You Oughtta Know

Okay, I really should be catching up on sleep right now, but then I came across this list and I couldn't not blog about it.

From Clap Clap Blog: Just Say No To Pants --

SOME THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MUSIC CRITICS
especially if you are a member of a (local) band

1. We do understand how much work goes into making an album. We also understand that our job is to then judge the results of all that work, which means you do not get a gold star for effort. You get gold stars for having a good album.

2. Just because people have different opinions from you doesn't mean there is something wrong with them.
a) With certain exceptions, generally involving emo.
b) This is especially true when it comes to your opinion of your own work.

3. Very few rock critics think of themselves as cool. They think of themselves, quite rightly, as nerds. If you think they are "trying to be cool," you are wrong. 90% of the time this means you are projecting based on the fact that you do not understand something the writer is saying.

4. If you do not understand something the writer is saying, that is not necessarily the writer's fault. Also, you don't have to read every word, you know.

5. When it comes to local bands, critics are almost always erring on the side of being too nice.

Read the rest of the list here. From personal experience, this pretty much all rings true. My favorite, however, has to be:

10. Please do not claim that we are not entitled to judge a work until we ourselves have produced a work in the same genre of equal quality. (i.e. "Oh yeah, well let's see you make an album as good as I'm Wide Awake It's Morning!") The inescapable corollary of this is that the musicians are then not worthy of being reviewed by us until they can write a better critical essay about a box set, or 200 interesting words about a band that there's not a damn thing interesting about. This is a game that nobody wins.

One last item before I hit the sack: will probably check out Soukelya later --

Soukelya is a two-day event staged by an ukay-ukay and art collective to take place at The Coffee Way (72-A Maginhawa Street, UP Village, beside Holy Family school) starting on the 21st of January 2006, Saturday. It will feature an art show, books, apparel with histories (garage sale/ukay-ukay), cds, vcds and dvds for sale, and a music trading hub.

The featured artists who will open their exhibits on Saturday, 8 pm are Pog Gomez B., Joaquin Misa and Roselle Pineda. The clothes and other things on sale are curated by Mel Baizas, Ginny Misa, and Sarah Raymundo with their friends. Everyone is invited.