Earlier today, we posted our 1,000th review. Looking back I find this quite remarkable, as we did not review anything for the first 8 years of Avant Music News. I had done some music writing in the mid-nineties but was of the mind that the music had to speak for itself – words were not sufficient to describe what one can hear. In line with Frank Zappa, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” As a result, I resisted publishing any sort of original reviews.
That changed in 2011 when Dan Barbiero convinced me that reviews can be well-written and thoughtful. Since then, he has contributed nearly 400. I started writing again, and a number of other individuals have helped out as well. And as the music world has evolved since, I believe that reviews are taking on a valuable filtering function – there is so much music coming out (much of it quite good) that you need some way of focusing your efforts and time. Reviews help you do that.
In any event, I am grateful to all who have written for AMN over the years – Dan, Stephen, other Dan, Chris, Mike, Irwin, Monique, Tom, and Jacob. And of course to all of you who have read, commented on, and shared our work.
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