Has Bakersfield scene reviewing gone south? - By N.L. Belardes

Bakersfield has garnered attention over the past year by taking over a good piece of online territory with positive-spun articles on art, music and theatre. There's an interesting debate going on in the Bakersfield Music Scene regarding that spin. I'll get to that in a moment.

First let me ask: Is such a positive spin good or bad?

Depends on your viewpoint. Personally, I support art and music. I'm not an expert musician, though I have an opinion and took my share of art courses while once an art major. For the Bakersfield scene I write descriptive articles accompanied by photos that help show the global online community that there is a thriving music scene going on in Bakersfield. Has such positive-minded writing helped get any band signed? Probably not. Has such a positive spin on the Bakersfield music scene helped the scene grow? Yes.

Just take a look at band nights at the Rabobank arena where local bands have played to approximately 40,000 fans, creating a buzz that the Condors are going to help kick off even further through selling CDs in the arena, by sending out press releases, running commercials, by already having bands in their arena and on the local news, by spreading the news about local Bakersfiled community-driven music scene support to hockey franchises around the nation, and so on.

Yet the impact of the positive-spinning Bakersfield art scene writers extends far beyond the Hockey CD, having touched thousands upon thousands of people that extends beyond myspace.com, beyond Bakersfield, and across not just the realm of art, but across mainstream media radiowaves, blogs, and in site development. Look at how Bakotopia, a mainstream media site reaches into the music scene and further back into mainstream media in ways that local people don't even realize. The creator of Bakotopia worked for the Washington Post, etc... and the focus? Once again, the local music scene: illuminated. Falsely illuminated? Keep reading...

Myself as a writer illuminating the local music scene has helped open doors into the mainstream and will continue to do so in a mostly positive-minded manner, with criticisms now and then focused in ways that stand up for local art.

The most recent debate in the scene itself regards someone calling themself an 'honest reviewer'. I first learned of the 'honest reviewer' on BUMS. I left a fun comment but waited before making a statement until today.

Why should I make a statement at all?

Although I don't dislike the supposed intentions of the 'honest reviewer', I find the title misleading. Here's the self-declared intention of the latest scene reviewer:

Is anyone else tired of live show reviews that said it was all good? Nothing horrible? Nothing about the singers voice sucking? Guitars sounding like shit? Drummer cant find a tempo if it hit him in the ass? Well you know what, I am here to change that. I shall remain nameless in my quest to give you a HONEST review. If you were good, ill tell you. If you sucked, trust me, ill tell you too. I don't care about sugar coating anything. I'll tell it like it is and I just don't care! If you don't like creative criticism, then you're in the wrong spot!

Heath Dobbler gave his criticism today of the new reviewer. He writes,

These are your reviews and you are soley responsible for what you say. Own up to all of it. These bands whom you will either choose to praise and or chastise will ultimately respect you for it. Besides, how many bands would you be willing to review, if their act consisted of performing live, but from behind a closed curtain? See what I mean? People relate to a vision with a voice... not a statement from a titleless piece of paper.

If I met the reviewer (and maybe I already have) I would tell this person the same thing I have told Dobbler, Matildakay, myself, and illpressed in the past: Clean up your writing. Messy writing is unprofessional. Simple spellcheck helps. Left justify your article as well. Don't give some old badger of a professor like me ammunition to not even read the review.

There were other comments as well. One from Howard Owens, A local newspaper man high up the food chain. He wrote:

Here's the thing about posting music reviews with a bag over your head -- if you're full of shit, nobody can call you on it. If you write the song stumbled over its staccato intro, nobody can hold you accountable for not really knowing what staccato is.

Here's my advice to this honest reviewer -- if you're really honest, you'll use your name because you have nothing to hide. If you have something to hide because you really don't know crap about music, stay anonymous.


And my two cents? I put in a comment on Dobbler's site that philosophically, negative music reviews are simply meaningless, though they might be fun to read now and again (I made a few minor additions):

Although I won't, I could take the 'honest reviewer' mentality as an attack on the scene itself and an attack on me, illpressed, Matildakay, Heath and BUMs. Why? Because of the logic presented. If the writer feels he is honest then by his very title he is accusing the rest of the scene writers as being dishonest. (Is that a true statement? No, not logically true. You can't prove others false by just saying they are false.)

Art is what it is to those viewing the art. You can appreciate all of it, some of it or none of it.

Now, when I was a professor and going to graduate school we historians always accepted history and its criticisms, as well as the critical checks and balances built into the system through book reviews in journals like the William and Mary Quarterly. Experts would get on their soapboxes and legitimately deconstruct other works in the field. Those criticisms were published and fellow historians looked at those to help gauge the value of certain historical works.

But rock music is different. We all know that the music industry's checks and balances are not scholarly at all. A critical eye is practically meaningless. Otherwise, people like Jessica Simpson would be doing Heath's laundry instead of being a millionaire rock star performing at practically any gala event her publicist chooses for her to attend. Musicians rise to the top for sellability, not necessarily on pure talent.

The checks and balances in such a field are meaningless.

So I prefer to describe how I describe by illuminating the local Bakersfield music scene. If people want to read my pans of society, then they can buy Lords: Part One and Thick White Crust, both necessarily critical of society as they are social commentary in a field that is more scholarly than Brittney Spears latest fashion fuax paus and shitty music gone platinum.

I'll take any local Bakersfield band over her. And I would only read local pans like I would read my own rare criticism of local music: tongue and cheek.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Wednesday, February 08, 2006. You can leave your response.