Fun reviews corner

[Lethevich]

Here you can post any classical review that you find to be so bad that they're good. I can only assume that most will be drawn from the most fertile of breeding grounds for these things: Amazon.com. One statement I just tripped over:

For Schubert sonatas, stay with Russian artists

[Coco]

THE MARILYN MANSON OF CLASSICAL MUSIC!!!

[Geo Dude]

This wonderfully fuzzy-headed review of Brahms' double concerto is quite amusing.  That said, it would be more amusing if the author would realize that he is not Kerouac and use a few more periods.

[not edward]

THE MARILYN MANSON OF CLASSICAL MUSIC!!!

That's a fabulous piece of trolling. I give it 11/10.

[jowcol]

Okay-, I'm cheating here, but whenever I get down, I go to amazon and read the user reviews for Kevin Federline's (the ex Ms Brittney Spears) album Playing with Fire, on of the most reviled albums in history.  Great quotes include:

"I would rather listen to 80 minutes of feedback at full volume with headphones than catch a second of this from a passing car. This album is to music what Jeffrey Dahmer was to cuisine. "

"like listening to your grandparents having sex"

"He neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the extent of his destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record--and his potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason, he might well be called the "Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse." His more conventional name, of course, is K-Fed. "

"Having a limb removed by a Corn Picker would be less painful.
Please kill me. Please empale me on a rusty, manure covered pitchfork so that my gut can swell up with infestation and gangrene. It is the only thing that could overcome the terrible mind piercing pain that eats at my very soul when ever K-Fed raps. "


Some put there reviews to verse, and a couple people decided to mess with the ratings by ranking K-Fed slightly below the Second Coming.  One essay likened him to Shakespeare, and  my fave refers to him as Beethoven's Tenth.  Maybe I need to post the "genius" reference to another thread.

"Seldom do we witness the birth of genius in our time, the rise of a titan among those enslaved by formalistic vision, limited in both scope and depth. Just as Beethoven forever altered our concept of music in the 19th Century, and both Stravinsky and Bartok traversed startling new paths into the far reaches of what music could be in the 20th Century, K-Fed stretches further into the heavenly ether and places himself in a state somewhere between man and God. I will declare this with absolute conviction and in a sober state of mind--this album marks year zero for music. Just as the arrival of Christ forever split time between BC and AD in the western world, so too does K-Fed split musical history. All that follows this masterpiece will, in its inherent inferiority and spiritual weakness, be derivative of K-Fed at best.

Upon examination of this album's content, it is nearly impossible to fully grasp its brilliant commentary on the human condition. I will say this. Like many modernistic and avant-garde artists who preceded him, K-Fed draws his inspiration from the everyday realities of socialist life, utilizing Menckenesque satire within the confines of stream of consciousness narration. For the ideal example of this, see "Dance with a pimp".

And, as a response to critics, I will proclaim this. In His time, it was Christ who was crucified and Barabbas who was set free. There will come a time when the concert halls of Europe will, in an ultimately futile attempt to capture the very voice of God, set civilization ablaze with the sounds of "Playing with Fire"


To add a bit of obligatory Classical content, I must confess I did a mashup of the afforementioned "Dance with a Pimp" with some of Webern's 6 pieces for orchestra.  As you can imagine the most violent, wrenching, dissonant moments occured after I faded out the Webern, and let K-Fed continue.

[Lethevich]

Thanks to Madaboutmahler for directing me towards another worthy entry to the Amazonian archives of infamy:

This cd had all the music I hoped and was lovely apart from that the cd sounded as if it had been recorded from the playback of a gramophone or record player and had lots of hissing and scratchy sounds just as you would expect from a record, not a cd!

Re. a recording of Holst conducting his own music.

[madaboutmahler]

Thanks to Madaboutmahler for directing me towards another worthy entry to the Amazonian archives of infamy:

This cd had all the music I hoped and was lovely apart from that the cd sounded as if it had been recorded from the playback of a gramophone or record player and had lots of hissing and scratchy sounds just as you would expect from a record, not a cd!

Re. a recording of Holst conducting his own music.

Oh, my pleasure! haha - what an incredibly amusing quote!

[Lethevich]

...the light fellatios of time...

...mists of garlic patches,spatialized...

[The new erato]

That review sounds like something run through google translate a number of times. visiting countless numbers of arcane languageson its way to English.

[Dax]

Compose your own review in the style of the "hugely impressive" Andrew Clements, music critic of the UK Guardian newspaper

http://ded.increpare.com/~locus/Clements.html

[Lethevich]

How could I forget this classic?

Birgit Nilsson is the death star!!!!

Imagine the death star in Star Wars. "Fire at will commander," orders the Emperor himself. The peons pull the lever and whooooooooosh .... a blinding flash of light shoots out from the fearsome death star. The moon is completely pulverized.

Yes, this is Birgit Nilsson hurling her vocal lightning at you. You'll be utterly stunned by the impact of her voice, no holds bar.

[Karl Henning]

I sank a couple of beers at the No Holds Bar, once . . . .

[Sergeant Rock]

...the light fellatios of time...

...mists of garlic patches,spatialized...

What's even funnier is that 4 out of 5 people found this review helpful. Helpful in what way, I wonder? 

Sarge

[Coco]

...the light fellatios of time...

...mists of garlic patches,spatialized...

I've actually met the guy who wrote those. He's surprisingly lucid in person.

[Brian]

I really love the music of Jean Cras, so it really pained me to see MusicWeb's classical editor, Rob Barnett, write this bone-headed sentence in a review of Cras' chamber music:

"The five movement Quintet (1928) is in four movements."

[ibanezmonster]

Someone should write a Quintet in 5 movements and only write it with 4 movements.

[Coco]

The final movement would be marked pensato, which means that the players merely think about playing the notes without actually playing them.

[The new erato]

Someone should write a Quintet in 5 movements and only write it with 4 movements.

Even better, it should be for four players!

[madaboutmahler]

I really love the music of Jean Cras, so it really pained me to see MusicWeb's classical editor, Rob Barnett, write this bone-headed sentence in a review of Cras' chamber music:

"The five movement Quintet (1928) is in four movements."

Someone should write a Quintet in 5 movements and only write it with 4 movements.

The final movement would be marked pensato, which means that the players merely think about playing the notes without actually playing them.

Even better, it should be for four players!

That all made me laugh out loud. 

[PaulSC]

All of that reminds me of the story of Ezra Sims' String Quartet no. 2 (1962). The prolific biographer Nicolas Slonimsky had attributed a work of this title and date to Sims in Baker's Biographical Dictionary when none existed. In response, Sims gave the title "String Quartet no. 2 (1962)" to a later work, written in 1974 and scored for a mixed quintet of winds and strings.