Aged Miscreants Disrespectful of Choice,

Many people have decided to review this year’s music, one such party are MTV2. Today I observed snatches of their end of year review of music, there was Zane Lowe, the lad who tries to sing in Yellow Snow Patrol, a Klaxon, Plan B and the NME editor. They’re all taste makers albeit wholly irresponsible ones. The musicians appeared indifferent and diplomatic, the NME guy seemed a bit tired (he’d obviously spent all his year exaggerating the quality of the bands discussed) and Zane was trying to appear intelligent as he eulogised and philosophised. I wondered what the point of it all was. On an aural and visual medium such as television, couldn’t the quality of the music videos in question stand alone?

I pondered the role of the nation’s taste makers. Do they have to speak? I like BBC radio DJs such as Mark Radcliffe, Mark Lamarr and Marc Riley; mostly, they just play the records and tell us enough information in order to enable us to buy it. There’s KEXP Seattle, where the listener gets even less talk, they hear the record and then a title, an artist and maybe a website. In these shows, the listener is usually allowed to judge whether they like something without a sycophantic DJ trying desperately to persuade them that that something was good. Picking the right records and playing them seem to be the only required actions of a broadcasting taste maker.

Wolves by My Latest Novel was the album released in the year 2006 that I liked most but none of the above broadcasters really heralded its quality. I thought about how I had come to buy it. The band obviously had some airplay, but it was scarce and sporadic. I remember hearing Reputation of Ross Francis a few times but by then I’d already decided to buy or had bought the album. It was not radio or MySpace that made me do so, it was probably a whim backed up by the opinion of a messageboard poster.

I considered my role as a taste maker (brother is still intent on seeing Razorlight). I’m the editor of a webspace that has a title chosen by me and I can sometimes make comments on a messageboard. If I can be swayed by the opinions of people of whose backgrounds I don’t know a thing about, I wonder how many people I’ve misled. I know there haven’t been many misled, because there haven’t been many. The difference between radio broadcasters and I is that I have to use words to try to describe the records that I’ve been listening to because they are the only resource available to me aside from links and pictures. They can play a record and let the listener decide. They should not play the record and then justify giving airtime to a record.

In conclusion, anyone who expresses an opinion is a taste maker. People with the biggest outreach can unfortunately be the most effective taste makers. Since anyone can be a taste maker, it's important to know which taste makers to trust. Taste makers might not know that they are taste makers so they have to be sensible with their opinions. People don’t need taste makers, they only really need the sound and their own judgement, but they will want a taste maker to offer them reassurance. Finally, I like My Latest Novel very much.