Letter in Today's Sunday Mail (Adelaide)

[skyblue2004]

Give Guy A Break

Tim Duggin uses Guy Sebastian as an example
for his article on no sex before
marriage (body+soul 27/3/05) but then uses
the words "legitimise Karaoke as
entertainment" to describe his art.

Guy demonstrated his wealth of musical
experience on Australian Idol by
writing his own arrangements of his chosen
songs.

He was one of the first to write on his debut
album and constantly
re-arranges his own sings and those of other
writers, so it's difficult to
hear the same song sung the same way twice.

Is that the definition of karaoke?

Wake up, Australia, before we lose him to the
US permanently.

[Jen21]

Good letter...anyone we know? ;D

[Sunny]

Not me. But I thought the same thing when I read the article.

It is nice and short and gets straight to the point.

[prinia]

Heh heh definitely heard the words before.

As someone has posted in a review recently, using Body and Soul as an example - if a jazz musician or artist did their version of Body and Soul - no critic would label it karaoke but probably - if they enjoyed it - rave about the arrangement and using superlatives, because its jazz.

If Miss Higgins did ditto to Body and Soul - ditto again by the critics, who no doubt would jump on bandwagon and get the thesaurus out.

If Guy Sebastian did his own arrangements with Body and Soul, the sheeplike critics would jump up again, with their ego and id getting in their way of a decent and unbiased critique.

A boring lot, on the whole, except for a few who actually don't follow like sheep but really think for themselves and do a thinking person's review (and I might add, obviously stay for the whole concert in those particular cases) and present, as unbiased and reasonable review, a review you actually take note of.

There's not a whole lot of those, though. *sigh*

Hey - when reading some reviews - it reminds me of when Ashwin was teaching - you could tell the teachers when they at the coffee shops because their conversation was peppered with teacherisms. Well, those sheep reviews are like that - ego and sheepisms. I suspect a lot are written on the table top while the critics are "expensing" or doing what they really want to do. (betting on the 4.30 at Randwick?)