Reviews

I have to have a whinge tonight, sorry. I'm really fed up with The Age. I'm sure there were some recent halcyon days when they used to send people to review more gigs. They'd print them in the papers on the following day or the day after and people who'd gone to the gig got to read them and remember how good it was. But this year they've really slacked off. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me? I spent all of January looking for reviews of gigs I'd been to on their web site and finding nothing to please me. I assumed they had shut down something for the summer holidays, the department that sends people to see live gigs, but no. It seems to have become a permanent state of affairs.

I've been searching for reviews of the Wilco gig and the only ones I can find are rather biased and written by one-eyed fans who'd like it if they came out and played on garbage bins and a ukelele and sang covers of Livin' On a Prayer. Sure, today Beat magazine has a review here, which you can read if it takes your fancy. But it's a review of the second show. Why oh why would you send a reviewer to see the second night of their performance? All the hard core fans would have been at the first one (and in fact were).

In the mean time I'm just going to keep adding to my list of little musical annoyances. The tally stands so far:

1. Triple J featuring albums before they are released (see entries on The Shins and Josh Pyke)
2. People reviewing albums well in advance of their release dates and writing about them in a smug, all knowing tone (see recent entries on Wilco)
3. The Age not reviewing enough live music gigs that I've been to see.