Date sent: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 13:22:04 -0500
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Subject: Re: First Bad Review
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

Sarah wrote:

<< Hello listers, I am in need of cheering up as I have had my first bad review. I have been doing some opera vocals with a pop band and one of our recent concerts was reviewed in a national rock music weekly today (I am in Britain, by the way). The comment was obviously due to the reviewer's
personal dislike of opera merged with pop, not anything about my technique or singing voice, but it's still rather nasty:"During the band's set a dolled-up opera singer slinks onstage and vomits over two songs">>

<>

Here's mine - in terms of this "review". First, it's not a review in any way shape or form. All it does is report that someone performed two opera songs, and that the writer didn't like it. The implication is that the opera songs and the opera singer were out of place. That's all it says.
With language which is offensive, and which there is no excuse for having been written, and even less excuse for the editors' having permitted it to be printed. It is no reflection on you or your performance. The only thing it reflects on is the character and taste of the writer and the
publication.

If I were given to unfounded judgments, I'd expand my statement to say that it also reflects on the character and taste of all people who like the kind of music this publication writes about. But that would be wrong.

Can you tell that the sentence you quoted above made me very angry? And I don't know you, or know anything about your performance. So if my reaction is at all similar to the people whose opinions you value, it is probably safe to assume that anyone who were to read that sentence would be angry
about it, and sympathetic toward you.

You can probabably even take it as a badge of honor. There's some famous quote about judging a person by his enemies, in which case, (if this writer can be termed an enemy), you couldn't have gotten a more positive review if you'd written it yourself.

But I wouldn't frame it -- because that would put too much value on this idiot and what he wrote - why should he get the opportunity to be immortalized in your living room!!! No, he and what he wrote deserve to be forgotten forever, as if he and it never existed.

Peggy

--
Peggy Harrison, Alexandria, VA, USA
mailto:peggyh-at-ix.netcom.com
"Music for a While Shall All Your Cares Beguile"