The Afterword

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At what point do you decide an artist/record, book, film, TV series is just not your cup of tea?

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Taste being a personal thing, this question is about your deciding something just isn’t for you rather than slagging off others’ faves as being of little or no artistic merit (aka a load of old bollocks as it’s known in the trade). One man’s meat and all that…

Reason why the question came to me was the recent Crowded House thread when I thought that as I’d always been quite fond of Split Enz, I’d never really got deeper into the Finn’s more recent band than the better known songs (Weather, Dream, Cake, etc).

Subsequently bought the 2 CD Gold collection and got six songs in before deciding that myself and messers Finn et al weren’t – and were never likely to become – BFFs.

If I don’t really enjoy a book, I’ll generally chuck it within the first 50-pages.

While TV series rarely last more than one or two episodes, I did make a notable exception in the form of Peaky Blinders which I got four episodes into twice before deciding it wasn’t for me. Some stuff I just know I’m not going to like so don’t even bother to start (those US sitcoms where they » Continue Reading.

Does anyone here still pay much attention to album reviews?

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Just noticed that of about 20 CDs reviewed on the first three pages of the Uncut website’s review section, only one has less than 4 stars; and that one, Sufjan Stevens, got three and a half.

Given that every new release by a wrinkly whose records stopped being “must-buys” 10 or 20 years back is hailed as being a “return to form”, I take what reviews I read nowadays with a backload of Saxa.

FWIW, if you held a gun to my head and asked me to itemize my music buying patterns, roughly 80% of the CDs I buy nowadays is back catalogue, with around 10% by new artists and 10% by old farts (sorry cultural touchstones).

How about you? Is there a writer of publication that has you hitting the record racks as quickly as say, Nick Kent’s wonderful Marquee Moon review in the NME did backj40-odd years ago?