How much will it cost to get you to review my CD?

I don’t accept payment for my reviews because I think it ruins the integrity. On one hand, that saves you money. On the other hand, my lips are not guaranteed to touch your ass.

If you want me to review a CD for you, it will cost you no more than a CD and the postage to get it here. If you’re interested, just head on over to my contact page and drop me a line.

Everyone’s a critic, and no one’s interested. Why do you bother?

I have never cared about popular opinion because I write for the integrity of my soul, man… I’m just screwing with you. Mostly, I just write reviews to track the CDs that I’ve bought and to give a quick opinion to either lead the reader to some music that they might not know about, or to allow the reader to get a feel for my tastes and lead me to something similar.

No, seriously. I fucking hate when you review shit. Can’t you just replace them with more fart jokes?

I actually spend more time listening to music than doing funny stuff involving farts, so I’d have to probably say No.

How many CD’s do you buy a week?

I don’t drink, so figure whatever you spend on beer, I spend on CDs.

Your reviews are all over the place. Shouldn’t you focus on one genre or another?

The key to increasing readership is focus, but I just don’t have it in me. I like all types of music, so my reviews tend to be widely dispersed like a shotgun blast. Thus, the name, “Shotgun CD Reviews.” If I focused, I’d have to rename the reviews to “Sniper CD Reviews” or something, and that just sounds weird.

You have no idea what you’re talking about! XXXXX is the best band in the world! How can you not be a fan!?

You might be right. When I was a DJ and Rage Against the Machine came out, I actually gave away the promo CD because I couldn’t see a future in rap-metal. I probably don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. Morningwood doesn’t suck. Neither does Dan Dokken. You win. Go home happy.

I’m in XXXXX band, and your review hurt my feelings. Please take it down before I sue you, bitch!

First of all, calling someone a bitch just isn’t menacing anymore. Second, I was in a band once, too. I know that you don’t have any money beyond what you spent on beer last week, so let’s not pretend you have the money for a lawyer, ok? And if you do have the money, you’re probably too old to be in a band.

Why should I pay any attention to your reviews, then?

I was a DJ? The production director at my college radio station? In a band? I buy a lot of CDs? Maybe you read this site regularly and you know I won’t intentionally steer you wrong. Shit, man, I don’t know. I’m over 30 and make shit up as I go along, so you probably shouldn’t trust me at all.

Why don’t you write full CD reviews instead of these quick blurbs?

I have. A few years ago, I did one for Hermano and one for QOTSA. Frankly, I find that full reviews take way too much time to both write and read. Honestly, I can’t stand reading them. When I look up a review of a CD, what I’m really doing is trying to confirm an opinion on a disc that I’m already planning to buy. Reading more than a letter or star grade does nothing more than let the author verbally jerk off all over me. I’m not into that, and I won’t do that to you.

How do you get companies to send you all the CDs?

Ha. Buy a radio station, I guess. I have to spend my money on them just like everyone else, but from my radio days I know that free CD’s are complete crap 92% of the time, anyway.

Where do you buy your CDs, then?

I have a soft $10 limit on CD’s, which tends to send me to BestBuy’s $9.99 section, CircuitCity, or Newbury Comics at sale time. I’d rather get my CDs from the used bins, and since there is no Amoeba Records around here, I’m forced to hit Spinnakers on the Cape or one of the used stores in Cambridge.

Where do you find music online?

Geez. Amazon, SecondSpin, and Pricegrabber’s music section are usually good stops in the online arena, if you can buy enough to minimize shipping. Other than that, I rely on Other Bloggers, OddioOverplay, MusicPlasma, Pandora, MySpace Music, and sometimes I just hit label sites like FatWreck, RoadRunner, Bridge9, Traktor7, SubPop, Century Media, Prosthetic, etc.

You review CDs that are like 1000 years old. Why don’t you put up reviews for brand new bands?

Sometimes I do, but I admit that a lot of what I buy isn’t cutting edge. Do you have any idea of how many recordings have been made over the last 100 or so years? Do you have any idea how much music has been produced in even the last 20? It’s staggering. Imagine the amount of music being produced as an ever expanding sphere, and the music produced today as the outer layer of that sphere. Given the sheer volume of music available, can you say that CDs produced on that outer edge are more valid to “discover” than any other CD in that sphere just because it was produced more recently? Is Rise Against somehow more valid for someone to discover than Face to Face simply because it’s newer? There is just so much music available, that only record companies benefit by a cutting edge mentality. And if any “discovery” is no more valid than another, getting your fix in the used record bins nets you twice the music.

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