Daily reminder that SCARUFFI is a HACK

Bump

not believing this till I actually hear that podcast. post the podcast OP. Post It

if you post the interview he trips up on i’ll believe this but I really don’t think it exists. His writings, at least for albums he likes, generally make reference to specific elements in the music that you really couldn’t guess on.

Yeah I have yet to see evidence of this interview existing

That’s he’s secret - he only actually rates albums he likes. That’s why most albums have 5’s or 6’s etc. - because it’s a mostly safe rating for an album he never listened to

That’s also why his 5’s and 6’s often seem weird and random

The only way you can prove a single sentence in your shitpost is with the interview, and you haven’t posted it, so it’s safe to discount this as bullshit.

Somebody did the math and it came out to 12 straight years of listening since I believe it was 1985, which is where the beginning comes from.

No one cares. Post the interview or fuck off.

OP here, I clearly don’t have the interview. I just thought that post was an interesting insight into that dude, and a possible one

Oh, so you’re a retard who believes everything he sees at face value without verifying sources. Great going twat.

Nah dude. All I’m sayin is that it’s possible. Im not believing it 100% but it’s plausible given how much I know Scaruffi

All that just to say yes. Cool, get fucked.

Fuck off

Cringe and redpilled
Based and bluepilled

Given just how extensive and in-depth the actual review portions seem to be, I find it a bit improbable that he forged and bullshat all the way to his encompassing catalogue of rankings; at the very least, every review he's published contains a decent chunk of subjective introspection, to the point that every rating appears to sport some internal consistency. I'm not too certain on the other aspects of life, though, albeit if one to shave off all the time they spend vegetating on their phone all day and invest it towards something a little more fulfilling, netting as many achievements as Scaruffi might become a bit more attainable.

Scaruffi’s reviews suck.

He doesn’t review music, he reviews history. He doesn’t give a fuck about the subjective feeling each piece evokes, he only cares whether it was the first in the genre/style or not. He’s a fuckwad

If you read any other review of Scaruffi’s aside from the Beatles one you’d know that most of his reviews summarize albums with just one sentence, kind of like Christgau. He probably spends a total of 5 minutes on most albums, finishes them off with a single sentence and gives a random rating in the 5-7 range for most non-classic albums depending on whether he liked the one song he listened to or not

dude he's been doing this since the 70's and he probably hasnt heard can since then.

Also listening passively is difficult to define. We would probably agree that reading a book while listening to music is passive, but what about video games? Passive ones like GTA? What about staring at images or paintings?

Is the only "true" way to listen to music to meditate while doing it? Because sure that's great. I do that a lot too, but not everyone has that luxury. Also most music, especially pop music is made to be listened to passively.

In the 70s he was still either a teen or occupied with his Math MSc and later Phd

>If you read any other review of Scaruffi’s aside from the Beatles one you’d know that most of his reviews summarize albums with just one sentence, kind of like Christgau. He probably spends a total of 5 minutes on most albums, finishes them off with a single sentence and gives a random rating in the 5-7 range for most non-classic albums depending on whether he liked the one song he listened to or not
(not true, by the way)
He does this for some albums yes, but if its within the last 20 years his reviews for the albums are at least a few paragraphs.)

Not saying his reviews are good though.

He claims he stared the original list in 1974

Lmao that must be complete bullshit. Started where? In a fucking notepad?
Is he a fucking autist? LMAO

Has he ever given an album a 10? I thought he gave Beefheart one but it's 9.5...

yes it probably started on a notepad

That’s still 6.5 hours a day, now instead of 8.5

just look at his original artwork section btw.

youre missing the point, for someone to actually forget about can means that are a verified pleb

no theyre usually little bits of just thigns that are already written about the bands, sometimes including common misconceptions

Most if not all of his 5s and 6s (with the exception of Revolver) are very fitting.

>Started where? In a fucking notepad?
Yes, zoomer, before computers and iphones were a thing people would write down stuff on notepads.

>music review

With the exception of the beatles, David Bowie, Miles Davis (sketches of Spain 6.5 what a fag) etc

Which Bowie and Davis recording didn't deserve a 5 or a 6? And yes, Sketches of Spain isn't really that special.

sketches of spain should have at least been a 7

all of his bowie ratings are accurate, except blackstar should have been a 5 and scary monsters should have been a 1

>and scary monsters should have been a 1
Hyperbole belongs in drunken banter, not professional fields.

>sketches of Spain isn’t really that special
Why?

>all his Bowie ratings are accurate
Fuck off. Hunky Dory is easily 8.5

The problem with Scaruffi is that he isn’t a music reviewer. He’s a history reviewer. If a band wasn’t responsible for a major breakthrough in music (read: 99.999% of music), then it sucks according to him, just because it wasn’t first

He gives fuck all about the subjective experience of the listener

>Why?
Well, what reason is there to believe it's that special on the first place?

>Fuck off. Hunky Dory is easily 8.5
Definitely not. Scaruffi's ratings are much more strict than giving away ratings like that.

>The problem with Scaruffi is that he isn’t a music reviewer. He’s a history reviewer. If a band wasn’t responsible for a major breakthrough in music (read: 99.999% of music), then it sucks according to him, just because it wasn’t first
Indeed. If you aren't relatively original, you aren't good.

>He gives fuck all about the subjective experience of the listener
That's the work of entertainment reviewers, not art reviewers.

>Fuck off. Hunky Dory is easily 8.5
dude just listen to any other glam rock record of the time. I'll admit i have a soft spot for it, but you're kindding yourself it its a fucking 8.5.

at best a 6.5

Why would he go through the effort of creating a fake database of reviews, ratings, lists, etc. for literally no one to see? It makes much more sense that he actually does it for his personal satisfaction

He did an interview with University of Adelaide student radio where he claimed he only listened to albums once before rating them except in very special circumstances, and that sometimes he doesn't even listen to albums in full before rating them. The interview seems to have been taken down from their website but I remember it very distinctly... I tuned in because the interviewer posted here the day before saying that he was interviewing Scaruffi and was asking if we had any questions for him. Maybe if he's around here he could post a link?

>Given just how extensive and in-depth the actual review portions seem to be,
you have to be joking right

>If you aren't relatively original, you aren't good.
Brahms wasn't orginal.

>buaahh he doesn't listen to full albums before rating
So what? Most albums you listen to 3 songs and already gather what's up with it. He doesn't need to waste his time listening to 1 to 2 hours of mediocre music. Most music is unoriginal and derivative anyway and the way he reviews is based.
He values more historical relevance and originality and there's nothing wrong with that.

If you want "muh beats" "muh melody" "muh feels" "i listened to the whole album three times!!" there's a bald dude on youtube that has you covered.

Bowie was definitely at least relatively original, he had a unique style, and a very diverse one at that

Also music is literally all a play of influences
Pet Sounds was influenced by Rubber Soul and Revolver, go figure

>Also listening passively is difficult to define.
No, it's not. You are either giving it your full attention or you are not. Having music in the background while mediating is also not active listening.

Cont.
>He gives fuck all about the subjective experience of the listener
>That's the work of entertainment reviewers, not art reviewers.

Art is subjective you literal fucking mong lmao

You’re literally wrong dude lmao

This is for example his section on Fall out Boy - yes, from the last 20 years

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>Art is subjective
This statement isn't even gramatically correct. What the fuck is the point of arguing with a retard who doesn't know what the words he uses actually mean?

Pretty based of true. Most music doesn't deserve even a full listen.

Brahms wasn't particularly good either. Overrated classical.

This dude gets it.

Yew, which is why Scaruffi awarded some of his albums with a 7+, so what's your point now?

Let's suppose it is. So what?

Art - singular noun
Is - form of “to be” in present tense for singular nouns
Subjective - adjective that can be attached to any noun

The statement is grammatically correct and you’re a retarded faggot

>suppose
There is nothing to suppose. Art isn’t objective as nothing that is supposed to result in some purely individual reaction can be objective. There is no god up there to assign any objective value into anything aside from “true/false”

>Yea Forums interviewed him
wtf when?

Not the guy you responded to but....

He's not a credible critic.

Meant to attach this

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Agreed, all those ratings should be lower

That’s my problem with him - his 5’s and 6’s are truly random. He lumps together much better albums and some really shitty ones

When you're an impressionable underage b&, new to Yea Forums, and looking for support by pixels on a screen, you look up to retards like Scaruffi. Once you've grown up it becomes apparent there's a real world. Do you really want to consume, consume and not even remember or enjoy half of what you hear? I bet if you asked any faggot like AntiWarhol what they've been listening to in the past month or about a specific rating/genre they'd explode on the spot.

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>couldn't even remember who Can was
Nah, what he didn't remember is if he prefers Future Days or Tago Mago. Stop spreading lies you Beatlesfag.

This is the guy who did the podcast: last.fm/user/marconofrio
But as explained by the OP is either trolling or is a mad Beatles/Bowie fan.

Alright, art is subjective. So fucking what?

What's the problem? Chemical Romance, while not particularly great, still developed their own style within emo-pop.

>OP is either trolling or is a mad Beatles/Bowie fan.
As usual from Scaruffi haters.

I'd explode on the spot. If you give me a genre to talk about I'd have more info. At this point I don't really even focus on genre, just the band and then move onto predecessors/successors or similar bands

Beethoven's 9th symphony is his only 10 according to him.

The insecurity of beatlesfags knows no bounds.

The guy is in his 60s he's had a lot more time alive to listen to shit then your average mutant. I find his catalog very believable. Its not even anything too staggering in the first place.

>so fucking what?

So, being an “””objective””” reviewer means you’re a shit reviewer since art is all about the subjective

Ah so quantity of quality

>art is all about the subjective
Then how come there's art schools?

Being an objective reviewer means you take into account the objective elements our of which a specific art piece is composed from.

'trivial'.

>takes an "intellectual" stance on music
>doesn't even know music theory
What did he mean by this?

You mean over quality?
If so that's not what I'm saying at all. The quantity isn't that abnormal given his age, thats my point.

>You mean over quality?
Correct, was a typo.
>If so that's not what I'm saying at all. The quantity isn't that abnormal given his age, thats my point.
Sure. My point is that it's all of poor quality

>Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times.

Ellington and Coltrane are supremely important jazz musicians. However, jazz critics in the real world, as opposed to the imaginary jazz critics in Piero Scaruffi’s head, have long recognised that Louis Armstrong is as important, and possibly more so. Here’s Martin Williams in The Jazz Tradition: ‘If we take the most generally agreed-upon aesthetic judgments about jazz music, the first would undoubtedly be the dominant position and influence of Louis Armstrong — and that influence is not only agreed upon, it is easily demonstrable from recordings.’ And here’s Richard Cook in his Jazz Encyclopedia: ‘[…C]ontemporary jazz celebrities such as Wynton Marsalis have insisted on the primacy not only of the universally acknowledged early work but the rest of Armstrong’s oeuvre as a potent and powerful legacy. If the world’s music still swings today, it is in large part because of what he was first doing, eight decades ago.’ Here’s Whitney Balliett, writing in the Fifties: ‘For all that, he [Armstrong] has managed, as the purest of all jazz musicians, to be an infallible definition of just what jazz is.’ Here’s Ted Gioia, in his History of Jazz: ‘Surely no body of work in the jazz idiom has been so loved and admired as the results of these celebrated sessions, the immortal Hot Fives and Hot Sevens. In historical importance and sheer visionary grandeur, only a handful of other recordings — the Ellington band work of the early 40s, the Charlie Parker Savoy and Dial sessions, the Miles Davis recordings of the late 50s come to mind — can compare with them. Certainly none can surpass them.’

And here’s Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins, the author of a book-length study of Armstrong, writing in Visions of Jazz: ‘If the twentieth century has proven to be the American era in music — an assessment made with increasing frequency and growing confidence — it can also be characterized as the Armstrong era.’

Why does Scaruffi omits any mention of Armstrong? Because Armstrong was an indisputably great musician who was also wildly popular and commercially successful. Scaruffi’s contempt for the ‘masses’, which we’ll see more of later, means that he cannot accept that any musician who’s been broadly successful with the public has any merit; if the ‘masses’ love it, it can’t be good. The flipside of this is that he will downplay and even misrepresent the popularity of musicians that he likes. The idea that Ellington and Coltrane were in any way unpopular or obscure is completely inane. Ellington during his lifetime became as famous as any jazz musician gets, winning nine Grammies, appearing on the cover of Time magazine and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969. Coltrane’s A Love Supreme sold in the hundreds of thousands, and an abridged version of his cover of ‘My Favourite Things’ was even a hit single. But Scaruffi never lets the facts get in the way of what he wants to say. In fact, his contempt for fact is all over this piece.

>Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe.

Who are the musicians that these ‘classical critics’ rank Beethoven ‘over’? Could he mean Haydn, who was enormously popular in Europe and who has been routinely regarded as one of the greatest composers in history? Haydn doesn’t appear in Scaruffi’s remarkably unadventurous list of great classical works. And to what degree was Beethoven ‘controversial’, anyway? His personal behaviour could be controversial; the quality of his music was much less so. He was generally agreed to be a genius, and when he died, thousands followed his coffin.

See? Like I told you, this thread was made by a mad Beatlesfag trying to demerit Scaruffi by posting this pasta from another site.

>My point is that it's all of poor quality
Thats not a rebuttal to my point then, its just an opinion.

I'm pretty sure I've read this exact post on a blog somewhere before.

Irrelevant since your point is also an opinion
>seething scruffites

In passing, let’s take a look at Scaruffi’s list of the greatest pieces of classical music you’ll ever hear:

>Ludwig Van Beethoven: Symphony 9 (1824)
>Franz Schubert: Symphony 9 in C Major “Great” (1828)
>Wolfgang Mozart: Concerto 21 in C K467 (1785)
>Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B Minor (1749)
>Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony 15 (1971)
>Gustav Mahler: Symphony 9 (1910)
>Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (1859)
>Giuseppe Verdi: Requiem (1874)
>Johann Sebastian Bach: Brandenburger Concertos (1721)
>Bela Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra (1943)
>Johannes Brahms: Symphony 4
>Franz Schubert: Quintet for 2 Violins, Viola and 2 Cellos in C major, D956 Op. 163
>Bela Bartok: Quartet 4
>Ludwig Van Beethoven: String Quartet No.14 Op.131
>Shostakovich: Quintet in G minor for Piano & String Quartet, Opus 57
>Ludwig Van Beethoven: Triple Concerto C major
>Leos Janacek: Glagolitic Mass (1926)
>Igor Stravinskij: Le Sacre du Printemps (1913)
>Antonin Dvorak: Symphony 9 (1893)
>Antonio Vivaldi: Il Cimento dell’Armonia op 8 (1725)
>Hector Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique (1829)
>Olivier Messiaen: Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps (1940)
>Claude Debussy: Jeux

What’s striking about this list is how amazingly conservative it is. There is nothing earlier than Bach, and nothing later than Bartok. Everything on it could be programmed by the least ambitious director of the least adventurous provincial symphony orchestra, with no fear that subscribers would be frightened away. (If that Vivaldi looks unfamiliar to you, he means the Four Seasons — he’s just using the title of the larger set to which they belong to make himself look like he knows about classical music.)

Scaruffi professes to despise the Beatles for being ‘mainstream’, but this list is mainstream with a vengeance: no Gesualdo, no Schoenberg, no Webern, no Stockhausen, no Babbitt, no Ligeti; but more interestingly, not a single Bach cantata, when the general consensus these days is that Bach’s cantatas are far more central to his achievement and career than something like the Brandenburgs, which, great as they are, are nowadays most often heard as pre-flight music on Ryanair planes. Only one work by Mozart, and that not an opera; nothing by Haydn, Sibelius, Handel, Palestrina, Gabrieli, Victoria, Tallis, Byrd or anyone else from before the 17th century; no Britten, no Berg, no Henze, no Birtwistle, no Partch, Cage, Feldman or even Glass or Reich.

>Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success: the Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest.

Freesheet reviewers might do this when explaining the success of the most recent Beatles compilation, but serious rock criticism, which was invented partly in order to deal with the Beatles, has never made a simple equation of popularity with merit. The Beatles’ popularity is, if anything, something that serious rock criticism has had to explain away. More to the point, if the popularity of popular music has nothing at all to do with its merit, then it doesn’t matter how many records the Beatles sold.

Its not irrelevant since you were replying to my post, which implies yours was a rebuttal of some sort.
Also of course mines an opinion, but its not one as context empty as "ooga booga bad quality"

>Beatles’ “aryan” music removed any trace of black music from rock and roll: it replaced syncopated african rhythm with linear western melody, and lusty negro attitudes with cute white-kid smiles.

Leaving aside the eye-popping racism and unforgivable inanity of this characterisation of ‘black music’, insofar as it tries to describe what the Beatles did with the styles of black music that the band knew, it’s the reverse of the truth. The Beatles married Western harmonies and melodic techniques to rhythmic foundations learned in part from rock & roll and in part from black American pop music — not ‘african rhythm’, of which they, like most of the black American musicians they admired, knew nothing at all. No British pop musicians before the Beatles had such a grounding in black American pop, and not many white bands since have been able to match the Beatles’ groove — e.g., ‘The Word’, ‘Drive My Car’, ‘She’s A Woman’, ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’.

>Contemporary musicians never spoke highly of the Beatles, and for a good reason.

The Rolling Stones disliked the Beatles so much that they begged Lennon and McCartney to write a song for them; went to the Beatles’ parties; attended the Beatles’ recording sessions; appeared on the Beatles’ records and got the Beatles to appear on their own. Eric Clapton, a principled hero of rock, showed his loathing for everything the Beatles stood for by becoming one of Harrison’s best friends and jumping at the chance of playing on a Beatles session. Jimi Hendrix despised the Beatles so much that he was playing the title track of Sgt Pepper within a couple of days of the album being released. In short, the contempt with which the Beatles were regarded by their peers is familiar to nobody who knows anything at all about the history of popular music.

>which implies
Irrelevant. Reply to what was actually said by me, not what was said in your head
>but its not one as context empty as "ooga booga bad quality"
It kinda is though.

Absolutely based

You certainly don’t have to finish art school in order to be a good artist. In fact, most good artists have never even stepped into an art school

Art schools are for poseurs and people who don’t know what to do with themselves

Hope this clears up your questions :^)

>They could not figure out why the Beatles’ songs should be regarded more highly than their own.

Yeah, the stupid ones probably couldn’t.

>They knew that the Beatles were simply lucky to become a folk phenomenon (thanks to “Beatlemania”, which had nothing to do with their musical merits). That phenomenon kept alive interest in their (mediocre) musical endeavours to this day.

The meaning isn’t clear, but he seems to be suggesting that people only go on listening to the Beatles because they are historically interested in the phenomenon of Beatlemania. Which is the same reason why Charles Manson’s album continues to sit at the top of the album charts, all these years later.

>Not to mention the American musicians who created what the Beatles later sold to the masses.

You can’t accuse the Beatles of selling other people’s music and simultaneously accuse them of changing the same music before they sold it. If they changed the music, then they transformed it into their own music; if they didn’t change it, then in selling it to the masses, they can’t have wrecked it.

S E E T H I N G

So then why did you specifically reply to my post when your point had nothing to do with my point? Or did my head just imagine that that happened?
>It kinda is though
My post was a simple 'because A then B' yours was 'low quality'. What are you even trying to prove here?

>So then why did you specifically reply to my post when your point had nothing to do with my point?
Of course it did. Do you need to reread my original post?
>My post was a simple 'because A then B'
The lack of context and analysis is what makes it low quality (which I attempted to rectify, before it went over your head, apparently)

Are you going to address my point?

>The Beatles sold a lot of records not because they were the greatest musicians but simply because their music was easy to sell to the masses: it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth.

While it’s true that difficult (i.e, non-catchy) music is seldom very popular, there is no reason to suppose that the ‘masses’ automatically reject technical innovation; if a record is hot enough, people will buy it, no matter how innovative it is or isn’t, and the truth is that most listeners neither know nor care about the level of technical innovation in a record. In any case, it is demonstrably untrue that the Beatles’ music was not technically innovative. Among the techniques that they pioneered in popular music were: controlled feedback, automatic double-tracking, use of tape loops, use of Indian musical techniques, use of chance techniques, creative use of studio technology (feeding Lennon’s voice through a Leslie speaker on Tomorrow Never Knows), etc. And those are just their innovations in recording technique; their innovations in musical style and songwriting are too numerous to go into.

Among the Beatles’ songs to have no ‘creative depth’ are: Eleanor Rigby, Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day In The Life, Hey Jude, Blackbird, I Am The Walrus, Happiness Is A Warm Gun, Something, Help!, Ticket To Ride, Long Long Long . . .

>They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic. If somebody had not invented “beatlemania” in 1963, you would not have wasted five minutes of your time to read a page about such a trivial band.

Beatlemania was not an invention, but the name given by the media to a real historical phenomenon.

>For most of their career the Beatles were four mediocre musicians who sang melodic three-minute tunes at a time when rock music was trying to push itself beyond that format (a format originally confined by the technical limitations of 78 rpm record). They were the quintessence of “mainstream”, assimilating the innovations proposed by rock music, within the format of the melodic song.

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

To be serious, once again Scaruffi has it backwards: later rock music picked up on what the Beatles were doing (unusual harmonies, studio experimentation, serious lyrics, emotional intensity) and continued to do it, but no other band did all of what they did. Prog-rock bands extended the musical range, largely at the expense of emotional intensity; hard rock ramped up the intensity, but at the expense of melody and concision. As Joe Carducci put it, the Beatles were simultaneously the biggest pop group in the world, and the world’s first rock band.

Me
>he is old he has listened to a lot
You
>Quantity over quality
Maybe you need to reread, I never said anything about quality. I was just addressing people that doubted that Scaruffi could of had the time to do everything he has allegedly done.

>I never said anything about quality
PRO-TIP: that's the problem

Do you got it yet?

>I was just addressing people that doubted that Scaruffi could of had the time to do everything he has allegedly done.
Not if it's actual, active music listening. Based on his writings, I see no evidence of that. Ergo, it may be of quantity, but not quality.

Samefag but w/e
>(which I attempted to rectify, before it went over your head, apparently)
You even conceded by saying "sure" here
As an addendum your reply works, and if thats the case I have no problems, but you said "Ah so" which usually means the speaker is directly addressing a previous point.

That is completely irrelevant to my question. If art, as a concept is "subjective", how come it can be analysed in an objective, academic manner? Honestly, I've no fucking clue what you even mean by "art is subjective". Top definition of "subjective" I'm finding is
>Dependent on or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world
Which is bullshit because art can be observed within the external world. Maybe you mean "what constitutes as art is subjective" but that makes no fucking sense either as that topic can too be approached from an objective (not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased) anthropological viewpoint. Honestly I think the issue here is there's a certain feeling you have in regard to this topic, but your command of English, or really any language, is too poor to convey that emotion because you're too much of a mouthbreathing cretin.

Now who is addressing something that was said in one's head.
>Not if it's actual, active music listening. Based on his writings, I see no evidence of that. Ergo, it may be of quantity, but not quality.
How am I supposed to know this was your unabridged point based off a simple "quantity over quality" I was going off only what was said to me.

That was based on the assumption that he never listened to any music until he started reviewing. Which is retarded, of course. There are a ton of artists I could knock out full discography reviews of right now

>nothing later than Bartok
>has Shostakovich
The guy who made that blog post was so retarded, and you too for following his retarded opinions.

>How am I supposed to know this was your unabridged point based off a simple "quantity over quality" I was going off only what was said to me.
Sorry, I thought you weren't a fucking idiot.

I obviously mean the value of art you braindead retard
Everything has to be spoonfed to you
And you dare call me a mouthbreathing cretin, you fucking idiot who can’t do his own legwork hahaha

>complaining about a post of 30 compositions doesn't feature over a hundred composers
I swear, you really are retarded.

He meant the dates of the individual works by the artists, not the absolute dates of their death

I assume you’re the same moron as this guy though:

Him listening to that many albums isn't much of an accomplishment (look at RYM autists).

It's more his extensive book list. Reading a book requires a lot more time and effort than listening to an album. And he's said he's read a lot. Either he has a freak level speedreading ability like Bloom or he's a lying hack. I'm guessing the latter.

>value of art
On an individual level? Sure I guess but why would anyone give a shit about that, especially when it comes to reviews, the entire point of which is to gauge value.
On a societal level? Absolutely not. Anthropology deals with that.

What warrants an inference to your whole point based off your post? Remember you are posting anonymously and I can't assume you were any of the other posters in this thread.
If you must know I actually do agree with you that quality is an issue with Scaruffi, albeit not a consistent one. The critiques that I like, I like them for niche reasons.
Its obvious which ones he put more effort into as well.

>The Beatles were the quintessence of instrumental mediocrity. George Harrison was a pathetic guitarist, compared with the London guitarists of those days (Townshend of the Who, Richards of the Rolling Stones, Davies of the Kinks, Clapton and Beck and Page of the Yardbirds, and many others who were less famous but no less original).

There are no instances in the Beatles’ official recordings of Harrison not being up to the task before him; he wasn’t a virtuoso because he wasn’t required to be one. He understood that his role was to serve the song, something which all of the above, with the possible exception of Richards, forgot from time to time. A guitar hero of the Clapton sort would have had no place in the band. What Dave Davies, of all people, is doing in this company, is anyone’s guess.

>The Beatles had completely missed the revolution of rock music (founded on a prominent use of the guitar) and were still trapped in the stereotypes of the easy-listening orchestras.

What this means, if it means anything at all, is not clear. Is he trying to say that he Beatles didn’t use guitars?

>What warrants an inference to your whole point based off your post?
Either you want to have a discussion or not: it's to you

>Paul McCartney was a singer from the 1950s, who could not have possibly sounded more conventional. As a bassist, he was not worth the last of the rhythm and blues bassists (even though within the world of Merseybeat his style was indeed revolutionary).

This is the same Paul McCartney who sang Long Tall Sally, Helter Skelter and Oh! Darling, in case you were wondering, and the same bass player responsible for the bass parts in Taxman, Rain, Come Together and I Saw Her Standing There. What ‘rhythm and blues bassists’ Scaruffi is talking about, I doubt even he knows; presumably he has some shadowy awareness that people played on Motown records, but I doubt he could tell you Jerry Jemmott from James Jamerson, since they’re all ‘african’ to him.

>Ringo Starr played drums the way any kid of that time played it in his garage (even though he may ultimately be the only one of the four who had a bit of technical competence). Overall, the technique of the “fab four” was the same of many other easy-listening groups: sub-standard.

What ‘other easy-listening groups’ is he talking about? Since he can say nothing about Starr’s actual technique as a drummer — such as Starr’s mastery of timbre and tempo — I think we can assume that this faint praise is not in good faith.

>Theirs were records of traditional songs crafted as they had been crafted for centuries

I think he’s mistaking the Beatles for Fairport Convention, here.

>yet they served an immense audience, far greater than the audience of those who wanted to change the world, the hippies and protesters. Their fans ignored or abhorred the many rockers of the time who were experimenting with the suite format, who were composing long free-form tracks, who were using dissonance, who were radically changing the concept of the musical piece. The Beatles’ fans thought, and some still think, that using trumpets in a rock song was a revolutionary event, that using background noises (although barely noticeable) was an even more revolutionary event, and that only great musical geniuses could vary so many styles in one album, precisely what many rock musicians were doing all over the world, employing much more sophisticated stylistic excursions.

Since the Beatles’ level of fandom was unique precisely because it crossed all boundaries of age, class, sex, nationality, political inclination and race, it’s impossible to lump all their fans together in this manner.

>While the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, the Doors, Pink Floyd and many others were composing long and daring suites worthy of avant garde music, thus elevating rock music to art, the Beatles continued to yield three minute songs built around a chorus. Beatlemania and its myth notwithstanding, Beatles fans went crazy for twenty seconds of trumpet, while the Velvet Underground were composing suites of chaos twenty minutes long.

When the Beatles were sticking baroque trumpet on ‘Penny Lane’, the Velvet Underground’s first album hadn’t even come out yet. By the time the first Velvets album came out, the Beatles were finishing Sgt Pepper. The Velvets album that contains the closest thing to a ‘suite of chaos twenty minutes long’ is White Light/White Heat, whose final track ‘Sister Ray’ is a seventeen-minute jam on one chord, and if Piero Scaruffi seriously thinks that it’s the greatest thing the Velvet Underground ever did as opposed to a juvenile art gesture, he’s got a tin fucking ear. Incidentally, Scaruffi’s earlier crack about how the Beatles removed all traces of ‘black music’ from their music is far more true about the Velvet Underground than it is about the Beatles. Almost alone among great 60s rock bands, the Velvets never, ever swung. They were a white folk-rock band turned up to 10.

>Actually, between noise and a trumpet, between twenty seconds and twenty minutes, there was an artistic difference of several degrees of magnitude. They were, musically, sociologically, politically, artistically, and ideologically, on different planets.

Yes, the radical political awareness in the Velvet Underground’s songs is well known to all.

>The Beatles had the historical function to delay the impact of the innovations of the 60’s.

Again, this is quite a long way away from meaning anything, but insofar as it reflects a perception that the Beatles were not at the forefront of change in the 1960s, the historical record shows that people at the time felt that the opposite was the case. They might not have liked the change much, but nobody doubted that the Beatles were part of its vanguard.

>Between 1966 and 1969, while suites, jams, and long free form tracks (which the Beatles also tried but only toward the end of their career) became the fashion, while the world was full of guitarists, bassist, singers and drummers who played solos and experimented with counterpoint, the Beatles limited themselves to keeping the tempo and following the melody.

Like on A Day In The Life.

>Their historic function was also to prepare the more conservative audience for those innovations. Their strength was perhaps being the epitome of mediocrity: never a flash of genius, never a revolutionary thought, never a step away from what was standard, accepting innovations only after they had been accepted by the establishment. And maybe it was that chronic mediocrity that made their fortune: whereas other bands tried to surpass their audiences, to keep two steps ahead of the myopia of their fans, traveling the hard and rocky road, the Beatles took their fans by the hand and walked them along a straight path devoid of curves and slopes.

That’s why they kept touring until the very end, and didn’t spend hours in the studio trying to find new ways of making music.

>The Beatles are justly judged for the beautiful melodies they have written. But those melodies were “beautiful” only when compared to the melodies of those who were not trying to write melodies; in other words to the musicians who were trying to rewrite the concept of popular music by implementing suites, jams and noise.

Once again, we’re skirting meaninglessness here, but he seems to be saying that the Beatles’ melodies were only beautiful compared to melodies by musicians who didn’t write melodies.

>Many contemporaries of Beethoven wrote better minuets than Beethoven ever wrote, but only because Beethoven was writing something else. In fact, he was trying to write music that went beyond the banality of minuets.

There is nothing intrinsically banal about a minuet, as Beethoven knew perfectly well, writing many of them throughout his career, such as the ones in the third Razumovsky Quartet and in Piano Sonata No 18, to name two off the top of my head. Scaruffi would know this if he’d listened to anything by Beethoven besides the Ninth Symphony. When Scaruffi tries to talk about classical music, he comes across like a pompous twelve-year-old who’s read the liner notes of his dad’s CD collection and thinks that that makes him Donald Tovey.

>Moreover, Martin undoubtedly had a taste for unusual sounds. At the beginning of his career he had produced Rolf Harris’ Tie Me Kangaroo with the didjeridoo.

He means Sun Arise (1961). Far from being made at the beginning of Martin’s career, it was made eleven years after he joined EMI.

>At the time nobody knew what it was. Between 1959 and 1962 Martin had produced several tracks of British humor with heavy experimentation, inspired by the Californian Stan Freiberg, the first to use the recording studio as an instrument.

He means Stan Freberg, but if he’s trying to suggest that Stan Freberg was the first person ever to muck around in a recording studio, he should take it up with Spike Jones. In any case, the history of experiments in sound recording is as old as the history of recorded sound.

Those of us who write about music in more than a dilettante way believe that writing about music is subject to the same rules as writing any other kind of non-fiction. You should write so that your meaning is clear. You should strive to be consistent. If you have an argument to make, you should base what you have to say on solid evidence. You should avoid writing badly, unclearly or illogically. You should try not to be dull. Piero Scaruffi flouts all these rules, but that wouldn’t matter so much because lots of people break them. But there is one rule in writing music criticism, the breaking of which is the only truly unforgivable error, and it’s the one that I’ve tried to demonstrate Piero Scaruffi breaks all the time, it would seem compulsively, perhaps without even knowing or caring that he does so.

You are not allowed to make shit up.

Ok here goes:
The niche reasons I started describing are as follows:
I find his perspective on anglo music culture/history as an initial foreigner interesting. Particularly from the history standpoint, regardless of what he gets wrong or right. I always saw his site as more of a journal of opinions rather then a cited academic report on a subject, therefore the accuracy isn't quite a huge problem for me. I also like his descriptive language for certain records that he clearly holds in high regard and happen to think it fits the sonics of said certain records.

He definitely is. You just fucking CANT:
READ THOUSANDS OF BOOKS
WATCH TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MOVIES
LISTEN TO TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ALBUMS
IN FUCKING DEPTH

AND REVIEW AND COMPILE THEM LATER ON

he’s a lying a fucking hack who thinks lying will impress anyoe

>value of art
>on a societal level
Try to define this in simple terms.
Protip, you can’t, because you’re a pseud who uses buzzwords he heard in a Nerdwriter video

>He meant the dates of the individual works by the artists, not the absolute dates of their death
Yeah, I know. He's still wrong. Look again.
>I assume you’re the same moron as this guy though:
No, that's not me.

Scaruffi is honestly super intelligent.

who uses buzzwords that you heard in a nerdwriter video once*

Sorry, it’s late here and am drunk

>tens of thousands
Is that actually an accurate number for his site?

>Scaruffi is honestly super intelligent
He really isn’t, you naive bootlicker.

If you dare watch any interview with him, or read any excerpts from his book, it becomes clear he’s just an average guy and an impostor with a fake persona online

His books are vapid, shallow and dont elaborate on any topic in any depth. He literally just compiles Wikipedia and other encyclopedia facts he read ad hoc during the process of writing each book, but doesn’t really have any understanding on any of it

You can see his lack of knowledge clearer in the politics section. And in the history “timeline” section you can just feel the Wikipedia/encyclopedia writing, it’s soaking in it

RYM compiled all his album ratings and it amounts to roughly 30,000 albums

Intelligence =/= knowledge.

Fun fact - another way to disprove Scaruffi

Years active (“in-depth” reviewing and “analyses”): 1985-present

In total: 33 years
That is: around 12,000 days

He’d need to relisten each album before fully forming an opinion on them whole, because I’m assuming he’s not an unprofessional hack

30,000 x 2 = 60,000

60,000 albums per 12,000 days
EQUALS TO

5 ALBUMS PER DAY
FOR 33 FUCKING YEARS, NONSTOP

On top of that, add tens of thousands of movies, thousands of books, tons of classical music, traveling supposedly 160 countries and writing 12+ full-length books

He is a liar. It’s impossible, unless he spends every single bit of his free time dedicated to the site scaruffi.com, has no social life, is an autist since always and spends just below 6 hours for sleep

Given his age I don't think its a stretch to assume he's listened to all that at least once. And yeah just once may not be enough for a thought out critique, but I think its obvious which ones are thought out versus the ones that aren't. I wouldn't discredit the good ones only for that reason, but it makes sense if you would.
As for the books if it actually is tens of thousands that might be an issue.

No. I mean he shows no understanding of the deep parts of science or history or politics. He’s afraid to go deeper because that would require some intelligence to understand (check out his AI shit, that shit mayve worked in 1979 but not anymore)

It’s not tens of thousands of books but thousands of books for sure.

He literally has a “My top 30 books by traditional Albanian writers” page

It’s like a joke. Like a comedy

Its very possible that he had unpublished material before 85.

Scaruffi has been working and is still working with AI. You are full of shit.

>has been working and is still working
His only job since 1985 is scaruffi.com and that is the real fact

Any man with a serious carrier wouldn’t waste so much time on fucking entertainment lmao

Hes such a scientist that he has never made a contribution to the scientific community - this is the fact. He just majored in STEM and just furthered it because he didn’t even know what to do with himself

He has made lectures at well respected universities. Again, you are full of shit.

>any person with a degree wouldn't like fun
Wow!

And I watched those lectures. And again, they are very shallow, very popsci shit.

Seriously, you should sometime experience stuff firsthand instead of just relying on memes and names and secondhand reports, mostly coming from the most biased source, that is scaruffi himself

Seriously fuck off you brainless asslicker

Buddy. Scaruffi listened to music, probably a lot of music, before 1985. I could write several in-depth reviews on the complete discographies on several artists. The ideas that he either 1) didn’t listen to music until he started reviewing it, or 2) had to relisten to every album twice before reviewing it, are completely fucking retarded.
Here, I want you to just think about your favorite albums. Could you write a review of them now, or would you have to delisted to them twice? If you have to relisten twice, why are they your favorite albums?
I actually decided to check, and I realized the combined discographies of my top ten favorite artists is well over 100 albums. That’s just my top ten. I could release over 100 album reviews in less than a week. Hell, it would only take a couple days if I had nothing else going on. There’s not a single album I’d have to listen to twice again before writing about it. That’s ONLY my top ten, and that’s talking about me, not someone who knows as much obscure music as Scaruffi (learning about Red Krayola or Pere Ubu nowadays isn’t much of an accomplishment, but knowing about them in 1985 meant you were an extreme music fan who liked really weird underground stuff).
It’s entirely doable, over the course of 64 years of life, to form opinions on 30,000 albums.

Where is this compilation?

Whatever number you could write off the top of your head without needing to relisten to it TWICE like it’s brand new (sometimes you need that because you might forget what you heard 20 fucking years ago), it’s still but a tiny fraction of the total amount of 60,000 albums

100 albums, 500 albums, that doesn’t matter. I actually doubt you’d remember enough of each of those 100 albums to write a passionate mini-review and analysis for each of the songs

Sure, he listened to music before 1985. But if you want to be a professional music critic, you can’t just relay on your faulty memory and experience from 20 years ago - for example because people grow up. And music tastes change.

>meant you were an extreme music fan who liked really weird underground stuff
Eh.
My dad’s music taste is mostly based, and he knew of the residents and many krautrock bands back in the 80s. Was that any sort of achievement? I don’t think so

If you liked rock and stayed in the rock-sort of circles, you’d be bound to stumble upon some more niche music. Be it at a party or at a music store

>60,000 albums
I thought it was 30,000 albums.
>he reviewed 30,000 albums over the course of his career! Who has the time to listen to 60,000 albums? Oy vey, never forget the 90,000 albums!

It’s 30k albums times two because of the relistens

You don’t need to relisten to every album twice to form an opinion on it. If you hear an imagine dragons album, it's gonna be shit and you don’t need to relisten to it to know that. Hell, you’ll know it’s shit before it’s even finished

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but Im positive Scaruffi never claimed to be a professional critic.

>8/10
>never listen to again
what did you mean by this?
and while i agree that most pop music is made to be listened to passively, most people who care about music will be listening to it actively, making a review of such a passive experience rather useless

Jesus.

Imagine this.

You have 9000 bands. Your most recent memory may cover enough information so as to suffice for a review for maybe 5-10 bands in total, but that’s stretching it (and I mean 10 bands as in 10 bands and each and every album released by the band, and each song analyzed in the album, that much in depth. It’d be very hard to do it off the top of your head but I’m gonna give you the benefit of doubt)

Then like 20-100 bands would require just one relisten of each album I guess?

And then for the rest of the bands you’d have to do double listens, no escape, it’s just how much you’d have forgotten about so many other bands

So at best you have.. 110 bands off, the easy way.
8490 bands to go! Double listens, every album, remember!

I'm glad you are so flexible, because it does take some mental gymnastics to justify Scruffy

I don't think memory has much to do with the equation. Scaruffi seems like the type to immediately write his thoughts down as soon as they are formed and not let them sit and disentegrate.

>You aren't allowed to enjoy things

Musical memory is your strongest memory dude. People with Alzheimer’s will often remember the songs of their youth more than anything else. I have incredibly vivid memories of albums of children’s music I haven’t heard in many many years. Do you really think anybody thinks he sat down before e.g. his Beatles review and said “oh gee, I have completely forgotten what they sound like. I guess I have to listen to all their albums twice before I can say I don’t like them.” Cause I don’t know a single person who thinks that. He probably listened to a lot of music he hates a few times, and probably relistened to his favorite pieces of music tons of times, and then decided to start organizing it online. He’s probably discovered some new music since then and reviewed it as well. That’s not at all unreasonable
Be honest, if I told you to write a complete discography review of your favorite artist, would your first instinct be to get writing, or to immediately relisten to each album twice?

>Do you really want to consume, consume and not even remember or enjoy half of what you hear?
good music is enjoyable and memorable; consuming it in large quantities doesn't change this

> I bet if you asked any faggot like AntiWarhol what they've been listening to in the past month or about a specific rating/genre they'd explode on the spot.
how is this a bad thing

Goalpost shifting

I do remember reading an interview with him where he basically states he only keeps around the records that are special to him for re-listens and the others are basically disposable.

Which is entirely reasonable. Nobody should be expected to listen to an Iggy Azalea album in full twice before saying it sucks

Well, as I said - 5-10 band discographies at most dude. I agree with you, all I’m saying is that the extent to which you can write a review in beautiful prose is limited without any listen at all

8500 bands still to go

>5-10 band discographies at most dude
Source: ASS
There are people who listen to hundreds of bands on the regular. The fact that I limited myself to my top 10 in that earlier post means nothing

I literally was only saying why I like reading his shit, and you go off acting like my reasons are disingenuous and invalid because they are logically inconsistent. No shifting there
I do happen to think a lot the criticism levied at him is valid, it just doesn't detract from my specific reasons.

I didn’t give a fuck about your estimation, all I’m saying is - bands on average have around like what, 4? 6 albums? More?

100 bands off the top of your head with no need to relisten?
That’s 600 albums
Now multiply that by the number of songs. Let’s assume 12 as the rough standard as most albums fall in between the 10-14 scale

That’s roughly 7,500 songs. Are you sure you’d remember all of them perfectly well, fine enough to warrant an in-depth interview covering all of the songs in a single album?

Also, that’s still just 600 albums.
There’s almost 30 thousand of them

So currently Scaruffi still releases "reviews", at a very slow pace. He hasn't stopped, and the current rate is a very plausible one at that. There is at least now not a good reason to not give him the benefit of the doubt with his new releases. Considering this, and his age it makes sense that a bulk of his material was uploaded en masse from early writings that began the moment he started consciously listening. Add in that he probably used to write more frequently than he does now, and I think his catalog makes sense logistically, at least with music.

He doesn’t write track-by-track reviews in general. Why are you talking about a track-by-track analysis?
Sure, I couldn’t hypothetically write 600 track-by-track reviews by memory. Of course, Scaruffi usually covers the album as a whole, so he’d have no need to do that

>He doesnt write track by track reviews in general

Precisely that. That’s why he is a hack, and all I’m doing is showing you that reviewing 9000 bands in their entirety is impossible, and what he did was review like 500-1000 bands at most and all the other are just copypasted syntheses of opinions of other critics, 5 minutes of actual listening to an album and a quick verdict with mostly random 5-7 ratings

He doesn’t give a fuck about modern music and prefers to spend this time on writing or adding stuff to old bands, or movies, books, politics etc
He also writes his shitty run of the mill books

>the only proper way to review music is track-by-track
Fantano drone detected. Is the only way to review a book chapter-by-chapter? Is the only proper way to review a song verse-by-verse? You review albums as a whole, read any old music review and you’ll see them do the same thing Scaruffi does

>I literally was only saying why I like reading his shit,
Were you though?

You said
>The guy is in his 60s he's had a lot more time alive to listen to shit then your average mutant. I find his catalog very believable. Its not even anything too staggering in the first place.
You said "believable", which suggests historical accuracy and validity to his claims. Weather you like it or not is irrelevant, nor was it your stated point.

>I do happen to think a lot the criticism levied at him is valid
Like his Beatles essay?

Yes I think that's right. Are you saying you agree with what said?

>implying you can either only write about albums track by track or as a whole

Fuck off. The way to do it is by seeing the album as a whole, but dissecting it and going over the major strengths and weaknesses of the album - the major strong songs and major weak pieces

Ideally, you’d dissect the album track by track and then at the end offer a summation of the album, seal the review sort of

I agree with what you said only in regards to newer music. He used to review old stuff much more intensely than new stuff. Only a few years ago I think he stopped doing the old stuff because he’s literally covered almost any major and lesser known rock artist of the past

Because he was copying everything he could find on them on Wikipedia and in other critics’ reviews haha

He even admits to using critics’ opinion as his own in the movie section

You said he was a hack because he didn’t do track by track reviews. So according to you, there are two ways to review albums: track-by-track, or the hack way. Unless by your new post, you have evolved on the issue

Believable only in the sense that he doesn't write reviews for things that he has never heard at all.
>valid criticism
What I think is valid is that it that his intellectual integrity is compromised when he lets certain pieces accuracy waiver, which he would probably explain by stating his interest isn't sufficient. Basically I like him when he is firing on all cylinders.

I frequently come across older releases that he has never mentioned, by no means is his older stuff all-encompassing.

>Believable only in the sense that he doesn't write reviews for things that he has never heard at all.
Fair enough

Where exactly did you watch those lectures? Because he lectured on actual academic topics at university, not just internet popsci.

>60000 albums
No, just 30000. You were already told why before. Idiot.

Most music doesn't even deserve a second listen.

>was that any sort of achievement?
It was if you were at Scaruffi's level.

I don't think these numbers are impossible when a person takes full advantage of a long life and doesn't waste it with modern brain numbing vices.

Bump

>he lectured on actual academic topics at university

First off, that’s the thing, he never did lecture professionally, only as a guest or “visiting scholar”
Secondly you can access his PowerPoint presentations and see how high school-tier they are

>no, just 30000. Most music doesn’t even deserve a second listen
Maybe. If you aren’t a music critic/reviewer
Also, I repeat, dumbfuck, I said 60,000 albums as in 2 x 30,000

Can has a different name in Italian

does he say that somewhere?

1. Most music is not worth listening to a second time
2. He listened to music before he started reviewing it
The idea that a 64 year old man who loves music has listened to 30,000 different albums at least once
>BUT HE WISSEN TO IT TWICE
No retard, he listens to them once
>BUT HE HAVE TO WISSEN TWICE
No retard, once is enough
>BUT ONWY HACKS NOT WISSEN TWICE
No retard, your opinion after your first listen through is fine
>BUT HE HAVE NO TIME TO WISSEN TWICE!! 60000000 ALBUMS!!!
No retard, he listens to them once
>BUT WISSEN TWICE
No retard, listen once

top fucking kek

>once is enough
Is it thought?

Through ONE, single, real-time listen you can not only 1) chart out every chord sequence, voice leading and counterpoint, but 2) understand the lyrics (that are not even in your native language), 3) research the intertextuality of the lyrics (even thought they were heard just once), 4) take note of all tempo, time signature variation and polyrhythm, 5) what every lead instrument is playing, simultaneously and 5) take note of the production and arrangement while understanding the timbre of every single instrument, possibly even mentially placing them on a frequency spectrum?

No.

I'm still waiting for the podcast link

No retard, listen twice

No retard, you’re goalpost shifting now. Nobody was talking about “1) charting out every chord sequence, voice leading and counterpoint, 2) understanding the lyrics (that are not even in your native language), 3) researching the intertextuality of the lyrics (even thought they were heard just once), 4) taking note of all tempo, time signature variation and polyrhythm, 5) what every lead instrument is playing, simultaneously or 5) taking note of the production and arrangement while understanding the timbre of every single instrument, possibly even mentially placing them on a frequency spectrum”
We’re talking about a critique. One listen is enough to hear if it’s good or not. Hell, I don’t know a single critic who does all that on a track-by-track basis on every single album they review. If that’s your definition of a hack, then sure, Scaruffi (and all music critics in general) are total hacks

You’ll never get it cause it doesn’t exist. OP is a retard. He probably didn’t understand the podcast cause he didn’t listen to it twice

...

>He probably didn’t understand the podcast cause he didn’t listen to it twice
Top kek, this is gold.

Did OP ragequit?

wtf that's my post
why did you screenshot it