[NewMusic] John Zorn gives out the comps but bans review

[weasel walter]

> and where is the public, reading reviews, making informed decisions 
> and coming to public spaces as a byproduct of that participation?

when most reviews consist of ignorant gibberish, why would the public
retain any faith in these arbiters of taste?

that's the real problem here - so many reviewers are so full of shit
these days that i believe many people don't take much creedence in what
the critics are saying anymore. i know i don't. a lot of people look
blindly to things like pitchfork, the wire, etc. to filter through this
onslaught of artistic mediocrity to find the stuff "worth listening to".
that's fine, but i posit that those sources are definitely missing out or
outright ignoring tons of worthwhile things. 

why do they miss so much great stuff and champion so much dreck? dunno -
could part of it be that they're more apt to write about musicians with
publicists? more apt to cover those who buy big ads? more apt to cover
the same junk everybody else does? it's a sheep mentality, even in the
underground. 

i wish more critics had the balls to come forward and actually have a
voice, but they're few and far between. we've got all these horrible
identikit critics just rewriting the same flowery onesheet-regurgitation
crap about the same "cool" bands. that's why people don't listen to
critics very much anymore - they're interchangable for the most part and
they really don't give us very much information to deliberate on.

ww