Members: start a music review section?


I have thoroughly enjoyed being a participant on Audiogon for the past 18 months or so, and much of that pleasure is directly attributable to the fine contributions made by our members. I am an avid jazz listener (perhaps apparent from some of my posts), and buy a substantial number of CD's and the occasional LP. With the price of CD's, I dislike spending $15-18 on a recording that is either poorly recorded or fails to appeal to me. Hence, I often rely on professional reviews, but they can cover only a limited number of releases each month. Then I thought: Eureka! Why not start a music review section to take advantage of our collective listening? We have some real expertise within our ranks, and it would be great to tap that knowledge (especially helpful for the newbies).

What I have in mind is asking interested members to contribute good, well-written reviews when they encounter a recording that deserves mention. For example, I have just purchased an excellent 5-CD set of recordings by Art Pepper titled "The Hollywood All-Star Sessions", which were done during the last few years of Pepper's life. I am still listening to the last 2 CD's in the set, but will plan to contribute a review of 500-1000 words of this very fine boxed set.

Would anyone else be willing to commit to writing a review or two each month? (Remember, the idea here is to provide a quality review, commenting on the music as well as the recording quality.)
sdcampbell
abstract7: what you seem to be suggesting is a replication of the customers' ratings system on amazon.com. my reading of sdcampbell's query is his calling for something much more modest. it would, indeed, be wonderful to have a fully-searchable archive for all threads. i think/hope that audiogon already has that in mind for its latest round of forum enhancements. it would be fun, i think, simply to have a music review section, with author's providing two to five paragraph posts of the sort one might read in s'phile's "mini-reviews." i'd be willing to contribute to such a section, concentrating mostly on my main areas of interest: folk/blues and "adult rock." -kelly
Kelly: I didn't know Amazon did reviews like this. I got the concept from a variety of things, Netflix (great DVD rental site by the way), the Tracking Angle's scale, and the search engine at CD NOW. I thought I was being over ambitious about this, but wasn't aware it had been done. I still think it's valuable here on A-gon, because I would believe the ratings (particularly sonics) from the people here on A-gon. I agree with SDs idea--I just want more--why not ask? Who knows, maybe A-gon will get part of it incorporated and phase in more as time goes on.
I volunteer to be the token redneck reviewer here at AudiogoN. [:)] The past recommendations by members of this site have been the single most helpful experience, for me, in my pursuit of new music. I would also like to share what I find to be enjoyable, hoping someone else might too. Charlie
Yes, I think that either a thread (or a spot) for this would be very nice. You people will tire of me quickly though, if I participate, as I am still picking up 25 or so CD's a month on an average and am not really into main stream music.
Sdcampbell I support the idea specially since member suggestions can dececrease the ammount of discs in your that you might acquire that at the end just hang in your rack without been played that much...
My two cents is to not complicate the thing that much so more people feel comfortable enough to contribute and avoid the expectancy that they should be not a source of controversy or as stated above by Wire head "shooting the messenger"

I'm also interested in jazz and good suggestions are always
welcome!!!