at five stars, do we just work our way downward with everyone else? Going by that, Nick might get three stars with his best work and Britney would get one or zero. That wouldn't be helpful at all for someone who wants to check out an artist whose status is less than influential.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. We've got a long way to go, but we're making improvements and adding new wrinkles constantly. The volume of info does get frustrating at times. You can spend three weeks making corrections or three weeks doing everything in your power to ruin the database and actually effect it in the same, small degree.

Ned, I'll get right on your Raunchy Young Lepers issue.

Does anyone have the Spin Alternative Record Guide? That's a surefire argument starter. For example, Rob Sheffield rates Bowie's Eno trilogy 9, 5, and 8 chronologically. Heroes is a 5 and Lodger is an 8? Woah. Not only that, but he rates Let's Dance higher than Heroes. I do generally love Sheffield's writing ("John Taylor, you can feed my wolf anytime," etc.), but those ratings are irritating. He backs up his rationale, so it's impossible to remain too displeased.

By the way, Simone is a male name in Italy. It's female in Germany and France ;-)

Tom, are you really serious when you say that Britney Spears deserves 5 stars? will you still be listening to it in ten years? do you think the lyrics are clever of just plain funny? does the music spark something in your mind and/or body? I'm not being snob but I can't say that I appreciate her as an "artist"... Besides I'm still an idealist, at least when it comes to music: I don't like artists who owe their success to marketing (i love marketing but music and business in a perfect world shouldn't mix), stylists, whole production teams, etc.

Does it spark something in my mind/body? Yes. It energises me and makes me want to dance, and I love the melodrama of it (lyrics included).

Will I still like it in ten years? Well, I suspect yes (I still listen to pop hits from 1981 *twenty* years later, after all). But that's not the point - it's what the music sounds like to you right now that matters. Ten years ago I'd have probably said I'd still like REM in ten years time - can't stand them now. And for what it's worth I got bored of the Boatman's Call in a week tops, whereas I'm still awestruck by "The Mercy Seat" 13 years down the line. You simply never can tell, and if you can then your taste is probably quite boring and static.

When it comes to an artist's skills, the rating is a combination of how it relates to their prior work and how it relates to the remainder of the style. Since the Avalanches just made their first full LP (I believe), you can't really compare it to anything else they've done. You can, however, see where it rests with the like- minded. (It rests rather well, obviously.)

Maybe no one will be listening to Britney in 10 years. I doubt timelessness is high on the priority list with her records. For her, it's about hitting the charts and selling records. With those goals in mind, she succeeds.

I get you point, even if it puzzles me. A few weeks ago, before bumping into Freaky Trigger and its curious philosophy i would have just said that "disposable pop music" is s*** (so your sentence would have sounded like "Britney sucks but as long as you love music that sucks, she's the best). Now that I've made acquaintance with Tom and it' strange world were Britney and the greats of the music pantheon live side by side in harmony and are thought to be equals I know that such a statement wouldn't make any sense to you. We clearly belong to different worlds but I respect you ideas even if, again, I don't really comprehend them. I'm not static at all, quite the contrary, I keep moving on and my music collection is very varied but I'll never cross Britney's path (and that of her fellow Disney Club friends). And I really think it's just a matter of good taste ;-)

Most everyone would say that they have good taste, whether they're into prog rock, teen pop, or IDM. How many people enthusiastically listen to music they don't like? How many people would slam their own taste in music?

If I had one.

Regarding Tom Erlewine -- say what you want, he was the one who got me started writing there after he ended up on my Oasis list for a while, so hey.

For a while, I had to skim or read through every submitted review (he's the head pop editor, btw), so it's definitely not on a selective basis that I've read his writing. If anything, he's the epitome of subjectivity. He's extremely fair with everything, whether it's Badfinger or Bad English. Plus, he's as affable and humble as they get. I swear the man must absorb records and movies in his sleep. Either that or he's inhuman, which I'm increasingly suspectful of with each conversation.

Uncertaintly is often a very good thing in music reviewing, true, and I think perhaps he's better as a music *critic* than a music guide (a truism maybe?).

the reviews are misleading? simone, are you someone who would be looking for advice on britney albums anyway?

My oppinion:Dud

I like this idea. "God, I need to know what sucks. Sonicnet!"

Ned, do feel free to use this line in one of your next reviews. Of course, you could use "good" instead of "bad" if you like the record in question.

I think all my reviews from here on in will be nothing but obscenties. "The newest effort by the Midwest trio Sweetie, _Plinths and The High Beyond_ shows without a motherfucking doubt that the bastard-ass shitness of the post-Chicago school of ass-jazz has hit new unplumbed depths of aural smegma."

Sonicnet = classic. All music dud that should have died out in the early days of the internet.

I love the assumption that AllMusic writers have "credentials" and think they're meaningful; it's like "I will invent facts to accommodate my own kneejerk anti-intellectualism!"

Point of fact: at least one AMG writer was a dumb-ass college kid who needed to pay some bills. By the way, Ned, I actually really appreciate your colonizing some of my reviews, because as you've surely noticed, many of them are butt-lipped and ill-conceived.

It's like an attempt at humor that's then translated into two mutually exclusive languages and then brought back here. But thank you for trying.

butt-lipped and ill-conceived

That's an evil way to describe your children. ;-)

Although I do think the questionable racial activity was on his part for even thinking of that.

So go to www.sonicnet.com.

GRILL-SHILLAZ!

You are the most amusing punching bag I've dealt with in a while.

Ned, is it true that you sometimes write for Sonicnet under another name?

Yes indeed. Look for the name "Brett Beautiful." I do nothing but talk about fey indie rappers who wear leather and Max Factor.

GRILL-SHILLAZ!

Nicole ist rad.

Ned writes all music commentary online under all names.

Nitsuh, Andy, Sean, all mere figments of my imagination!

And he wrote a novel in 2 weeks too.

This is true, actually. :-) Whether or not it's good...

yes, but can he clean out my yard in under 20 minutes?

How much are you willing to pay?

Do you really think I care?

Strange!

Joslyn Layne rules.

I like the fact that the ratings are scaled by artist and not universally, because it means that you have a better idea how certain albums rate compared to other albums by the same artist...and not that this is only up to a certain rating...not everyone will get five stars just because it's their best album. Some artists I've seen routinely get bad reviews for ALL of their albums, if they're completely stinky.

Andy said: The Palm Pilot concept Ned brings up is a bit bizarre.
And I disagree, as you'd expect if you were reading the other thread. I have a link to AMG on my Blackberry so I can quickly check up on an album I've spotted in the used bin, or on the new release wall, if I'm not 100% sure. It's a valuable resource to have at your fingertips, if you want to spend your money wisely at the store. My only complaint about it is that it's not optimized for wireless devices obviously, which means sorting through a whole lot of image tags and other crud which doesn't mean much to a wireless browser. A slimmed-down version delivering only the basics via XML would be really nice, but I bet it'd be a real bugger to implement.

Ignore the weird-titled categories when looking – we are not currently topping them up as we intend to retitle them (which you can only do by competely emptying them).

I also like the star system because what so much music writing provokes the response "stop parading your hipster credentials and tell me how good you thought the damn record was". It's a useful cut- the-crap device.

The Penguin Guide does seem to me to show much better judgement in jazz. Although the AMG Jazz Guide is at least free from the weird snobbery that makes Penguin exclude artists like Frank Sinatra (but not not lesser singers in a similar style) presumably because he is mega-popular hence naff hence not-jazz.

(ArfArf, as Richard Cook is one of the world's major Sinatra fans (and experts) I seriously doubt that snobbery is the reason the penguins don't include him: more like, we have to make the cut-off point somewhere or we'll never finish and also the book's spine will not survive a single mid-book perusal... )

On the other hand that particular cut-off still strikes me as bizarre and in need of better explanation. I remember several years ago someone conducted a poll of jazz luminaries as to who were the greatest jazz singers in history. In the male section Sinatra polled an astonishing 54% of all votes cast, including the votes of guys like Miles, Rollins etc. These people had no problems in identifying Sinatra as a jazz artist.

The Penguin Guide includes people like Dinah Washington and Mel Torme whose credentials as a more "authentic" jazzer than Sinatra seem fairly marginal.

How many disappointed readers will have looked in vain for the entry on Sinatra? Finding room for obscurities is perhaps one of the guides glories, but when one opens a page at random to find entries on Gene Bertoncini, Ben Besiakov and Ed Bickert, for example, it's difficult not to conclude that Sinatra's exclusion is a more calculated and pointed piece of stupidity than "well we've got to draw the line somewhere so we may as well draw it here".

But yeah, as a question of ordinary usage, maybe there is a case to answer here.

I have the first edition too (In fact I keep thinking it's time I updated). It's a long time since I read the intro but I know I wasn't much in sympathy with the way this particular argument was presented.

The "backing" argument could probably just about stand up as coherent in the sense that Washington and Torme no doubt cut a larger percentage of their recordings with "real" jazz bands. But first, it's a question of degree: Sinatra did record with Basie, the Red Norvo Quintet etc, and Washington did record with orchestras, r'n'b bands and so on. Secondly there is commercial reality: recording with an arrangers and orchestras of the Nelson Riddle/Billy May calibre was an expensive business and the decision by less popular artists to go with a more orthodox band was not so much a badge of authenticity as a reflection of commercial reality.

Then there is the dubiousness of the proposition itself: are they saying that Charlie Parker with Strings ain't jazz? By what criteria can, say, John Zorn's "The Big Gundown", a five star jazz album for the PG, be argued to have more of the characteristics of jazz than "Songs for Swingin' Lovers"? Hardly a swinging rhythm section.

Some of Sinatra's recorded output is undoubtedly jazz by any standards; almost all of it is has more of the characteristics of jazz than some of the music included in the PG; he is accepted by his peers, by an overwhelming margin, as the most gifted male singer to work in the genre.

I agree you need to draw the line somewhere but to draw it in a place that excludes Sinatra is perverse. As for the question of practicality AMG's jazz guide - a slimmer volume - has no problem including the likes of Sinatra or Tony Bennett.

Relaunch.

http://www.allmusic.com/

Wow. Looks pretty nice at first glance. Had finally given up on it during the Rovi era. Seems to move a lot faster than it ever did.

What the hell, where's the album ratings? I use that all the time to figure out where to start with new artists.

Oh never mind, they weren't showing up initially for some reason.

Still feels like too many clicks to get the info I want.

yeah .. this is a much better look than the temp rovi facelift ..

I'm just glad they did away with needing to click to a new page to see the full review.

Well, still classic of course!

Anyway, just received the news that due to budget limits at the AMG they’ve had to cut back on freelance contributions, so my last batch of reviews I recently submitted earlier in the month will be my swan song there! A pity but hell, one crazy great run over these nearly fifteen years, so no complaints, and it’s no exaggeration that starting there is what’s given me the greater writing opportunities elsewhere. So now it’s time for me to look into those in even more detail!

bummerz. do you have a final tally of the number of reviews you did for them? must be in the thousands?

You should compile 'em all into an ebook/Lulu print-on-demand paperback. Call it The Ned Raggett Guide To Rock 'n' Roll, or something similarly grandiose. I'd buy one.

I think it's something like...5000ish?

allraggett.com

Raggetts, I've had a few

You did it Ned way?

what is yr favourite amg review ned?

i used to read amg too much when i was 15, 16

Oh, probably this one. If the guy hadn't already been dead I think this would have killed him.

http://www.allmusic.com/album/live-in-germany-mw0000898384

You should compile 'em all into an ebook/Lulu print-on-demand paperback. Call it The Ned Raggett Guide To Rock 'n' Roll, or something similarly grandiose. I'd buy one.

i would too

but i imagine allmusic owns the copyright?

Yup, it's work for hire. Still, I could ask.

what is yr favorite positive amg review ned?

I dunno. Probably Unknown Pleasures.

smooshing poopkins

I would imagine you'd only need to ask permission if you were doing it through a real publisher. I compiled a book of my magazine features, many of which were originally written for The Wire, and nobody over there said a word to me about it.

Yup, it's work for hire. Still, I could ask.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, December 18, 2012 9:00 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If it was all freelance it would only be if you signed a contract under S. 101, and even then it's arguably not

Oh and I've learned that my grand total of reviews at the AMG site is 6057.

Wow!

That's a whole lot of 'particularly fine.'

Also "Heavens!", I presume.

Oh, probably this one. If the guy hadn't already been dead I think this would have killed him.

http://www.allmusic.com/album/live-in-germany-mw0000898384

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 18 December 2012 20:58 (1 hour ago)

yeah i remember this

i wouldn't ordinarily click on the 1.5* ones tho, just alien soundtracks or what have you