(reviewed by Nick Karn)
Well, we've come to the end of another year - the first fully active one in this site's history (most of January as well as the August through December 1999 period were spent on initial design and reconstruction), and it's been an interesting and extremely rewarding one, with hopefully a lot more to come in the future. The "start of the millennium that really wasn't", 2000, brought forth a lot of reviews from several new contributors, the most notable of them being Philip Maddox (who I think has come quite a long way since his initial Jethro Tull reviews in developing his own interesting personality throughout his writings), and Rich Bunnell (who in addition to his own entertaining and useful reviews here does a great job of maintaining the Prindle site on the side as well). And I thank everyone else who contributed as well!
In early fall, Music Junkies Anonymous also hit the 1000 review mark, something that's pretty overwhelming to me now at this point, seeing this site's extremely humble beginnings as the Freak Music Guide, something that fellow 'longtime' reviewers Casey Brennan and Pat D. were around to witness. I never really thought it would get this far, as it seems that every time I start an ambitious project (whatever it may be) I never seem to get too far with it. But my lazy personality couldn't stop me this time, especially with the great competition out there now from the personal review sites of people like George Starostin and John McFerrin (as well as the Satan Stole My Teddybear and Cosmicben sites), who I think also had successful and productive years, and thanks to the beauty of interactivity, they were home to several comments that provided a helpful addition to their actual reviews. And Mark Prindle actually came back from retirement to produce several new band pages - once you start reviewing you can never turn back! Never!
I thought I'd take a trip back through this year typing this at the site's headquarters in my own words (sorry I don't have actual pictures scanned or anything yet, but I did get a digital camera as one of my Christmas presents, so there may be some coming in the future!), in a month by month review:
The year began with the continuing rewrites of my "R" band/artists reviews from the old site (fittingly with my obsession of the year, Rush, of course!), and listening sessions for albums I had most recently purchased. This was by far the most productive month in site history for several reasons besides those aforementioned rewrites. Pat D., who at the time had his own music review site, had a plan to transfer his site reviews over to here and convert his 'star' ratings to numbers for more convenience, and I thought that was really cool of him to do that. Casey Brennan was also in the midst of his Kinks reviews (up to "K" alphabetically by band/artist in his collection of course!), and of course Philip Maddox knocked on the door with his review for Tull's Minstrel In The Gallery and invited his 20 other reviews to come in shortly afterwards! It was something of a rewarding job to post them all, but a nightmare when my damn machine completely crashed after the initial post, perhaps foreshadowing future computer troubles throughout the year. I even had a message board for a short time that I added during the month, but that experiment didn't last too long. The 'Reader forum for site feedback' section is probably just a little more convenient. Oh yeah, and I also restarted school later that month again - it's always a cool experience taking music to listen to on the half hour drive there and back.
Not one of the site's more productive months. Casey Brennan took a long hiatus at the beginning (he actually has a job and a life, which is more than I can say for me! ha!). Outside of a few new Pat D. reviews and a couple from others, most of the month was basically my new, previously unreleased, reviews and rewrites starting from The Tea Party and ending with the only Velvet Underground album I've heard. But one major event did occur - I finally got to see my favorite band live (Dream Theater as if none of you knew - and music 'critics' aren't supposed to have those! There goes my unbiased credibility....) for the first time, and it was incredible. Later on I got to see them again in the summer, with an even more killer setlist and Casey accompanying me, but I never got around to reviewing that show, mostly because I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have on account of a major headache. Bummer.
Towards the midpoint of the month I finished the rewrites of my initial reviews from the old site, so for me things could finally move towards a more efficient pace. This was almost entirely a solo month for me again with the exception of a few "Weird Al" reviews from Rich Bunnell, and outside of the new reviews and completion of those rewrites, the site also went through one major project. I organized every album on the site (or at least I hope I did - E-mail me if you see any album that hasn't been chronicled yet!) by year. Words can't express what a horrible pain in the ass that was to type a ton of album titles and links continuously. I was afraid of carpal tunnel syndrome (which I bet I'll get one day with how much time I spend using this worthless paperweight in here). And this was months before my site move to Geocities, so visitors could never link to the specific albums from those charts. It seemed a waste at the time, but thankfully it didn't turn out to be.
Now this was truly a dead month. Basically down the home stretch of the spring semester of my second year in college, and getting closer and closer to exhausting the well of albums I had left to review, I didn't do all that many new reviews, and outside of a Marco Ursi contribution of The Who's Quadrophenia (which four or five months later I discovered to be a masterpiece I'm so fondly in love with), outside contributions were non-existent (can't say I blame em! :P).
More active than the previous month. School was finally over for me and Casey after the first couple weeks or so, and shortly thereafter he came back on to finish his Kinks reviews (and start on Led Zeppelin in advance, that cheater). My successful used CD store ventures continued here, as I give them a heck of a lot of the credit for my collection expanding as much as it does these days, though I'm not sure what my brother's fascination is with those lower tier 80's hard rock bands everyone bashes, and I probably cost my site some credibility by reviewing that stuff. That's my obsessive-compulsive desire to review everything I can come in contact with coming out again - including videos, which I was motivated here to set up a section for when Pat D. sent me one for Iron Maiden.
More exciting updates came in the midst of summer's beginning, including Prindle site commentator Alex R. jumping on board for a bit reviewing some Black Sabbath, plus more of Casey's Led Zeppelin reviews, Rich Bunnell finally finishing up his reviews on "Weird Al" and starting ones for the B-52's, plus more of my reviews from recent purchases (I was more in an eBay mood than usual, getting stuff like Yes' Relayer and the reissued Live At Leeds from The Who) and the weaker half (at least in my humble opinion) of the reviewing barrel.
It had been a fairly nice summer so far outside this computer screen (you mean there is life outside of it? whoa!), including trips to amusement parks and shores, the usual fun stuff, and the reviewing world here was no exception. Besides reading the increasingly fine updates from other sites, this one ran smoothly enough. Casey was actually on a roll, gaining momentum up to Paul McCartney and Wings, while I found some awesome listening this month with Selling England By The Pound, Who's Next and Power Windows. We even attempted our rendition of the now notorious 'band rating' scale of George Starostin's site, which just may be one of the most clever incorporations in web reviewing.
As the summer was drawing to a close, the site found itself at its' most productive point of the year since the beginning. A big reason for that was Philip Maddox coming back out from behind the bushes with more reviewing skill than ever, and delivering one of the site's most comprehensive pages for, you guessed it, Frank Zappa, and even contributed a huge 'various artists' page. A couple of us explained our album rating criteria a little more in depth, and I added a new feature in an album reviewing list by author, which (I hope) is a helpful tool for you all. Oh, and this month for me was a particular goldmine for used CD and music club purchases - I got a very generous 12 CD deal from Columbia House and ordered a few others from BMG, which greatly helped things. And I saw Dream Theater again! Yay!
School started again, which inevitably saw a decline in production, but surprisingly enough only a slight one. The task of reviewing my huge CD haul was extremely fun, and Casey (through the "M" artists), Phil (showing his diversity with Insane Clown Posse and Queen in the same month!) and Rich (with more Police reviews) continued their worthwhile contributions. This job is great - even if we don't get paid for it!
Ooh, now this was quite an interesting month. Three new contributors in Jeff Blehar, Seth Edwards and Jean-Paul Keulen (all three of them commentators on other sites) made their debut on this site by reviewing Radiohead, The Rolling Stones and Marillion respectively, but that's not even the half of it. Towards the middle of the month I became extremely frustrated with the xoom server I was on, so I decided to change all my links (since all of them had inadvertently contained their whole entire Web addresses instead of their single filenames! talk about a royal pain in the ass again!), take on a project where I organized every band/artist on here by genre (don't ask me why I did this to myself), and plan to move the entire site elsewhere, but uploading problems due to both the quality of my web browser and the upgrading processes of the Geocities server prevented me from doing so for what seemed like forever, and afterwards for a short while I was unable to stay at home to upload files, having to go elsewhere (at school or my dad's office to do it). Ugh. And on top of that, this umm... mailing list incident which I feel kinda stupid for even responding to in the first place now provoked a rant I wrote, whose entire plot can be explained here. If you haven't already seen it, it's one of the site's very best reads - a truly great discussion on 'ideal reviewing styles'. Whew.
November 2000
George Starostin went on a really long break from his site for almost the entire month, which was something of a development in the web reviewing community, since the guy updates his site constantly and seemingly never sleeps. This wasn't a very productive reviewing month for me, since, with my brother actually living on campus (as opposed to my commuting to school), essentially half my supply of what I was able to review was gone, though I did copy a few of his albums before he departed, and I didn't have that much from my haul left. Luckily, the site's prominent reviewers chipped in and made it a productive month overall (thanks!) - particularly Philip Maddox. And a 'prog rock' related rant came as well.
December 2000
Even more of the same as the month before letting the other reviewers contribute mostly with the exception of a few updates from me, because my well was sort of running dry, although in the middle of the month my brother came back home, which put some more albums back on the 'coming soon' list, and I received quite a nice haul for Christmas and went on a nice CD 'shopping spree'. Yes, I really am a music junkie in the truest sense of the word! Don't expect any Movie Junkies Anonymous sites as counterpoints any time soon! In any case, I created an area where readers (and reviewers) could submit their 'favorite all time albums' lists, which I think turned out rather well. Everyone else's reviews for this month came in rather smoothly as well - and I thought Phil's 'underrated albums' list was pretty nice. I'm surprised certain hardcore fans haven't yelled at Casey yet for his Moody Blues reviews though (cough cough).
Also, I thought I'd add my brief impressions of what albums released in 2000 were the best, worst, biggest disappointments, and so on (only including ones I've heard this year - that list is incomplete so far):
Best album: Transatlantic-SMPTe
Worst album: Motley Crue-New Tattoo
Biggest disappointment: King's X-Please Come Home...Mr. Bulbous
Didn't quite live up to the hype: Radiohead-Kid A (though it's still good!)
Underrated and underexposed: Spock's Beard-V
Honorable mention (live archive release): Jeff Buckley-Mystery White Boy
Honorable mention (comeback album): U2-All That You Can't Leave Behind
Well, there's my long summary of how things went on the site in 2000. And I await what 2001 (the real millennium beginning). Thanks again to all those who contributed reader comments and reviews this year, and I hope the next year is just as great if not better!
How was your 2000? Post your comments
[email protected] (Philip Maddox)
Yup, twas a good year in music reviewing (and not just because I finally got up and started writing stuff). It really kinda took off, with plenty of new sites, the existing ones expanding a whole lot, and even the return of Prindle. Special compliments to all of the reviewers out there.
So, how did the year 2000 shape up for me? Not too different than other years. Socially and whatnot, nothing changed. But, I did get lots of new music, and decided to take it upon myself to review my obsessively large record collection. I got into old Genesis really hard this year, and they've been growing into one of my favorites. I also grabbed a ton of Zappa and Yes albums as I got more into prog rock. I didn't hear too much in the way of interesting new music this year (I only bought a few discs that came out in the year 2000), so I'd probably give the title of "My favorite album of the year" to Ian Anderson's The Secret Language Of Birds (Tull is my favorite band so, like you said, there goes my unbiased credibility as well). I got to see Tull and the Who over the summer, both of which rocked the house down (though I have to admit that the Who was even better than Tull live this year).
Music was about it for me this year, except for my continued interest in RPGs (I finally got to play Chrono Trigger! Do you have any idea how hard that game is to get?), though Final Fantasy 8 disappointed me (if anyone out there has played the game, what was UP with that damn 'draw' magic system?). The Lunar series reisssues on Playstation continue to rule, of course (and if you haven't played 'em, play those games!!!). I also kept working for my school's "Science Fiction Club" (which I cofounded as an excuse to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 at school and escape the wrath of my psychotic band director, whose class I escaped occasionally to work on this club). Saw a couple of awesome movies. The best 2 of the year (well, of last year - I don't go out to the movies that much, so I'm kinda behind) were the extremely awesome American Beauty (what a soul crushing experience) and Princess Mononoke (which brought a tear to my eye through its gorgeous animation, perfect characters, and truly touching story). And well, that's about it. Hope the web reviewing community has another great year!
Ummm, well, uh, i uh um, well i guess i did jack squat in 2000 other than rebuilding my computer a coupla times. I did go back to school at SUNY-Albany, and yeah, i must be the oldest junior in history at age 22. As you can probably all tell from my FREQUENT music submissions, i'm damn lazy and thats why i am at this point, a 22 year old still a year away from graduation.
In any case, ive been rather lax on buying new music lately, simply because i am completely disgusted with the pop music scene nowadays, and i really dont know many people who are diehard undreground metal fans, so buying some unknown releases and wasting $18 is not very attractive to me. So my best of list is quite understandably short for 2000.
Best Album- Iron Maiden- Brave New World (7/10)
Worst Album- (tie) Limp Bizkit- Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, Disturbed- The Sickness (ive heard both many times, but i dont own them)
Biggest Dissapointment- New Metal, Rap Metal, which isnt really metal
Underrated and underexposed- Iced Earth, and Slayer, since Slipknot pilfers from them all the time
Honorable Mention- Incubus- Make Yourself (maybe a review coming soon)
Best Comeback- U2- All You Cant Leave Behind, Iron Maiden- Brave New World