> The number one thing I see is convoluted run-ons
full of 88%
> adjectives, among other things.
I'm writing about music for about 10 years now (in
Hungarian, so you can't
check:)), and I think it's pretty hard to avoid
using lots of adjectives -
all you can do is try to replace some of them by
verbs.
I think the main point is that even if music is
something that is
happening in time (so verbs would be adecvate for
this), when you describe
music, you approach it as a whole, as an entity. And
you have only a few
subjects (describable with nouns: album, song,
track, intro, arrangement,
feeling, processes etc) to describe which you can do
most easily with
adjectives.
And an other thing (from a linguistic point of
view): reviewers try to
avoid being "too" subjective - you can describe your
subjective experience
with verbs (what is _happening_ to you listening to
this piece of music),
but reviewers seem to feel that this kind of writing
has an atmosphere of
more than enough subjectivity.
> Anybody care to wager a guess why it's all so
embarrassingly poor?
I have to tell I enjoy a lot of stuff I read, about
half of each month's
Wire and lots of reviews on the internet.
r.a