Wow...this still fits after many months of not having worn it! The question is...does anyone even care? My guess would be no, but someone might surprise me and say maybe.

So I guess I should do a little news and notes thing since it is the time of year where I start going out in public and whatnot. First off, Chomsky is hitting the Dallas scene hard once again in preparation for the release of their second album (this time from Idol Records, if I'm not mistaken)...I'll also be conducting an interview with not only the band, but some of their more rabid fans as well, so, like, look for it soon. The Fry Street Fair (do they have a site?) called in Bella Fleck as well as Built To Spill this year, so you might want to check them out...and for those of you who hate F.S.F., I'm sure you already know how to find out about Fuck The Fair, so it's not even worth going into. I just did a couple of reviews for some Alkaline Trio stuff, including their new album (due out April 3), so look over to the right and clicky clicky. Mike's recently added the absolute coolest toy to the site, click here to play with it (and praise the hell out of that boy, he fucking deserves it like no other). And finally, in an effort to further hone and refine my journalistic abilities, I'll be out and about at local/indie shows as much as possible...so check the new forum as that is where I'll be posting what shows I'll be in attendance at.

Enough news...article time (it's been a while since I've done this...so bear with me)!

Over the course of my life, I've written more than my fair share of crap...poetry, prose, one act plays, portions of novels, essays, songs, and so on. One thing I hadn't ever tried to tackle prior to the inception of this site was music reviews. Movie reviews I'd done. Book reviews are old hat. Music reviews, though, were something of an anomaly to me...I mean, sure I've read a ton of them, but writing one is an entirely different ball-game, so to speak. You have to be loquacious. You have to be astute. You have to be concise. And most of all, you have to be right.

As you may or may not have been able to tell, I've recently begun to really get into doing the whole live show/album review thing...and I had thought that I was doing a pretty decent job. That was until I was taken to task for getting couple of pieces of information wrong in doing a retrospective on Alkaline Trio. I quickly corrected my errors and double-checked the remainder of the information, but the fact remains that I had committed what equates to a cardinal sin of music reviews...I hadn't been accurate to begin with. Had I been writing for Rolling Stone or CMJ, I'd have probably lost my job with a mad quickness, especially given the integral nature of my info-flub...so, you can either thank Mike, or hate him, for keeping me on staff. Long story short...I've learned my lesson about being right the first time or not writing it at all.
I've never really had to deal with criticism, not as far as my writing has been concerned, and seeing some of the comments made about my article on another site really got to me. Here's a couple of examples:

'That article is awful. Whoever wrote it should be given a swirly.''I don't think it's *awful* per se, but it isn't good at all.'

I honestly didn't think it was that bad of a review...I used big words, and talked real pretty...isn't that all it takes? To satisfy my curiosity of knowing what a 'good' review consists of, I looked at some comments to another review of the same material on that very same site...what I found was amusing, to say the least. The comments, for the most part, were positive and mostly just contributed their own opinions on the subject of the new Alk3 album, never minding the fact that the grammar and spelling skills of the reviewer were quite lacking.
Does this make it a bad review? Hell no. Does it make it a better review than the one I wrote? Not really. What's my point? Good question. I think what bothers me most about the criticism is the fact that (with one exception) it was vague and meaningless...well, that and the comments were posted to another site where the article doesn't even reside, rather than to this here fine site where the article is actually in existence. I mean, seriously...if you have a problem with a) my writing style, b) my content or c) my errors then you had damn well better have the balls to 'tell me to my face' and either email me or post comments to the article and have the intelligence enough to articulate what you exact problem is. Otherwise, I really don't give one flying fuck what you have to say about my article, and I'll take your opinion as a silent one and move on with my life (aside from bitching about it here, that is).

In summation...it takes talent to ramble on coherently for 3400 words about a band with just four full length releases under their belt (and that's no knock on the band...four full lengths in less than four years is pretty damn impressive)...it takes having neither spine nor scrotum to post inane, anonymous 'troll' comments on a completely different site (note, this is in reference to just one of the people who commented, not all). You know what that means? Exactly...not a damn thing. Good night, god speed and all that rubbish.