RASIE

5y

Tbh scaruffi's scores/rankings haven't held any value to me for a while now. I mean the love for his music pages definitely began with an unavoidable influence over my own rankings/taste, like any other group's infatuation with notable ranked lists — like RYM for the self-identified music nerds, Rolling Stone's top 500 for boomers, or Billboard charts for Drake and Adele stans.

For the past few years i've still really enjoyed the albums and artists his site exposed me to, and still rank many of them among my favorites, but I've since changed my own taste and opinions on his. A lot of his artist pages that i used to think of as flawless, i now very much disagree with, even though i still adore a lot of the artists.

His writing (more accurately, his interns/superfans' writing) has nosedived since the first half of the 2010s — and I also don't find as much value in a lot of his more detailed, self-written stuff as I once did. In the rare times I go back on his site now and read an old page I used to love, it's frequently clear to me that the most valuable thing I find in them comes from his references to other similar/obscure artists, and little historical facts or events that went overlooked. His artist pages are really like the ultimate version of Pandora Radio, and being able to use that at the expense of glorifying his elitism (and cringing at that later on) isn't a bad trade.

His film section used to be something i browsed a lot and thought highly of too, but that was the first thing on his site I did a 180 on a good while ago. That also probaly helped a lot in changing my perspective on his music scores and rankings a lot too.

I still love his extremely "high standards" scoring system, and still think its super refreshing since the systems used in popular music journalism are still sprinting headlong in the opposite direction.

And i'm never gonna act as if I don't think albums such as The Good Son, Down Colorful Hill, Perfect from Now On, Morphine's discog, VU&N and WL/WH, etc... aren't some of the greatest albums ever made. But nowadays I can say that I don't enjoy those (or tons of other) albums/artist because of the scores Scaruffi gave them — but I do enjoy them because of Scaruffi.

And i dont think it'd be a stretch to say @Aruji or @Galaxy have similar feelings. You're definitely right about Scaruffu's spectre still looming large. But we all grown up now. We went from having the cool uncle who showed us a bunch of albums that we thought were the best simply because our cool uncle liked them — to loving a bunch of music that our cranky, off-their-rocker uncle showed us back when we thought he was cool.

This concludes another classic self-indulgent Rasie essay post that nobody asked for at 2:30 AM

RASIE

5y

Dunkey is the new Scaruffi

Galaxy de list mon

5y

f***ing around on a keyboard that my roommate is letting me use. It's kinda fun, learning some super beginner songs. Also fun to f*** around on and make purposefully bad sounds with different instrument settings but it would be cool to get better

rvi

5y

i now have 3 unrelated songs titled "Rattlesnake Shake" in my library

Atlienz

5y

that's what I wanted to hear

Galaxy de list mon

5y

Yeah.... post 2012/2013 (???) his reviews have become pretty meh. I still look occasionally to see if there's some cool stuff I'd like, but the peak of his work/recs is 80s/90s and where I probably have my taste most adjacent to his ratings (loosely). His Yeezus review is still one of the worst reviews I've read and was a clear indicator on his agenda at that point. He'll praise artists for "borrowing" from lesser known artists and call them onnovative as well, but will discredit an artist who derives from more well-known artists. All in an attempt to keep up with his own brand of cynicism. Don't think there's a single 8+ album from the last 6-7 years that I've agreed with him on outside of Julia Holter's Aviary. But it's not like her album was uber obscure and I've always enjoyed her music pre-Scaruffi

Galaxy de list mon

5y

is one of them grateful dead

Galaxy de list mon

5y

is one of them grateful dead

RASIE

5y

Proud owner of a library that has zero grateful dead songs

RASIE

5y

Proud owner of a library that has zero grateful dead songs

Elric

5y

· edited

i have 8 as of last week and you just reminded im supposed to listen to one of them tonight cause i microdosed lsd for my Dune watch wasnt quite worth it so this Dark Star listen better be good @RVI

Elric

5y

my geezer eyes cant tell what im seeing here

rvi

5y

scaruffi would be ashamed

RASIE

5y

So would my brother. Dude has so much f***ing random merch and trinkets of those bears. He had like 17 of them as bumper stickers on his truck in high school too

Elric

5y

i have 8 as of last week and you just reminded im supposed to listen to one of them tonight cause i microdosed lsd for my Dune watch wasnt quite worth it so this Dark Star listen better be good @RVI

rvi

5y

this motley crue dr. feelgood album absolutely slapping

RASIE

5y

So would my brother. Dude has so much f***ing random merch and trinkets of those bears. He had like 17 of them as bumper stickers on his truck in high school too