| Only Solitaire: Introduction | List of Artists | List of Albums |
Chained Forever To A World That’s Departed: One More Introduction
Greetings and welcome to the third(and probably last) version of OnlySolitaire, my personal site of music reviews which has been functioning,on-and-off, since almost the early dawn of the Internet age.
The first incarnation of Only Solitaire, which ran from 1998 to2007, covered lots of bands and artists from the 1950s up to the 1990s in nospecific order other than personal preference and random chance; suffering bothfrom really crappy writing and from too much ambitiousness backed by too littleknowledge, it was eventually retired (though you can still access the originaltexts if your curiosity overrides your squeamishness).
The second incarnation, which wasreprised in 2009 and ran all the way into 2020, was planned more strategicallyand presumed to cover a variety of great and not so great artists in alphabeticorder, separating them into several chronological layers so as not to lockwriter and readers alike into a specific time period, and also permit myself toget better acquainted with what was happening to popular music in the 21stcentury. This version (I dare say) was already much better written andbenefited from all the benefits of the Internet age (easy access to all sortsof music and data), although nothing is ever perfect. Eventually, however, Iran into much the same problem as Franklin Clarke from Agatha Christie’s ABC Murders and realized that it wouldbe really weird to leave this worldsomewhere around the letter G. This led to various modifications of theoriginal strategy, none of which really felt suitable to me. Then, along with alarge chunk of the world around me, I somehow fell into a period of darknessand disillusionment, and pulled the plug on the project altogether. (The secondincarnation of Only Solitaire is still available in its complete form on the Only Solitaire blog, and is alsoarchived on this website).
Once the darkness had somewhatdissipated (or, rather, settled into a form of permanent grayness with which Ihave somehow learned to cope), I came up with the idea to revitalize OnlySolitaire once again — but this time, as a straightforwardly historicalproject. Subtitled A Subjective Historyof Rock’n’Roll (And Its Neighbors), this version of the site now followstime rather than people, starting at certain milestones in the history ofpopular music (namely, the rise of early rock’n’roll in the United States and,several years later, in the UK) and going from there. This makes the entireproject more wholesome and systematic than it ever used to be, and itguarantees a certain "intermediate completeness" in case somethingwere to happen to me (no one lives forever, and certainly not in a world besetby Covid-19 and an alarming growth of all kinds of neo-fascism). At the veryleast, writing a comprehensive history of rock and pop music in the 1950s and1960s is quite a realistic perspective — whether I will be able to move on fromthere, God only knows.
Sadly, this means that in thecurrent incarnation of the site I shall not be covering any modern music(something that I quite diligently tried to do on the 2009-2020 blog, but whichultimately contributed to my depression, I think; the summary of all my darkthoughts on the subject is stillavailable here). As far as I am concerned, music has essentially ceased tobe a major cultural force in this day and age, though, of course, it stillpreserves its entertainment function, and can have all sorts of meaning forspecific individuals on their own individual level. To me, however, this meansthat there is no principal difference these days between trying to dig out anobscure, mediocre, but still curious album out of 1957 or 1964, or rummagingthrough the 2021 charts of RateYourMusic in order to "stay up todate" with "current musical trends", which hardly even exist anymore, certainly not in the sense in which "current musical trends"were understood in 1957 or 1964. I’m still listening occasionally to new stuff,but I won’t be covering it again any time soon.
Now, onward to current technicaldetails.
1. What kind of music gets reviewed these dayson Only Solitaire?
I am writing a selective history ofthose kinds of popular music which (mostly) have their roots in the blues,R&B and (to a lesser extent) country tradition of the United States in thefirst half of the 20th century — call this a "history of rock’n’roll"if you wish, but with a very, very broad understanding of"rock’n’roll", which would also include some folk, a lot ofsinger-songwriter stuff, some more or less "pure pop", andtheoretically might even extend to electronica or hip-hop if I live longenough. To make things a little more exciting, I am dividing the reviews intotwo geographic sections — America (including USA and, probably, Canada) and therest of the world (mostly the UK, but also artists from other European and,again theoretically, Asian and South American countries); the American sectiontellingly starts out with Bill Haley’s RockAround The Clock, while the UK / World section starts out with (the ratherunjustly forgotten) Lonnie Donegan and his skiffle explosion, without whichthere would be no... actually, never mind.
For all those worried about thediversity factor, I can only say that I mean no harm to other musicaltraditions, from Western classical to Latin American dance music to Frenchchanson to Indian ragas to Beijing opera, but there have to be limits setsomewhere, and while I might love to share my thoughts on Françoise Hardy, RaviShankar, and João Gilberto, my experience with all these musical worlds hasmostly been limited to the topmost artists, and I wouldn’t want to sound like aclueless tourist. Additionally, most of the local traditions are precisely whatthey are — local — whereas rock’n’roll, want it or not, has remained a more orless universal language (in the Western world at least) for more than half acentury, probably for the same reasons which cause me to be writing this inEnglish rather than in my native tongue. Anyway, I will be covering some non-US / non-UK bands and artists,particularly those whose musical language is more or less compatible with themost common one for me.
As to what precise artists getreviewed (obviously, I cannot review everybody),I have two main criteria here — they have to have at least some historicalimportance (for instance, at least minor chart success, or at least someobjectively unique feature to their sound, or some transparent and acknowledgedinfluence on future musicians) andthey have to have at least something that piques my interest — this is a"subjective history", after all. Fortunately, it turns out that mostof the time, these criteria overlap.
2. How often does stuff get reviewed? What’s the schedule?
Currently, the preferred schedule isto review 2 (two) American albums and2 (two) UK and / or world albums perweek (I also have to allocate some time for a completely different reviewingproject – story-based video games), usually in chronological order, thoughsometimes I find myself obligated to break up the queue with some earlierrecord that I had accidentally missed in my research. On some weeks when I’mparticularly busy or particularly indisposed there may be no reviews at all; onthe other hand, it is not excluded that I might also return to a busierschedule some day. Unfortunately, any good review requires a modicum ofinspiration, and inspiration can sometimes be hard to come by.
Completed reviews are posted bothhere (on my own personal website) and on my new blog set up at Substack.This is done for (a) reasons of security — doubling the info on two websitesprotects it from getting lost; and (b) reasons of convenience — on the Substackblog, users may add their comments. As usual, comments are very welcome,particularly those that indicate typos, spelling mistakes, and factual errors(I will try to correct all these), but also those that add alternateperspectives and opinions.
3. Why the different formats?
To save myself the hassle of workingin different editors, I continue writing everything in MS Word format, fromwhich the finished texts can be automatically converted into Web-compatibleformats. The HTML variants look a bit clumsy when done this way, which is why Iput them next to PDF variants, which look a bit more elegant to my eyes andwhich I therefore recommend as the default format — unless your computer orgadget somehow does not support PDF, in which case you can always fall backonto the HTML variant. If everything fails, there is always the Substack blog(although I only post the bare text there, without ratings, external links orextra pictures).
The individual files / pages are,like they used to be, for artistsrather than albums (having a separatefile for each album is very tedious, and it would be quite a hassle for you,too, if you ever wanted to download the entire site) — but they are beingfilled up very gradually, in chronological order.
4. Are there any changes to the old format ofthe reviews?
Very minor ones. As usual, I includethe complete track listing, occasionally highlighting the outstanding ones ifanything stands out in any particular way (red tracks are the ones that I deemunquestionably superior, even if only slightly, to everything else on thealbum; brown tracks are those that sound fairly odd or unusual comparedto the rest; blue tracks are those that are markedly inferior) — reservingonly one instance of each color per album, however. I also regularly post linksto Wikipedia (so as not to have to waste space on all the historical detailsand trivia which can be easily looked up in more reliable sources), Discogs(where you can find lots of useful technical info on specific releases of theLP in question), and RateYourMusic (where you can find many alternative pointsof view, which will certainly give you a better overall perspective on thealbum than any «official» critical reviews from the so-called professionalmusic journals).
If possible, I try to provide a bitmore context in the new reviews than before — for instance, long-playingrecords by artists in the 1950s and early 1960s were commonly inferior to theirsingle releases (the most common recording market those days), and it is oftenuseless to discuss the LP without also discussing the singles that surround it.Sometimes they are included as bonus tracks on newer CD releases; just as often,however, they are not — all of this deserves some commentary. I also occasionallyinclude links to YouTube, where you can find almost anything these days free of charge (I do not subscribe toany streaming services and probably never will).
5. Are there ratings for albums, and if yes,what are the principles?
Okay, yes. Given how much people love to fight about ratings, I decidedto bring them back for this version of the site, almost the same way they werefunctioning in the earliest incarnation of the site. Each reviewed album getsits own numeric V-A-L-U-E, with each of the five aspects rated on a 1 to 5scale, somewhat like this:
| V | A | L | U | E |
| 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
The five parameters are: (1) V = Variety(Diversity), assessing the overall variety of genres, styles, and moodscaptured on record; (2) A = Adequacy, assessing how well, on thewhole, the artist is suited to performing these styles and genres, whether thelevels of ambitiousness and pretentiousness that are brought to the table matchthe actual musical content, and suchlike; (3) L = Listenability, assessing the generalcare taken to please the listener, ranging from production (sound quality) topresence / absence of fleshed-out melodic hooks; (4) U = Uniqueness,assessing the overall amount of new musical, lyrical, emotional content of therecording; (5) E =Emotionality, assessing just how hard of a gut-punch the record delivers.
Just as it always has been, thesenumeric ratings are not hard science, and merely serve to summarize my currentopinion of the strengths and weaknesses of the recordings, which, hopefully,will be better expressed in the review itself. Needless to say, some recordsare actually not meant to be"diverse" (AC/DC), "listenable" (Captain Beefheart), or"unique" (99% of music ever made), so a low number in a certain cellall by itself is not necessarily indicative of its poor quality. Probably theworst score to have is low Adequacy,which typically just represents artistic cluelessness (this is something I’dprobably slap on every Kansas album ever recorded – the band, that is, not thestate). But generally, if you ever want to fight me in a fair fight, I’d beobliged if you agreed to fight wordsrather than numbers.
6. How can I contact you and chip in with myopinions?
This is what the Substack version ofthe site is for — reviews posted there are raw variants, to which you may addyour comments, observations, corrections, alternate perspectives; I shall tryto take them all into consideration when posting the finalized texts on themain site.
