Avagdu
3rd January 2006, 07:41
Unlike you, I have never worked as a music critic—I'm a magazine editor, writing when I feel like it. And I have always written as a fan, using reviewing primarily as a means to make me think a little harder and more clearly about why something commands my interest and sometimes stirs what I can only call my love. So, I'm not all that troubled by the corporate aspects of the pop-music biz. Don't get me wrong: I don't want my sons to grow up to be record execs, but 1) music creation, production, and distribution have not been carried out more freely or more justly by Communists, Democratic Socialists, or theocrats; 2) the music business is no more dreadful or cruel than the art market, the dance world, book publishing, or Hollywood; 3) it is the only one of these systems that extends power of some kind to people of color and those under 25. Technology will do the record biz in as surely as it did in the sheet-music business. Until then, keep the CDs coming.