BOC: Sunday Times review

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 01:27:59PM +0200, Arjan Hulsebos typed out:
> On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 23:07:32 +0100, Tim Hall wrote
> > No.  Read the review again.  This guy clearly doesn't have any 
> > interest whatsoever in the actual music, 
> 
> I'm long past expecting that from a reviewer. And compared to the other
> reviews I've failed not to read, I found this one kind of funny.
> 
> And sometimes the reviewers even have a point: remarks like "they sound like
> they did in '76" isn't always A Good Thing (TM).

	This certainly wasn't exactly a friendly review, but I'm not 
sure we can really accuse the reviewer of not being interested. He 
reports lyrics, he says how the guys looked on stage, he was clearly 
actually there and paying some kind of attention. He tells the reader 
rouugly what sort of band it is, and he says not just whether he thought 
they were any good, but why he thought they weren't, to wit that they 
were lame, self-indulgent and tired, mainly I suppose. The problem is 
that he winds up coming across like he wasn't going to approve of 
anything that wasn't skate-punk. I can't tell from this whether BOC were 
actually putting on a flabby careless performance, which I've certainly 
seen them do, or whether it was just that the reviewer just thinks that 
anything with five-minute guitar solos is a waste of his evening and 
they were really playing at the top of their game. 

	I used to have this rant about how the _Sunday Times_ music 
journos were all after discovering the next big music news scoop and 
nothing at all about the music, mind. I remember an interview they did 
with, is it Buck Berry? The bass player from R. E. M. who broke his back 
just after _Monster_ came out? And it went roughly like this:

ST: So this is the end of REM I guess?
BB: No! Not at all. We'll be off the road for a bit is all.
ST: But seriously, a band like this need to tour or die.
BB: I don't agree. We'll have time to write now and we'll come back 
stronger. Honestly, the guys would never break up the band for this, 
we've been together through worse things.
ST: So you'll call it quits once the album's out then?
BB: We're not breaking up!
etc.

	And they did headline it more or less "REM on the Rocks" or 
something like that. They weren't going to let facts get in the way of 
their sensation! Of course Berry did in the end leave, but that was two 
years later and it didn't stop REM from recording and playing (though 
after getting hold of _Up!_ I wished it had--swapped it for the New York 
Gong album, best trade I ever made).

	So I guess if they're still like that then BOC were never 
going to provide the material they wanted. But to me it just 
sounds as if they sent the wrong guy to the gig. Yours,
							 Jon

ObCD: Man or Astroman? - _1000x_
-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk