.Intro

I figured I’d take a little time here to write a bit about this page and what my goals for it are. In 2003, I discovered the Music Junkies Anonymous page while searching the web for information on other King Crimson releases after In the Court of the Crimson King blew my mind. Since then I’ve read pretty much all the sites of the WRC and decided I wanted to start my own. I almost figured it as a debt – I’ve discovered so much great music through those sites that I would love to give something back. Plus, there were many great artists that I felt never really got covered thoroughly, sometimes not just among the WRC, but on the web in general. It was originally a sidelight to a webcomic I had, but once I was in college I lost interest in the comic and didn’t feel right continuing it as a music site. I decided I was going to get some webspace, but until the right deal came along I decided to just write into text files on my computer, figuring one day I’d post it all up. Needless to say there was not much motivation there and I forgot about it until I discovered Listology in 2007, which seemed like a great place to post up reviews. I decided that it would be nice to at least have a creative outlet until ‘the real’ site came along and wrote shorter-ish music reviews on the site, starting with a page on The Orb. Eventually my life got fairly hectic and I was fairly irregular until mid-2008, when I decided I needed a creative outlet again. I looked at my old reviews and realized they were very wordy – not until reading a newish WRC page that mentioned every song on They Might Be Giants’ debut album did I realize that it’s pretty much impossible to put all your thoughts on an album to text without being deadly boring.

I decided to rewrite almost all of the pages with this in mind, basically trying to make my main points without droning or ranting. At the same time I realize that reviews do need substance, especially considering how much I could write about some of these albums. I realize that most people who read these pages will have already heard the albums and are looking to see what others thought – at the same time, these sites are most useful to people who are trying to discover new albums through them. The trick is finding a balance between the two types of readers.

The site is artist-based, meaning that I hope to paint a portrait of all the different phases in an artists’ (or bands’) career and not just cover the popular or most well-acclaimed albums. In a way I feel the obscure ones are the most important since many people who have heard of the group will be interested to hear if the albums that nobody talks about are actually any good. That is really part of my personality music-wise; if I hear an album that I really like, I’m going to try to track down all of the group’s albums and see if I can find another one like it. In this way I can try to tell the “whole story” of an artist. As for the types of music found here – compared to the other WRC sites, this one is going to be a lot more focused on New Wave, technopop, and the like. Some time in 2004 I went on a CD buying spree that included Brian Eno’s Before and After Science, Devo’s Q: Are We Not Men?, and Kraftwerk’s Computer World. I really was able to get into these albums and was willing to try anything similar. Two years later, I discovered Yellow Magic Orchestra, which kicked off my obsession with Japanese music, something that is generally not very well covered on the English-speaking parts of the Net.

As for the ratings – I’ve already written a brief page explaining what kind of albums to expect from the individual rankings, but it’s so self-explanatory that you don’t really need to read it. Basically, I put more stock in giving out good ratings to albums that have lots of good moments than I do downgrading those that have bad ones. If you do agree with my taste, then I feel these ratings can be very helpful in telling you which albums to explore next. The ratings do scale, by the way – I’m not going to give lesser grades to Underworld albums because they have put out so much great material, and I’m not going to raise the ratings of Scooter albums because they are “good by their standards”. I realize this is going to raise a lot of weird comparisons – is Faust’s debut really as good as Ween’s Shinola, Vol. 1? So the main factors are how much I want to listen to them and how wrapped up I get in the album when I do. If you agree with my rankings, then I feel confident that within those genres you would probably agree with my rankings for albums you haven’t heard, so if you think I rated the Devo albums well, you should probably rush out and get the 4+ star albums for Depeche Mode and Thomas Dolby as well.

Anyways, hope you enjoy my page! Feel free to write me at erfinagerfin@hotmail.com or leave comments on Listology!