Are Scaruffi's opinions about jazz worth noting? If not,

>>68963289
nothing he has ever said is worthy noting

Scaruffi is just a kooky old man

>>68963289
no of course not

penguin guide to jazz
downbeat music
those JTG charts

>>68964653
It's all the same canon lol.

>>68964653
do any of those actually have reviews of albums though?

>>68964780
jazzthreadguy writes decent reviews for RYM

https://factorysunburst.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/scaruffi-on-jazz/

this accurately sums up why scaruffi's opinions are absolutely retarded

>>68965609
This.

Scaruffi writes some interesting stuff about rock but when it comes to classical and jazz it's pretty obvious he's full of shit.

>>68965706
yeah, this excerpt explains it:

>I suspect that this has to do with [Scaruffi's] general worship of composers and his contempt for improvisation, which, as should be obvious by now, rules him out as a serious commentator on jazz.

>>68965003
kys

that list is fine, just remember its Scaruffi so its full of edgy picks. carla bley is a hack tho

Why does anyone take anything he says seriously

Im actually asking honestly, why does this foreign nobody with stupid opinions have so much influence on this board

>>68965943
No idea

>>68965943
I'd listen to anyone who has spent that much time listening critically to music

>>68965943
It's easier than thinking for yourself

>>68965968
Read this and it's pretty obvious he hasn't actually listened to all of the music he implies he has
>>68965609

>>68965968

It is possible to be really bad at something for a long time

the jazz reviews on allmusic.com are pretty good usually

The list in itself is fine for intelligent if edgy stuff, but his criteria is absolutely laughable.

>>68966083
really? they've always seemed kind of uninspired imo.

>>68966232
I guess it's more that I usually think their ratings are pretty accurate more than their reviews are that good.

>>68965609
>let’s start with the single most important figure in the history of jazz, Louis Armstrong.
Fugging kek
Opinion discarded.

out of all the Art Ensemble of Chicago albums Scaruffi picks the one with their biggest hit. it's a good album but pretty weak compared to most of their other 60s/70s output
that Tim Berne pick feels tacked on just to make it look like he actually listens to something past the 70s.

>>68966586
If you look at his more accurate decade picks, his favorite Art Ensemble of Chicago actually is People in Sorrow.

>>68966259
Allmusic's star ratings (at least on jazz) are pretty severe compared to a lot of other places. They can be a good guide to what albums by an artist to check out first, but just remember that three stars still means "pretty good" - at least if the reviews that go with three star ratings are anything to go by.

Scott Yanow seems to do a lot of the jazz reviews on Allmusic and he's decent, but he does have a tendency to overuse the word "logical" as a compliment.

>>68963289
That list is fine for avant-garde and free jazz, but as a starting point for getting into jazz as a whole it's pretty limited. The danger with really opinionated critics like Scaruffi is that people just getting into a genre end up taking their opinions as gospel and closing themselves off to loads of good music.

>that guy who listened to Scaruffi's top 15 and no other jazz but thinks he's an expert in the genre now

>>68965003
Overinflated af ratings

>>68965943
Because his rock canon is still miles ahead of any other attempt seen.

>>68966702
oh, like half of this board?

>>68965943
nobody does outside this board. /mu/ can relate because of its obsession with ranking and feeling "objective" because little else in their lives is secure

>>68965943
Because he's the only critic that I can take a random recommendation from and have my experience closely mirror his? I mean christgau is just shit, rym suffers from certain biases and specialist review sites with inflated scores, especially prog, metal and hip hop. Also I'm a die hard contrarian and scaruffi is one of the greatest alive.

I used to think so but I just noticed My Favourite Things being that high on the list and changed my mind

>>68967692
kek.
You don't like favourite things?
It's a pretty fun album desu.

>>68967450
Yes

File: 1476388592255.png (55KB, 625x626px) Image search: [Google]

55KB, 625x626px

>>68966498

>>68963289
Surprisingly not bad but there are some doozies in there. Absolutely criminal there Tim Berne is in there but not Wayne Shorter, Bill Evans, Art Blakey, etc. I think one Albert Ayler album is plenty.

>>68965943
Assuming we're limiting ourselves to assessing his popular music criticism, there are plenty of reasons.

As far as existing attempts to record the history of rock music, catalog its most pivotal recordings and most impactful creative voices, and to evaluate its relationship to broader human culture, interpreting rock music and derivative forms as encompassing a standalone tradition of musical expression rather than placing it in a lesser valued or corrupted role unworthy of the same academic scrutiny as other forms, his History of Rock Music is the best attempt so far. Period. There is no disputing this.

As he writes in the foreward, "This is not a history of the charts", and many of you fail to take in the scope of what that means and why it is significant. He is the first writer to make a sustained case for rock music's elevated status as a mode of _artistic_ expression rather than a mode of _commercial_ enterprise. Remember how belligerent you plebeians get when I refer to art music forms vs. popular/commercial music forms? Scaruffi is the only prominent writer arguing on your side.

By eschewing a focus on popular success or popularly successful musicians for their own sake, his volume becomes not just a history of the "scene", but a serious history of (what he posits to be) an emergent art form, and his role as historian becomes that of tracing emergent musical and conceptual ideas as they first appeared within rock music, whether they directly impacted the mainstream approaches that year or three decades later.

This is iconoclastic by definition, as it runs contrary to the intent of any comparable text, but through his rigorous explanations he demonstrates beyond question that he is no mere contrarian.

Whether or not you agree with all his conclusions or find flaws in his methodology (I've noted my fair share), his text's importance in this regard cannot be diminished. Only a fool would attempt to dispute this.