Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Say Something

I had visited Funky Mofo a couple of times before I ran into an appallingly bad review of the new Tiga single earlier this week that essentially copied the info from the website adding less insight to the quality of the material than a typical amazon.com review. Curious if this was typical for the site, I browsed through their review section and found their lengthy take on Luxxury's "Drunk" EP that equally fatally flawed. The review went on (and on) addressing claims of the band's press packet, a trend for the site apparently, and in large part attempted to debunk four words of synthpop.net's review, most likely quoted in the press release, of the same material. The reviewer then went on to claim that "dance music has always puzzled me," that the style must require drugs to understand and that EP's are always a waste of money. Clearly they had the wrong reviewer for the job, but a look at their forum shows a statement announcing "the Funky Mofo team have experienced quite a few personal attacks, especially concerning our reviewers" so maybe it's not just this guy.
However, all this might be moot at this point because as of today the website has removed their review section. The site's front page now has a statement about the site not doing well enough financially to continue and reminds us that a "webzine isn't necessarily a 'fanzine', a webzine can be just like a normally printed magazine - it can be successful and it is possible to make a living from it." As reasonable adult I understand economics issues and completely support those who choose not to loose their own money instead of "supporting the scene" or some or other nonsense like the recent argument I read dismissing people who choose to get day jobs instead of loosing money, homes and marriages to pursue their musical dreams full time. I certainly wouldn’t be the type to add insult to injury so I wish the site the best of luck (and it’s worth pointing out I don’t believe that the offending reviews were authored by the site’s founder).

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