Updated already with Radiohead review we forgot to put up and photo of Gordon Russell.
"Audiogon" Music Reviews at last
About a year ago here on Audiogon I started a thread to see if Audiogoners were interested in music reviews and news-it turned out they were mostly and so a year later a site is ready born out of that initial post and the feedback.
My motivation was simple; I enjoyed Audiogon greatly but discussions and posts on music, a lot of them anyway showed two trends to me.
One was confusion about re-mastered material-what was available, what versions were best and people discussing discs long since surpassed.
Secondly a lot of discontent about the quality of new music and a lack of knowledge as to what was available.
These were two issues near to my heart and ones were I felt I could help and share my continuing passion for music, new and old.
I even liked the idea of long debates about why my latest rave wasn’t very good at all.
With the initial idea seemingly a goer I soon discovered fitting it directly into Audiogon wasn’t going to work, I spoke to Arnie (the main man at Audiogon) via phone all the way from here in Glasgow, Scotland and we exchanged several e-mails-he liked the idea but as a very busy businessman with most of his resources tied up I decided to try and get something up and running independently and try to develop the interface with Audiogon at a later date.
I posted for contributors on Audiogon a few times and I know some folks had real life problems that meant they couldn’t contribute others simply faded into the ether. I even had non-Audiogoners back out.
So we are left with three hardy souls who have contributed and I thank them yet again Lyle Crawford and Gordon Russell good friend and workmate for the last 16 years or so.
I really want to state that the door remains open for contributors, anyone who wants to write anything about music-this site will be open to any ideas and formats as hopefully it shows already. Too many sites imho stick to a rigid format-if this idea has a future I envisage articles, lost classics, live reviews, music book reviews-anything really.
As for the delay and the time it took I have to reflect a bit on 2004 and how it went for me and my partner Eileen, who designed the site from scratch with no previous experience. A series of fortunate and not so fortunate events befell us last year-we sold our flat and bought a bigger one, that took up a large chunk of April till August-the week we were due to take our summer break I unexpectedly got ill-I was on medication for 3 months and missed a month from work ( it's not all bad news).Finally as Christmas approached and the site started to take real shape we were struck by further bad luck in the shape of a sudden bereavement.
The real star of this show is Eileen who listened to me constantly nag and delivered this site when her health wasn’t great and had a myriad of bigger issues on her plate.
I love her to bits.
As for the content of the site-I see it as a start, it has a slant towards Audiophiles-I was glad to discover the vast majority of newer material was available on vinyl-we tried to cover the sound quality and production but I confess I don’t always relate to certain views on that subject.
It’ll certainly be interesting to hear feedback on how useful or otherwise people find the reviews and indeed to hear people who disagree with our views.
Feedback is crucial and whilst I think we did a good job-it’s been struggle writing as none of us are professionals at this game however some constructive criticism would be welcomed(for Lyle and Gordon anyway).
The Rhino Yes re-masters series is a bit old now but it was my intention to cover the series early in 2004 and I continued with it.
As regards material reviewed-there was no set pattern-we tried to stick to what we enjoyed or thought was important certainly we could never review every CD we bought.
As for the future-we may go for a magazine type structure with a new issue every so often-Gordon and I plan to tie up 2004 releases and publish a review of the year with our top albums of the year-quite a few of which have not been covered yet.
Enough said on it but a heart felt thanks to those Audiogoners-too many to mention who encouraged me with this project.
It is called Lugs and a cyber fortune to the first person to work out why.
Whilst the name is coincidental I think it is a nice tribute to Lugnut-Patrick Malone who is in many of our thoughts at this time.
Here is the link…..
http://www.lugsmusicreviews.com
My motivation was simple; I enjoyed Audiogon greatly but discussions and posts on music, a lot of them anyway showed two trends to me.
One was confusion about re-mastered material-what was available, what versions were best and people discussing discs long since surpassed.
Secondly a lot of discontent about the quality of new music and a lack of knowledge as to what was available.
These were two issues near to my heart and ones were I felt I could help and share my continuing passion for music, new and old.
I even liked the idea of long debates about why my latest rave wasn’t very good at all.
With the initial idea seemingly a goer I soon discovered fitting it directly into Audiogon wasn’t going to work, I spoke to Arnie (the main man at Audiogon) via phone all the way from here in Glasgow, Scotland and we exchanged several e-mails-he liked the idea but as a very busy businessman with most of his resources tied up I decided to try and get something up and running independently and try to develop the interface with Audiogon at a later date.
I posted for contributors on Audiogon a few times and I know some folks had real life problems that meant they couldn’t contribute others simply faded into the ether. I even had non-Audiogoners back out.
So we are left with three hardy souls who have contributed and I thank them yet again Lyle Crawford and Gordon Russell good friend and workmate for the last 16 years or so.
I really want to state that the door remains open for contributors, anyone who wants to write anything about music-this site will be open to any ideas and formats as hopefully it shows already. Too many sites imho stick to a rigid format-if this idea has a future I envisage articles, lost classics, live reviews, music book reviews-anything really.
As for the delay and the time it took I have to reflect a bit on 2004 and how it went for me and my partner Eileen, who designed the site from scratch with no previous experience. A series of fortunate and not so fortunate events befell us last year-we sold our flat and bought a bigger one, that took up a large chunk of April till August-the week we were due to take our summer break I unexpectedly got ill-I was on medication for 3 months and missed a month from work ( it's not all bad news).Finally as Christmas approached and the site started to take real shape we were struck by further bad luck in the shape of a sudden bereavement.
The real star of this show is Eileen who listened to me constantly nag and delivered this site when her health wasn’t great and had a myriad of bigger issues on her plate.
I love her to bits.
As for the content of the site-I see it as a start, it has a slant towards Audiophiles-I was glad to discover the vast majority of newer material was available on vinyl-we tried to cover the sound quality and production but I confess I don’t always relate to certain views on that subject.
It’ll certainly be interesting to hear feedback on how useful or otherwise people find the reviews and indeed to hear people who disagree with our views.
Feedback is crucial and whilst I think we did a good job-it’s been struggle writing as none of us are professionals at this game however some constructive criticism would be welcomed(for Lyle and Gordon anyway).
The Rhino Yes re-masters series is a bit old now but it was my intention to cover the series early in 2004 and I continued with it.
As regards material reviewed-there was no set pattern-we tried to stick to what we enjoyed or thought was important certainly we could never review every CD we bought.
As for the future-we may go for a magazine type structure with a new issue every so often-Gordon and I plan to tie up 2004 releases and publish a review of the year with our top albums of the year-quite a few of which have not been covered yet.
Enough said on it but a heart felt thanks to those Audiogoners-too many to mention who encouraged me with this project.
It is called Lugs and a cyber fortune to the first person to work out why.
Whilst the name is coincidental I think it is a nice tribute to Lugnut-Patrick Malone who is in many of our thoughts at this time.
Here is the link…..
http://www.lugsmusicreviews.com
28 responses Add your response
I barely skimmed the surface of your many reviews. Really individual, and meaningful reviewing. There is usually a "speaking voice" recognizable in the writing. Thanks for what is obviously a labor of love. I hope your site is eligible to receive free reviewer copies since you are a stimulus to search out items recommended. Congratulations on getting the project this far. |
Luis you got it right-Gordon suggested something Scottish and well lugs is used here in Scotland as slang for ears. Geronimo-it was something I considered indeed planned but it was one of the corners I decided to cut just to get the site up--it is something I will give careful consideration for future submissions. |
Jsonic-U2 will be featured in the closing reviews for 2004 and will include a few of my favourites from this year not already on Lugs as well as our Best Of Lists for the year and I have a sneaky idea that might appeal to Audiogoners. I'll post that shortly. Snow Patrol I believe will be support to U2 on their European tour-they are often mistaken for being Scottish although they are based here I believe they are from Northern Ireland-I've only heard snippets seemed ok without being remarkable-fellow Lugs reviewer Gordon Russell found them a bit lightweight/derivative. The album has sold pretty well here in the UK. |
Lugs updated today with reviews of the year including Jazz and more reviews from last year. Enjoy http://www.lugsmusicreviews.com |
Monotonous I'm afraid Lugs is in limbo at the moment for various reasons. It didn't develop the way I'd have liked and a change of job and a new baby has meant I no longer have the time to commit to the project. It may resurface but it would be in a way that wouldn't be specifically for Audiogon/Audiophiles. The reality is that simply didn't work. |
Congrats Ben on your site. Although I really don't listen to anything you guys seem to focus on (I began to drop out of the new rock music sweepstakes around the time MTV and the CD became ascendent, so I live almost exclusively in the distant past now), I'm still pleased to find anything remotely related to Audiogon that focuses on music (as opposed to, you know, gear). |
Zaikesman well that was the idea but the reality is Audiogon is what it is.................mostly about gear. We wanted to develop what music we reviewed (indeed some of it was very much Audiophile based)and get a balance between what Audiophiles might want to read about and giving exposure to music they might not know about. There was no real desire from the owners or the Audiogon community (apart from a few hardy souls and well wishers whom I salute again.) for music reviews. Indeed music reviews was just my first idea for Audiogon I had several others but it wasn't to be. Of course I can't just blame everybody else-it was a bold idea that didn't quite go where I wanted it to and I need to accept my part in that failure. It may resurface in the future but my time is tight these days. |
Its a very nicely designed site. Pty its not current. If anyone is interested in writing reviews though, I am looking for some at http://vinylfanatics.com Even if ou wanted to review the music which you have onl on cd and I could probably add the vinyl part :) Thanks :) |
Carmen Gomes on Sound Liaison this link should work,please google soundliaison if the link doesn't work,the site is valid. http://www.soundliaison.com check out this review from Sound Stage; I've been among the prophets saying that high-resolution downloads are the future of audiophile music sales. Surely it will benefit the majors to make high-quality downloads a first choice rather than an MP3 extra, but I believe that individual artists can benefit as well. Most new-to-the-scene performers have little money for middlemen and disc manufacture, yet can get things together for the Internet. . . . Rad Bennett |
The link works fine and the recording philosophy is beautiful, as are the songs by Carmen Gomes and the Paul Berner Band that I listened to. As you know we Americans (in general) aren't very good at other languages or changing money. Can we use our credit cards or PayPal to purchase downloads and will they give us the price in dollars? |
I bought my Sound Liaison downloads using PayPal. And I find that the Sound Liaison downloads are all you could ask for in an audiophile recording. Very beautiful music and incredible recording quality.(quote from an earlier post.) |