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A Critique Of Pure Jargon

3 Comments

As regards My post about Micachu, a friend wrote to me:

not intended to be sarcastic at your expense. I went through your review and xxxed out all words that either conveyed nothing to me (in my ignorance; like i know who matthew herbert is but not what that implies abotu how the album would sound) or that seemed to me to be content-free (eg “embrace the chaos”) and got the following dada-esque review:
‘xxx is a sort of next big thing-esque young woman from xxx, whose debut album about to be release was produced by veteran xxx xxx xxx. The songs on the myspace page remind me of xxx from xxx, having some of that xxx xxx xxx, though xxx seems to xxx xxx xxx a bit more than that duo. xxx xxx’s album “xxx xxx” is perhaps the high water mark of musical xxx, kind of like the first xxx record as heard by someone on a xxx xxx xxx.
xxx isn’t as deliberately xxx as that, but she’s not afraid to xxx the xxx, as she does on this “mix tape” which features some of her xxx xxx xxx on the xxx tip, with occasional vocal interjections from xxx, mashed together voices, and musique concrète.’

Fair enough I guess. I was depending on readers knowing things I can’t know they’ll know, to understand what I was on about.  On the other hand, I don’t try and live up to the same standards in blog posts that I follow when I write reviews for publication.  A big part of my review-writing narrative is the assumption that many readers aren’t going to be aware of everything I might bring to listening to a piece of Music. I’m someone who spends a large portion of their waking hours listening to, making, or thinking about music, so I have a domain-specific knowlege set a casual reader would not.

When I write on my blog, I don’t feel the same responsibility to explain, or to judge what needs explaining.  First, it’s a more personal forum, and until the big bucks start rolling in for my blogging expertise, I’m not going to waste time worrying about whether people can follow what I’m saying.  Second, with two examples of Micachu’s music included in the post, one can presumably gloss over the stuff in my post you don’t get, and judge the music independent of anything I might have to say.

Third, I think my friend goes a bit far, x-ing out some things that aren’t arcane references or untethered metaphor.  I’d think ‘obtuse’ would be part of most people’s vocabulary, and the meaning of an ‘obtuse’ composer or musician shouldn’t require a  lot of sweat to understand.