My Credentials (Or Lack Thereof)

There is one glaring thing that I wish to make absolutely clear to all of you: I am an utter idiot when it comes to music. ... Now, I can certainly tell you how much I like a song or an album, and I attempt to tell you why with every breadth of my lazy writing abilities, but when it comes to how much I actually know about music, it's minimal.

Now, if you're sort of well versed in this site, you might have already gathered that (I do admit it several times in several reviews.) Indeed, I am very new to music in general, so I haven't even had the time to become an expert or some type of authority figure. So, don't think I am an authority and, please don't think that I think I'm an authority! ... My language on some of the reviews might suggest otherwise, so I'm writing this to try humbling myself a little bit. Really, the only reason that an ignoramus such as I is spending my time reviewing music is because I am genuinely interested in it!

Okay ... for your reading enjoyment ... here is my history ... how I came to discover rock music and how I came to have the musical tastes that I have today ... and also a little bit about my history as a "writer" ...

What you should understand is that I only became a true music fan in 2001. I was 18 then. Before that, my music listening was limited to musical soundtracks that my parents used to listen to, the occasional MIDI file of a classical music song, and verrrrrry rarely the radio. When I was a kid, my mother actually forbade my brother and I to hear the radio (and ... ironically ... I become this music fanatic as a young adult), and I honestly didn't think I was missing out on anything. A small period of time when I was in the 7th grade and the 8th grade, I listened to a radio Walkman at night a few times in defiance. I made the unfortunate choice of listening to a pop station, though! (The only song I can actually name from that time period is Aqua's "Barbie Girl" ... so you can see what kind of crap I was listening to.) All of my classmates would listen to hard-heavy-metal junk like Korn ... And, really, that stuff appealed to me less than "Barbie Girl."

Now, I'm always going to regret that I never became a music fan as a kid ... I missed out on a lot of years I could have spent just listening to music, and just being a fan ... even if it was of somebody like Oasis. (Absolutely, I would never have bothered writing about music at this early period of my life ... this was well before I started becoming confident as a writer.) But, then again, I guess that also makes me kind of unique! There are very few albums, right now, that have any sentimental value to me. Ones that do, however, I usually try to point it out!

When I was in high school and signed up for journalism class (at the direct request of my dad ... who would later probably regret it when I announced that I was changing my college major from chemical engineering to print journalism), that was when I started to become confident in writing. In late 1998 (when I was a junior), I started writing brief movie reviews for web publication. I wrote about movies because I am interested in them! Keeping up with that project solidly for about four years proved to me how much I love to write about things that I like.

Now, in the fateful year of 2000, I discovered Napster. The very entity that the music industry shuns as evil is what eventually launched me into an absolute musical obsessive streak! (More irony!) At the time, I used this service only to preview Broadway soundtracks at the time. I turned into an utterly huge fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber in the process ... I bought albums for $40 at Barnes and Nobles that I now realize suck! ... (I still really like Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, and The Phantom of the Opera a lot, though.)

And then, sometime in the spring of 2001, I watched the famed Beatles' movie "A Hard Day's Night" in the local art theater. I remember enjoying the music on it, and I decided to make a Beatles album purchase. I bought The Red Album (the compilation). And then I bought The White Album ... which was the first legitimate album that I ever bought. The White Album really clicked with me as something great. I loved it more than Andrew Lloyd Webber, even! ... When I got a hold of more money, I bought more Beatles albums! ... And I also pirated Wingspan by Paul McCartney ... a compilation that I thought was just wonderful.

Later on that spring, I discovered Queen on Audiogalaxy. I downloaded all their songs, put them on CD, and brought them along with me on a trip that I took to Canada. At that time, I also discovered Billy Joel ... and, Mr. Roboto by Styx that was mislabeled as a Queen track. When I got back from the trip, I very unwisely took money out of my savings account and bought some Queen albums, Billy Joel albums, and Styx albums! ... I loved all of them very much at the time. (Queen is the only one of those that still like a lot.)

And now comes my college years! Looking back on it, my music fandom was very misguided! I bought all sorts of crap from Europe's The Final Countdown ... and I was also trying to become a fan of the Eurythmics (...though, the Eurythmics are actually pretty good...) ... and I also expanded on my Styx, Queen, Billy Joel, and Beatles collection. I also bought single albums or compilations by bands that I didn't like at the time ... The Midnight Oil, Sting, The Smiths, several by Led Zeppelin, etc.

Then! In the fateful Christmas of 2001, I bought David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars ... This album struck a particular chord with me for whatever reason. Part of it, I'd imagine, is that it's so theatrical and (as you already know) basically my only musical listening was to musical soundtracks. Most of it, though, undoubtedly has to do with the fact that David Bowie has an appealing combination of artistic integrity in his music, yet his stuff is phenomenally entertaining. ... And, as you also probably already know, I am more of a fan of David Bowie than I am a fan of anybody. ... I started buying David Bowie albums off the shelves almost as if I were buying meals. When I bought Scary Monsters in March of 2002, I almost entirely abandoned Queen, Styx, Billy Joel, Andrew Lloyd Webber ... and even The Beatles (but that's mostly because I over-played their albums). If I were going to play an album, about 95 percent of the time, it would be something by David Bowie. (And ... yup, I still love the guy ... but that percentage is probably down to 10 or 15 percent now, which is still pretty significant!) Indeed, my tastes were very limited at the time. I even bought Let it Bleed by The Rolling Stones during this time period, and I absolutely did not like it! ... Now, of course, it is tied as the highest rated album on the site.

That time-period of my music history didn't last too long, though. In May of 2002, I was doing a Google search on something, and I ran across George Starostin's site! ... (I also ran across the All-Music Guide). George's site and the All-Music Guide really did wonders for my development as a music fan. Also, in May 2002, I got a job! Then I had a significant stream of money coming into my pocket, so I could liberally dabble in a lot of the music that George Starostin and the All Music Guide was recommending. At this point, I bought stuff by Genesis, King Crimson, Alan Parsons, The Kinks, Roxy Music, Elvis Costello, etc. all by recommendations from George! (Genesis, The Kinks, and Roxy Music I still love today very very much.)

Then, I had to quit this job, because it was wearing out my car (I guess a delivery driver job would do that)! Unfortunately, my desire to hear different music expanded greatly at that point ... but my monetary resources were sparse! In January of 2003, I got a job as a staff reporter at the university newspaper, and I had enough money coming in from that to fund a few Procol Harum and T. Rex albums (that particularly intrigued me based on George Starostin's descriptions) ... I could not afford to frequently buy albums! ... Albums that I could not buy, I downloaded. Then, because it was the only good one left that existed, I had to get them off of the very erratic, P2P server, Kazaa. However, downloading even more albums and songs that came recommended by George Starostin (and also becoming an ABBA fan at this point ... and being introduced to all sorts of other weird stuff), my musical horizons were being expanded even more.

At this point was when I first started writing music reviews. I discovered a little web community called epinions.com, which actually pays me to write reviews! ... And I wrote all sorts of crazed reviews for that site. (Indeed, some of the reviews that appear on "Don Ignacio's Music Reviews" are directly from epinions ... and some have probably never been re-edited!) On epinions.com, there's a rather annoying clan of snobs who I resented totally. They usually load their overlong album reviews with irrelevant and uninteresting facts, and wrote their reviews so utterly DRY that it sucks all the moisture in anyone's soul who decides to read it ... and these snobs would often criticize me for not complying with their standard of a proper album review. ... And so then I launched myself on a mission! ... To be as utterly irrelevant in an album review as I could possibly be (yet still being helpful, so people in general won't give me "not helpful" ratings). For the most part it worked! ... I was being rather obnoxious at times, but the "cool clan" of epinions.com liked my reviews very much. I planned to continue in the epinions.com clique until I hit 800 reviews (as an arbitrary number). And then the site administrators unexpectedly kicked me out of it in early June of 2003. (I had to wait for July and about 20 e-mails before the staff bothered to tell me exactly why I was thrown out ... because I established more than one account with them. Those prudes.) Anyway, I was so irate at them that I started a geocities web site account and started writing TONS of reviews ... just out of spite.

Meanwhile, notice something about all these bands that I mentioned I was listening to at this point! I was listening to very little from the 1980s, and pretty much nothing from the 1990s and the 2000s. ... Undoubtedly, I was under an ill-conceived notion that everything from these time periods was crap and something that I don't need to bother with! (And, you know, George focuses primarily on the 60s and 70s!) I didn't even possess Let's Dance by David Bowie ... I even thought that was going to be bad.

And then, when I finally downloaded and listened extensively to "China Girl," I became an 80s music fan! (Yeah ... being this huge David Bowie fan, I wonder what took me so long to download "China Girl.") ...... Although, there was very little about 80s music that I could enjoy, so I continued to listen predominantly to 60s and 70s music. But Bowie did open that door for me, at least.

During that summer of 2003, even though I started the music reviewing with a bang, I sort of stagnated for awhile. I was reviewing albums more quickly than I could buy them! ... I was reviewing some pirated albums, but when I discovered that my review of The Velvet Underground & Nico had an erroneous track (instead of "There She Goes Again," I had "There She Goes" by The La's on it ... and my original album overview had several paragraphs dedicated to why that song is the best from the album). And so I became disillusioned with reviewing pirated albums (as I should have been)! ... I wasn't reviewing much until in late August of 2003, I believe, I discovered a music streaming service! ... Rhapsody! ... It has a lot of albums by a lot of people. And, I could listen to it all next to my computer for only ten bucks a month! ... From there, my music reviewing really took off. I wrote album review after album review ... I reviewed artists that I never would have even dreamed of buying albums from (e.g. Barry White, Foreigner). I then got my own domain name (to combat against stupid advertisements), and I was absolutely having a blast! ... And I still very much am!

With Rhapsody, I discovered Duran Duran ... and the interest in 80s music that I had with David Bowie's 80s work was piqued extremely. I decided to start writing some Duran Duran reviews. Then, when I got to their Wedding Album, it was when I realized that 90s music wasn't that bad, after all. Also at about this time, I reviewed Nirvana's Nevermind, which only sealed that. ... Currently, I will occasionally indulge myself in the odd recent artist (notably The Decemberists and The Polyphonic Spree), and my previous disillusionment with the direction music was going was shattered forever.

And ... dude. That's basically where I am today.

I guess the point of me writing all of this was to illustrate how relatively new I am to rock music. If you're a person reading my site, and you're conceited enough to think that you are more knowledgeable in music than I am, you're probably right! But I am learning ... at an accelerated pace, even.

Half the reason that I am even writing reviews for a web site is for me to learn all about music! ... I am immensely interested in it! ... So, please don't send me comments illustrating how stupid I am. I already know it. (...Yet, there was that person at my geology field camp who called me ignorant because I hadn't listened to Billy Squire before. If you happen to be reading this, I'll have you know that I have now listened to Billy Squire and he totally sucks.) My reviews are precisely what I think of a song ... why I think that about a song ... and, sometimes, I'll even indulge myself in a little comparison and contrast, and possibly any historical interpretation. Please forgive me if I haven't earned a PhD in rock'n'rollology from Georgia Tech University.

geosochi@yahoo.com (George Freedman) received Sept. 8, 2004

Hello again, Michael!

Just read your new essay, and enjoyed it very much, especially because I am a relatively new music fan as well and can relate to your experiences.

One thing I want to say is I respect that you admit you're not some know-it-all and that you do this because you actually enjoy doing it. And don't ever doubt your taste or your writing about music! I think the more various kinds of music you expose yourself to the broader perspective you'll have on what you're currently listening to and you'll gain more confidence and authority when talking about it.

Another one of the best things that have happened to me in the past couple of years is my progression beyond pop/rock. Since it's such a predominant kind of music in our culture it's often difficult to realise there's a whole new world of other music waiting for you!!! Well, as of today I'm heavily indulging myself in jazz, Brazilian and Cuban music, as well as everything from classical music to reggae to doo-wop! Maybe the best thing about all this is as you're expanding your taste you realize there's more wonderful music in this world that the mind could grasp and the amount of yet-to-be-explored music is simply never-ending!

I'm not sure if you remember my e-mail from a couple of months ago. Anyway, I'm still building up my website and delayed opening it until most probably the New Year. It's quite tough getting started and especially hard to find time and inspiration for it sometimes.

Well, good luck with your studies, Michael, and I look forward to reading your updates and seeing your website grow!

Don Ignacio responds: Thanks George! I'm really awaiting your own website to go public. Let me know when that happens!