The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #139210   Message #3191025
Posted By: Jack Campin
19-Jul-11 - 07:08 PM
Thread Name: Writing folk music reviews
Subject: RE: Writing folk music reviews
You seem to share Dick Miles's delusions about how reviewing works.

The model you appear to have in mind is a meritocratic one based on the school examination system as implemented by the Victorian bourgeoisie. The reviewer gets to rank their targets in order according to degree of genius, and their readers are intended to obediently follow these rankings in deciding which concerts to go to or recordings to buy. In the utopian ideal, the reviewer thus gets to determine the market share of each of the acts they write about.

You only have describe that model explicitly enough to see it's delusional, and people who read reviews have already done that. They read the reviews for their literary value, not to be told who's "talented" or "original". For most of the music people listen to, originality counts for about as much as it does in bellringing.