Ok, Martin. This self-serving dramatization about categorically excoriating those who "suck" should be outgrown.

Let's take the case of a newbie who finally finds enough courage to stand up and sing a song he wrote himself, say, about, oh, I dunno -- a love experience, or a religous experience. And he built four chords into this song, no, let's say he was really ingenious and used a relative minor AND its seventh so there are FIVE chords in the song.

But he is nervous as hell, he has never stood before an audience before. His songs are emotionally shallow, and his scansion leaves something to be desired, requiring that he triple-spread one syllable in order to balance a line in a couple of places. His palms are sweating and his fingers slip and they aren't that strong int he first place, so his barred F sounds shitty and in his panic he forgets the intermediate mionor chord in a couple of places.

So let's look at the pluses and minuses of this individuals situation:

PLUS items:

1. He spent his time learning to play
2. He wrote a song
3. He got up in front of an audience without wetting himself
4. He got all the way through the song
5. The song has a couple of original lines or images in it, say.
6. He actually used more than three chords in one song, not badly

MINUS Items:

1. Scansion needs improivement
2. Emotional depth could stand a review
3. Practice the barred F
4. Overcome stage fright.
5. Practice the song so it comes out right even in your sleep.

OK, enough. Your mindset appears to be such that instead of articulating thos epluses and minuses, you think the right thing to do -- even though it is perhaps the most crushing thing to do -- is simply say "You suck, son".

The reason is t5hat you are too self-centered and too lazy to try and separate the pluses out from the minuses and mention them? Or provide specifics so he can address the minuses? "You suck" is a complete generalization, and therefore it is in fact a lie. But you would prefer it -- because of its much more popwerfully invalidative emoptional impact, perhaps -- to the trouble of sorting out the truth?

No-one would mind being told he needs to practice the F chord, or that scansion needs work. No-one, being told "You suck", is likely to even bother picking up their capo on the way out. Your simple and arrogant choice of words could easily be enough to take all the music out of someone's life for twenty or thirty years. Good effect, huh?

Ya know what? Maybe you're the one that sucks. Your choice of tough-minded honesty is a false veneer in the example above, becvause you can't take the trouble to make clear specific statements, so you have to batter someone with blunt falsehoods like "You suck." An opinion without facts offered in support. I can't think of an unkinder way to comment on someone's performance. Do you get off on being discouraging to others? OR are you just trying to get even with your father?

A