Critics: Have you ever let your friendship with a band (or band member) influence your review?

The thing is though that your perception of the artist is always going to colour your perception of the art, whether you know them or not. And writing online with an e-mail byline at the end of everything you soon realise that almost any artist, especially less well-known ons, could bring you up on what you write just like a friend could.

Still on 2), I also once accused Alan McGee of 'selling out' in the pages of my Legend! fanzine back in 1985. The net result? All his other mates were given shares in the company, and became multi-millionaires. I wasn't. Fair enough again.

Still on 2), all I can say is that David Gedge is really a very nice man.

Spooky review, right? I remember that, I have it around somewhere. You weren't kind.

If it's Emma you're referring to instead of Miki, she posted on the boards recently. It's all coming back!

I admire people who are willing to risk friendships for journalistic integrity. I just hope those folks have the means to cope with knowing that, temporarily, a very close friend would, as Everett put, have fantasies of him/her's private parts in a painful vice... I just couldn't deal with it. I require immediate resolution whenever any misunderstanding causes someone I really like to not like me back equally. In this context, that's certainly a weakness of mine.

Furthermore, I completely admit a bias towards friends' music than music by people I don't know. The way music has permeated my way of life, social and financial, has kept me from being fully objective about a piece of musical work ever again. Period. If I didn't care to fraternize with fellow musicians as half of a way of life, and only saw the paths of music's affect on me as a purely unidirectional thing (stereo speakers ---> my brain), then I'd have no problems criticizing or praising artists I'd happen to meet.. to me, it would be a chance to share my feedback, and that's that.

Aaah, if things were that simple, though. Blame it on college radio if you must, but my past decade of shmoozing now has me seeing music as a way to describe the artist I'm friends with.. like a trait -- as opposed to this very well contained mutually exclusive byproduct. If I know and like somebody, music and all, I'm certainly going to investigate and scrutinize his/her work moreso than someone who I don't know.

This isn't to say that being friends with somebody is a basis for whether I'll choose to like someone's music or not. Most of my musical heroes are people who I'm convinced I will never get to meet or know.. alive or dead. And I also admit the mystery behind that may, in fact, elevate those artists' music to some degree. But if I were presented with two equally worthwhile slabs of music: one by a friend, one by someone I don't know.. I'd certainly elaborate more and give my friend the better review.

All very wordy way of saying the fucking obvious.. I might have to dig more to make another point. But my point of contention here is that very few people will fully admit to a bias towards musicians they know and like when it comes to reviews.. when in fact, not only is it practically unavoidable, but could also be a positive attribute.

I've actually become friends with a couple of musicians as the result of writing harsh reviews of their records/performances (in both cases, they wrote to me and said "yeah, okay; that was fair").

http://www.o-art.org/history/77-83/CCM/concerts/ear6,3tyranny.html

Hmmm, maybe I've got my lead.

that said, there are plenty of people i know whos recrds i don't review because i don't enjoy them. luckily, i can usually hand them over to someone else. but i very much believe that no coverage has more weight than throwing knives.

As for my actual friends' bands, most of them are too small to warrant coverage right now. I have held back from pitching a few of them as up-and-coming artists in a way I wouldn't if the band were unknown to me though.

i thik the "casual" tag is important there..i rarely consider touching something a good friend put out. as dominique said, if someone is a close friend they tend to want an honest opinion. and i do agree that a relationship which is more than casual should be made apparent.