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From this compiler's "9/10" albums I only have "Loveless", "Spiderland", "Down Colorful Hill" and "Repeater".

Has anybody heard some of these albums by these obscure artists like Lisa Germano, Harsh Jar Tempo, Royal Trux, Vampire Rodents, etc?

Basically, I'm just trying to figure out if this list is shit or not. So if you have any input on any of these rather obscure albums please share.

I love Royal Trux and Lisa Germano. Can't vouch for the other two you mentioned. I fancy myself fairly knowledgeable of the 90s indie-scene, having worked in a record store and at a college radio station during that decade, but there are still a lot of bands on that list that I completely missed. Some that I'm happy to see on the "Greatest Bands of the 1990s" list that don't get mentioned very much around here:

Thinking Fellers Union
Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments
Kyuss
Brainiac
Polvo
Girls Against Boys

And of course there are some glaring omissions. Can you really make a list of the 75 great artists of the 90s and not mention Pavement, Sebadoh, GBV, Yo La Tengo, Beck, Flaming Lips or Sonic Youth?

Have you heard Royal Trux's Twin Infinitives? Piero Scaruffi, the compiler, has it as his #8 best record of all time. Is it worth seeking out? Of course he also has the Doors' s/t as his #5 album of all time, which causes me to doubt this guy's credibility.

quote:

Originally posted by Vypa:
Have you heard Royal Trux's Twin Infinitives? Piero Scaruffi, the compiler, has it as his #8 best record of all time. Is it worth seeking out? Of course he also has the Doors' s/t as his #5 album of all time, which causes me to doubt this guy's credibility.

This review would make me very wary of his tastes. You can think In Rainbows is mediocre, fine, but "Amateurish" and "Moronic" should never be found in a Radiohead review.

quote:

Originally posted by Vypa:
Have you heard Royal Trux's Twin Infinitives? Piero Scaruffi, the compiler, has it as his #8 best record of all time. Is it worth seeking out?

I tend to to like RTX's later work from their second stint on Drag City, but if you're into noise-rock, Twin Infinitives is pretty stellar. My favorite record is Accelerator, but I've still got them all.

I'd consider Scaruffi just, if not more credible than most critics. He doesn't like a lot of stuff that most critics swoon over, but he definetely has a vast knowledge of music. He really got me into to a ton of different artists I had not heard before.

As for his 90's list, I've heard most of them, so
I'll go through a few.

I'm not a big fan of Lisa Germano, but she makes pretty slow and depressing folk music.

I love Hash Jar Tempo, they are kind of a slow, very dense psychedelic band. All instrumental.

As for Vampire Rodents, they are pretty heavy metal/ gothic/ industrial. I'm not a big fan, but hey, if it's your thing.

The list itself is a very good one though, my favorites being

Mercury Rev - Yerself is Steam
Royal Trux- Twin Infinitives
Morphine- Good
Hash Jar Tempo- Well Oiled
Cop Shoot Cop- Consumer Revolt
Built To Spill- Perfect from Now On
Amon Tobin- Bricolage
My Bloody Valentine- Loveless
Fugazi- Repeater
Nick Cave- Good Son
Slint- Spiderland
Nine Inch Nails- Downward Spiral
Mainliner- Mellow Out
Mercury Rev- Boces

There are more on that list I like plenty, but all of those mentioned above would at least make my top 50 of the 1990's. So, I'd definetely check it out.

And, as always, there are a few that should have been in there that weren't, but at least those artists were replaced with great, lesser known ones.

I really don't like Scaruffi. I kinda think he seems like an asshole, actually. I mean really: a whole page dedicated to your own music reviews? Any reviewer that talks a bunch of shit about an artist (when it's unlikely that he's actually attempted to make his own music) generally annoys me. He not only talks shit about musicians in just about every review I've read of his, but other critics too: "Any critic who hails this album as a masterpiece must be missing 99% of the music released in the same month." The guys just seems like a total douchebag to me. To use his words, I think he's the most overrated music critic since Christgau.

I like the Morphine nod, but other than that I strongly disagree with all of his reviews from the 1990s and the 2000s. What happened to Neutral Milk Hotel or Will Oldham? And I like Nick Cave and the Red House Painters, but neither one of those albums is one of the best of the 1990s. Finally, no Uncle Tupelo - "Anodyne" on the top country rock albums of all time, when it is, in my humble opinion, the most influential country rock record of the 1990s.

No folk list either? Grumble, grumble...

Scaruffi is a clown. I wouldn't take anything he says seriously. Be wary of autodidacts who try to write like academics.

Does anyone actually 'rate' Christgau though? You know, other than himself of course.

quote:

Originally posted by odysseyandoracle:
Scaruffi is a clown. I wouldn't take anything he says seriously. Be wary of autodidacts who try to write like academics.

It's funny you say that because - well - Scaruffi most certainly IS an academic.

His approach to reviewing music is unlike any other, and as you would expect, is a pretty 'academic' way of looking at music. He doesn't seem to care what other people think at least, which is good I suppose.

Christgau is just downright obnoxious. Still, I don't mind looking at his lists and reviews. Good insights can come from the mouth of someone you disagree with 99% of the time, so I don't think it's a good practice to ever discount someone's opinions unequivocally.

quote:

Originally posted by BContrat:
It's funny you say that because - well - Scaruffi most certainly IS an academic.

His approach to reviewing music is unlike any other, and as you would expect, is a pretty 'academic' way of looking at music. He doesn't seem to care what other people think at least, which is good I suppose.

Christgau is just downright obnoxious. Still, I don't mind looking at his lists and reviews. Good insights can come from the mouth of someone you disagree with 99% of the time, so I don't think it's a good practice to ever discount someone's opinions unequivocally.

Scaruffi has a Bachelor's Degree in mathematics. That's it. He has no music education, as far as I can tell. That certainly doesn't mean one can't write about music, but it does mean you probably shouldn't take a particular attitude about it in your writing.

I've read many, many of Scaruffi's "reviews," if you can call them that. He rarely actually talks about the music itself - he very frequently commits the AllMusic sin of rating albums and not explaining why he rated it as such, and I'm not just talking about the untranslated sections. When he does talk about the music, he phrases his opinions in such a way that he tries to give the impression that he's a scholar of musicology...without ever giving any concrete details that would actually show what he knows. His reviews are like number-shaped balloons with nothing but air inside of them. Actually, I find myself agreeing with a decent amount of his ratings (more than 1%, at least); it's just that it's easy to discount someone's opinions when they systematically don't offer any insights - far too many of his reviews are simple descriptions of the music rather than actual criticism.

I could go on about his absurd hatred of the Beatles, the thing that gets most people going, but in the end, he's just another schmuck with a massive record collection - there is nothing worthwhile to be gleaned from the vast majority of his reviews. You aren't going to get any insights into what makes music good from him. He's made himself relevant by quantity (and controversy), not quality. If I just want numerical ratings and lists...well, that's what Metacritic is for.

Whatever Christgau's merits and demerits are, they have nothing to do with the emptiness of Scaruffi's commentary. But I will say that there must be a reason Christgau has been so popular for so long.

quote:

He's made himself relevant by quantity (and controversy), not quality

That sums it up for me.

I've already posted my dislike of Scaruffi somewhere on this site. Check this out. Not one album released in 2007 was worth the "buy it now" rating. Really?

Seems like someone who can't find a single album from 2007 that he loves just doesn't like music. Why heed advice from someone who finds so little joy listening to music?

Well not really. By his philosophy, if he gives an album an 8 overall, that means he likes it just as much as all the other albums he gives an 8. Because Scaruffi is a relatively old guy and has been around for a while, he's probably out of his prime. It doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy music, it just means that he doesn't think it's as good as it used to be. This is no different than most of the people on here, who would put a large majority of older albums in front of newer ones on the best of all time lists. Scaruffi just takes the ratings literally.

Also, I don't think there's anything wrong with the huge quantity of stuff he has on the site, in fact I think that's the selling point. In all honesty, I don't read music reviews for the review itself, just to see what an album is about. Because of this, I really couldn't care less what an album review looks like, as long as I know what's in the album. Scaruffi does this pretty well, and doesn't try to do much else. I would much prefer to be able to find any artist's whole discography than to read a few well written album reviews.

Plus, his decades lists and genre lists are all great starting points for more obscure albums. I know he's a snob, but I don't see why so many people have such a problem with him.

Underworld: Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994)
...is 7.5/10. Bran Van 3000 ranks 59 as a band, and Underworld doesn't make the list. Weak.

I'll just add that Scaruffi ranked Blood on the Tracks a 6/10 and Oh Mercy a 7/10. Oh Mercy > Blood on the Tracks???

No Massive Attack? Poor.

quote:

Originally posted by musicfanatic:
I've already posted my dislike of Scaruffi somewhere on this site. Check this out. Not one album released in 2007 was worth the "buy it now" rating. Really?

Seems like someone who can't find a single album from 2007 that he loves just doesn't like music. Why heed advice from someone who finds so little joy listening to music?

No album from 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003 made the Buy It Now rating either.

Why "buy it now" when you can buy it twenty years from now and then create a blog on the internet where you can tell everyone that music sucks in 2028 and old music was superior? Don't get me wrong I love music, I just find it ridiculously silly to only listen to music created in certain decades and with the new technologies we have there is no reason why someone can't find at least one album from last year to enjoy. It's not like we are having a music shortage.