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Re: my first bad review/ALBUM inquery



> it's funny, i always think of "mindless guitar wankery" as
> bad EVH clones and stuff from the 80's--didn't think i was even
> close to doing that, but who knows.

...which of course is the problem with reviews... people's reference points
are so skewed by what they listen to, or more importantly, by what they
DON'T listen to, that if you are working in an area that people don't get,
then they will latch onto whatever the nearest reference point they can
relate to...

I remember playing a Metheny Group CD to a friend of mine who said 'oh yes,
it sounds like Shakatak'... Shakatak??? doesn't sound anything like
Shakatak, but that for him was the only reference point he has for electric
instrumental stuff with tunes!

I was recently dismissed in a review (albeit a review of the headline act,
not really of me) as doing 'frippertronics on a bass', with the following
comment along the lines of 'oh well, I guess it pays the bills'... if I met
the guy who wrote it again, I wouldn't know whether to laugh at him for his
audacity in writing about stuff he knows nowt about, or deck him for being
so offhand about what I do... I'd probably just ignore him...

The problem is that if you made an album that this reviewer liked, then the
next one will hate it for all the same reasons that reviewer #1 would love
it... forget about them, and do what you do as well as you can do it.

Of course there is always the possibility that you suck, and that the 
review
is doing you a favour, but unless they provide irrefutable proof that they
totally understand what you're doing and still don't like it, you are far
better of ignoring lazy put-downs like 'mindless guitar wankery', and
getting on with the business of making music.

That's the problem with believing the good reviews - it takes a while to 
get
your head round the more 'constructive' ones. There are certain people 
whose
take on what I do helps me to see what I'm doing - there's a review of my
first album up at www.krimson-news.com in Sid Smith's diary entry at the
moment (he wrote the Crimson Bio, which is excellent if you ignore the
typos...) where he writes about it in a way that sheds some light on what I
do. Dann Chinn, who writes for Misfit City and the Evo Digest, always does
reviews that enlighten me about what I do. Andre's review of Conversations
was an eye-opener, and as a result, his comments on aspects of my new CD
(some lovely, some constructive) were listened to and weighed in the light
of him having a pretty good understanding of what I'm doing...

move on, make more music, petrol bomb the bad guys... :o)

namaste

Steve
www.steve-lawson.co.uk