This week marks the beginning of an arduous and vitally important process: The Rating of the iTunes Library. You might think that as a music reviewer/writer this may be a relatively simple process, but you would be very wrong. I’ve always found the star rating system reductive, minimizing hundreds or thousands of hours of artistic sweat down to a cartoonish, linear constellation. On the other hand, every time I return to the 16,382 tracks currently engorging my hard drive (I reduced the collection by 60-some-odd-percent recently), the experience feels a bit like setting foot in the Smithsonian for the first time. Where do I even start?
So against artistic instinct, King Diamond, John Fahey and William Primrose are all now sporting the equivalent of stickers on a kindergarten “Good Behavior” chart.
What does 4/5 stars mean, you ask? I’ve decided to use the Netflix model (loosely) as a launch point. Here’s my version:
1 star: Causes compulsion to lance eardrums with rusty, Civil War-era bayonets
2 stars: Inspires constant eye-rolling and as such, dangerous while operating a motor vehicle
3 stars: Goooood
4 stars: I don your band’s t-shirt
5 stars: Face. Melted.
Next week on Old Man and the C: Decision Time