AllMusic.com Sucks!
It’s a real bad shame too, because allmusic.com used to be my lifeline, for hours I would sit at work and just waste the day away getting lost in my favorite artists pages, linking to their influences, to their influences - influences, similar artists, etc. Oh MY! It was wonderful, how else would you know that Interpol loves Joy Division, and Joy Division loves Bowie, and one of Bowies major influences was that dude that did the soundtrack for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, no not the new version, that is due in theatres later this year, but he old version.
Anyway, I’m getting off point. The point is that Allmusic.com sucks now, and I just blame the Ego’s at the helm of it all. The reasons for suckage are as follows:
1) Design - the new site as slow an eskimo’s molasses, and the “tabbed” browsing the got goin down totally kills the “one stop” approach they used to have. You used to be able to find out everything on just one page in the browser now you got to link to find the info you want. Its just a pain.
2) Writing - the writing has become horrible, now I’m certainly not saying I’m by any strech of the imagination an award winning writer, but I at least expect my music reviews to be about music. Possibly the worst music review ever written was by Editer-in-Suck Stephen Thomas Erlewine, this review is for Bright Eyes latest release “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning”, where he basically just spends a windbaggy amount of time review the hype surrounding the atmosphere of Mr. Oberst. Basically he says he’s no Dylan or Springsteen so people should stop saying it, well no shit.
Bright Eyes is not, Springsteen, Springsteen is not Neil Young, Neil Young is not Bob Dylan, and Bob Dylan is not Woodie Guthrie. So now as an “educated” music reviewer you would expect Mr. Erlewine to be able to differentiate artists, and not just lump everyone into one big pot mix it up and just get one folk-y stew.
I love all those artists individually, and I can see the lines between them clearly. Now does Bright Eyes desereve two stars for their effort, not in the least. (Another peeve is that they lazily just lumped the two simultaneous releases, Wide Awake, and Digital Urn, into one review) It’s better written song craft than have the pop drivel allmusic, and RollingStone (*cough* the bravery *cough) has been telling us is best bets lately, but hey whatever increase your ad revenues boys.