The Critics
// April 1st, 2011 // Uncategorized
We just got a battery of critiques on our last CD “Still Standing” and I must say, I am little confused with the total lack of consistency. Some examples:
- We get one guy saying he loves the writing, melodies, yet the production is some of the worst he has ever heard
- On the other side we get another who loves every aspect of the disc. Just loves it.
- We get one guy who loves the overall sound production and engineering, yet some of the songs don’t work for him
- We get another critic that says TLA sounds like Motorhead and Jason sounds like Lemmy. This guy also goes so far to say that all the songs sound the same. I can see what he is saying here as ‘Burning Stack’ and ‘the Last Light’ sound like almost the same song (not).
- Etc.
We have had these critics state that their most popular songs from the disc are anything from ‘Left For Dead’ to ‘Still Standing’, ‘Habitat For Insanity’, ‘Twilight Radio Waves’, and one was even ‘Break Me’. So obviously everyone’s specific tastes within this genre of music are totally different, as they should be. About the band and disc some say “Refreshing and different”, some say “Awesome, fresh, old skool rock” and some say “tired and dated” and “it’s been done”.
As you can tell, I am a little fed up with several areas involving ‘critics’ and need to vent a bit. I know that critiques from all sources comes with the territory (i.e. everyone has an opinion), but never did anyone say I have to like it…and I don’t. So if you don’t want to hear Jeff’s opinion/rant, then stop reading now! Here we go.
<Rant On>
My favorites are the armchair critics who frequent Facebook and sites like that. People who tout themselves as music industry “experts” (or some such thing) and know no more about the music industry than those of us who love to listen to music. Their “grand opinion” is supposed to mean something, especially if they don’t like whatever it is that they listened to…because they are so important (<sarcasm> I mean, c’mon…we should all know how important they are! </end sarcasm>). I hate to tell these people, but for every one of them that don’t like our stuff, there are 500 that love it. So we should pack it in or change because you say so? Uh huh. Then there’s the trolls that get banned from the TLA Facebook site because they drop in and start throwing hate for no reason: “That sucks, you guys suck, everything sucks, and why don’t you quit playing?”. We listen to constructive criticism and take it if it is warranted or if the same sentiment is echoed from a lot of people. We don’t pay much attention to these others.
To some of this I say whatever. I mean, Jason sounds like Lemmy and TLA sounds like Motorhead? Seriously? I would have picked Sound Garden, maybe Black Sabbath or Iron Maiden (as many people would). The worst production ever: well, it can’t be that bad if so many other people can’t tell if there is a problem or not. Some people outright love the production. And if people like/love the disc and the songs, then who cares? People often lose sight of the fact that it’s about the music and if it gets the emotion across, not how perfect the snare sound is on a particular song.
The “best” thing I saw so far was these guys who slagged the band for using the names Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Iron Maiden when describing the band’s sound/genre. “TLA is not worthy to use those names” was the statement or something ridiculous like that. Let’s clarify this point for the kids: when these bands names are used in describing TLA’s sound, that immediately helps identify the genre and if people would like that kind of music that TLA is playing based on their “like” of these other bands. Probably better to do it that way than say “Do you like Joe’s Garage Rocking Band or the Little Metalheads? If so, you will like TLA!” as I doubt that the last statement makes you want to hear anything from TLA, nor does it clarify whatsoever the kind of music/genre the band plays. That is unless you know who “Joe’s Garage Rocking Band” or “the Little Metalheads” are, which is highly unlikely. Chances are also really good if you saw an ad stating “Do you like Joe’s Garage…” no one would click on the link associated with it for the afore mentioned reasons, therefore no one would find out who TLA is. And in case there is still some confusion, at no point did anyone say or otherwise infer that TLA IS Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath. Seriously…do we really have to state this?
My mom always said “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Apparently this is a lost saying as so many feel it’s their god given right to be ***holes and that everyone wants to hear whatever they have to say, especially on the Internet. As I have heard about the Internet these days “Hard to hear when everyone is shouting…”.
Bring the responses if you like. I got my flame suit on already (but I would actually have to care about getting flamed for that to matter).
<Rant Off>
Until next time, Stay Heavy.
–Crazy, Ranting, Hard Rocking Jeff
