Talk:Good Times Roll: Difference between revisions

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A fact from Good Times Roll appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 5 October 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that for the 1999 reissue of The Cars' 1978 debut album, no usable demo of their single "Good Times Roll" could be found? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2010/October.

I quote from the article as it currently stands:

The song begins with electronic drums and a guitar riff, soon joined by Ocasek's lead vocals and synthesizers by keyboardist Greg Hawkes. Despite the up-tempo-sounding title, "Good Times Roll" is a mid-tempo song, with a beat described as "languid," "psychedelic" and "creepy." The lyrics are similarly described as "withering" and Ocasek's vocal style as "clinical."^[1]

Really? Are we really doing our best to not inject a little POV into our selection of adjectives?? Are we sure about that?!? Why do I have this terrible feeling that, if I actually open up and read that Allmusic review (and a word about Allmusic, in a moment), I'm going to find that the guy thinks this is a great fucking song and said so, and that, in context, these adjectives actually don't torpedo the tune?!?!?

If I haven't fixed the article myself by the time you read this -- should I? Or, would you like to??

Now, about Allmusic: Is it really such a great source for opinions? Do we really need to inject them into articles? The reason why I ask is, well, first of all, I've never heard of these reviewers before. The Cars and most of their successive albums were reviewed by the greats, y'know, your Creem and Rolling Stone guys, so why are we quoting this "Donald A. Guarisco"? Because he's on an easily-accessible website, is that all it takes? Why exactly does his opinion matter? Can't we find reviews from the album's own era -- wouldn't that be more relevant, how the song was percieved in its day? Because, secondly, these Allmusic guys aren't very smart. I've seen woeful misunderstandings of this band's "I'm Not the One" and Pink Floyd's "Dogs" get published on allmusic.com, and it makes me sick to think the reviewer - probably this Donald dude - got paid actual money to misunderstand great songs, when so many of us can understand and write well about them for free!

But I care more about the cherry-picking of adjectives. I have seen this sort of subtle disrespect in a few different Cars-related articles. --Ben Culture (talk) 02:33, 15 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]