Dear music editor,
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I rely on music sources such as the Reader for information about what shows I might like to attend, recordings I might like to purchase, or artists I might like to investigate further. Unfortunately, your music section is lacking in editorial quality. Without adding much more to the word count of my letter, I won’t recite specific examples from recent reviews, but the ongoing juvenility I’ve suffered through from your reviewer Liz Anderson is fully illustrated in this week’s reviews of Megadeth and Gil Mantera’s Party Dream [Section 3, November 19]. Beyond these two reviews, use of profanity, references to self drunkenness and other ugly behavior is used as a crutch by inferior writers and is a common thread throughout Anderson’s “work.” Strong writers have the vocabulary breadth to make their point without pandering to base emotion. I hear garbage language every day on the street. I don’t need to read it as part of a review in a respectable alternative news weekly. To use Liz’s own words, she “just fills space with whatever asinine syllables come out of (her) mouth.”
(1) Liz Anderson is 15 years old.
