“Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.” ― Neil Gaiman

The purpose of life is to spend our time on Earth farting around — paraphrased from Kurt Vonnegut

“Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness” — Chuang Tzu, 350BC

"How will you face knowing that you will never exceed, or even equal, the accomplishments of your predecessors?" — Minister Faust (*)

"What's so powerful about music, is that if you could describe it you wouldn't need it" — Sinead O'Connor explains why I so seldom review music here

"You can never have a life plan if you're going to be addicted to music" — Robert Plant

“All haters are losers, even when they win” — Paulo Coelho (*)

"I felt really alive, unencumbered by tradition, property and responsibility" — Pete Townshend recalls his 1965 self

"I don't want to know just how I feel" — Thijs van Leer (...)

“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work one is supposed to be doing at that moment” — Robert Benchley

“What has never been cool can never become uncool” — Joe Muggs (*)

”Some people want to know how a watch works, and other people just want to know what time it is” — Robbie Robertson, on different approaches to appreciating music

“Time... is what keeps everything from happening at once" — Ray Cummings, 1922 (*)

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid." — Frank Zappa

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought" — Sir Thomas Beecham (*)

"Years ago, people used to sit looking out of their windows at the street. Or on a park bench. They would stay for hours without being bored
although nothing much was going on" — Andy Warhol

"The inexorable logic of reality has created nothing but insolvable problems" — William S. Burroughs (speaking in my town, 1974)

"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.” — Abe Lincoln creates the only music review anyone will ever need

"Where's the rest of it? Where are all the other instruments? Where's all the detail?" — Dweezil Zappa on popular music

"The point of proper music is to transcend boundaries, create thoughtful pieces, and transport listeners to places they wouldn't typically go" — Gary Green*

"You can think too fucking much, you know. And it gets a bit fucking evil." — Elvis Costello

"Don't believe everything you think" — [some bumpersticker]

"The Institute of Mental Health spontaneously killed itself" — Peter Hammill *

"Works of art which cannot be understood in themselves but need some pretentious instruction book to justify their existence will never again
find their way to the German people" — Adolf Hitler, woulda-been prog-hater

"If you think that it's pretentious, you've been taken for a ride" — Peter Gabriel

"Rush is kind of one of those bands that are kind of like a dog whistle that only men can hear" — Nancy Wilson

"Utopian aspirations need to be affirmed in this world...We need strong arguments for the good things, and we need to make these arguments against
the fashionable cynicism that is urged upon us by the culture industry." — Bill Martin (*)

"If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them" — Karl Popper (*)

”I am a great enthusiast for political correctness: it may be counter-fashionable these days, but it seems to me just another manifestation of politeness.
I want more politeness, not less” — Michael Booth (*)

"The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel (*)

"Although the marriage of text and music can be transcendent, the best music does not need verbal associations to enhance it." — Mickie Willis (unconservatory.org)

"Most of the things that I see of value in the world are trodden down, their value is not seen, aggression is always used against them." — David Sylvian

“Secular liberalism is the final religion, though its church is not of the other world but of this” — Alexander Herzen (*) (1862)

"Lyrics in songs, in nearly 80% of cases, actually make the song less interesting." — Brian Eno

“Self-expression is evil…I find the singer-songwriter confessional crap truly irritating. I don’t care about your feelings. I want ideas.” — David Thomas

"A good album should always be much more about questions than answers." — Bill Bruford

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." — Arthur C. Clarke

"What was once an ancient tropical garden of immense color and variety is in danger of being replaced by
a comfortable but sterile and sleep-inducing system of cultural superhighways." – Alan Lomax, 1950

"The reason for hating others is hate of oneself, feeling the self is inadequate in some vague or specific way, and projecting that to other objects...
The man who hates doesn't realize everyone else is as complex as he knows himself to be." — Nat Hentoff's letter to Charles Mingus

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” — Bob Marley

”The music I like is so obscure it hasn't even been written yet. And I started liking it before you did.” — some smartass wag in The Guardian

“You get hooked on the idea of making big money as a reasonable and worthy trade-off for lack of artistic control” — Merrill Markoe on “the golden handcuffs”.

"Commercialism is the worst form of self-censorship" — Jack Bruce

"You don’t know who I am, but somehow, indirectly, you’ve been affected by things I did…I don’t make work as a product to be consumed by purchasers
and deployed as ceremonial objects” — Tony Conrad

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative." — John Stuart Mill

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." — Benito Mussolini

"Sales are not the only benchmark" — Jac Holzman (*)

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” —  Jiddu Krishnamurti

“There's so much religion in the world, but only enough to make us fight over who is right, not enough to make us love one another." — Margaret Cho

"I have a lot of faith in science, which is a belief system. It requires trust in officials, in the scientific method, in technology." — Robin Reineke, cultural anthropologist (*)

”The economic argument for conservation vastly outweighs the economic argument for destruction” — Torah Kachur (*)

“Some people are open to any possibility, and honestly examine all evidence in a rational manner to come to a conclusion, followed by a moral evaluation.
Others start with a desire for a specific moral evaluation, and then work backwards assembling any fact that supports them,
and dismissing any fact that does not.” — James B. Meigs (*)

"The world moves on a woman's hips" — David Byrne

"If you really must have vocals/lyrics, at least ensure they're always subservient to truly engaging music rather than the bloody other way around!!" —
my impassioned plea to any & all music artists

"Music > songs" — me


*****

My rating "system" is simple:

5-stars: since there's no such thing as a perfect album, I rarely award this unless for some strategic motive to raise an album's unjustly low rating here.

4-stars means I like an album a lot and don't really have any problems with it. Nearly all the music I rate here gets this rating.

3-stars means I only partly like the album, but that it's still pretty good and respectable.

2-stars or less: Rarely used, because life's too short to bother listening to or rating lousy albums. If I dislike an album I usually don't rate it at all.


*****


My middle-aged ears often gravitate to the sound production and sensibilities of the decade when music first impacted me, and I make no apologies for that. While I often choose older music, I refuse to call that music "better" because it's all subjective. I prefer music that's acquired lasting value from still being well rated years after it was made. I prefer artists who have a substantial back-catalogue to explore and whom have grown over time. While every decade has great music and disposable music, IMO if it's really new it's usually simply too early to tell if it has lasting value or not. My past is littered with music that I once considered great but now feel is disposable, especially if that music was ever popular or trendy.

The past still has tons of music that I haven't heard yet, so hearing old unfamiliar music is the same as hearing new music, at least to me. My ears just love that 1970s production with its panoramic stereo imaging, soft/loud dynamics, and warm analogue sound.


Here are a few elements that I like to hear in music:

1) Sound so engaging that words are unnecessary
2) Timelessness
3) Mature earnestness & idealism
4) Evokes active listening and analysis
5) Exotic aural colours, shading and spices
6) Passionate craftsmanship
7) Blending of "disparate" styles & influences
8) Contrasts of darkness & light, noise and melody
9) Oblivious to trends, coolness and "taste"
10) Quirkiness and unpredictability
11) Complexity and virtuosity (but not for their own sake!)
12) Otherworldliness
13) A cinematic quality
14) Music that goes on journeys or tells stories, without words, and takes the listener along for the ride.

(Many will say that sounds like a load of hippie shit, but guess what? I don't care. It's at least as valid as any other musical viewpoint is.)
*****