Frequenting this site, it wasn't hard for me to notice that there was a critic, Signor Scaruffi, who is notoriously hard on music. He was giving all of these classics that everyone else loved, that I loved, mediocre to low scores. For example, the highest Beatles score from him is a 7/10.

At first I thought this guy was insane, and resisted going to his site. I also wondered why Henrik would use such a man as a source. But after awhile I decided to go to Scaruffi's site, out of pure curiosity as to what he DOES give good scores, and to find out if he has ever given a 10/10. At first I went to his Beatles page (http://www.scaruffi.com/vol1/beatles.html) to see if he explains why he is so mean to them. I ended up reading his entire essay on that page and... found myself agreeing with a lot of what he said. Although I still believed he gives them too little credit, I realized that this was a very smart man who loved to think for himself, and to think very critically. He was also someone who knew his music and his history, as he cited several other important artists in his Beatles essay. Last but not least, he was a pretty eloquent writer (this was my impression from the translation of his original Italian).

Then I went to the page showing all of his 8+/10 scores (http://www.scaruffi.com/ratings/best100.html) and got to know his very unique tastes. It became obvious that an album had to be nothing less than distinct, experimental, innovative, challenging, coherent, and skillful for him to give it a high score. Not just that, but he has never given a perfect 10/10, even having heard thousands of albums, including all the important ones. Also, I noticed that he tended to champion the more obscure, but oftentimes superior artists out there. Consequently, Scaruffi ended up helping me discover a multitude of musicians ever since I first came to his site.

He may give many classic albums lower-than-deserved scores, but the man knows what he's doing, and his reviews are very well-written and argued. He is a virtual encyclopedia of modern art. I later learned that he has written volumes on jazz, rock, cinema, politics, and philosophy. At first I frowned upon his hard-to-please nature and all of his low scores, but now I've learned to admire those things. Although I still disagree with many of those low scores, I have agreed with every one of his high ones. I wouldn't be listening to great artists like Vampire Rodents, Jon Hassell, John Fahey, and Faust if it weren't for him. I now consider Scaruffi one of our great critics and analysts, when initially he was simply this man who was overtly tough on bands I enjoyed.

Yeah, I don't know, I just wanted to somehow show my admiration for Piero Scaruffi. This is the site that made me discover him, so it made sense that I posted it in this forum. I hope that I've got some of you to look into his website. It's certainly very informative, and he has a unique take on the history of rock.

He and Lester Bangs remain my favourite music critics. they never seems to waver on what they believe in. In Piero's case, it is the uniqueess of the music he listens to, its always either unlike anything else, or unlike anything close to that paricular artists back catalog. For Lester, he always believe in the raw power, and back to basics of rock. he felt that there was far too much bullshit and sideshow for pure music to take place. He loved artist like Velvet Underground, the stooges, early van morrison. ONce artist started moviing away from the roots of there music and attempted at mainstream success, they fail. I dont see lester liking to much of todays music. Maybe Pj Havey, grinderman, and stuff along those lines

While I can respect that he stands firm in his musical tastes, I could never trust/agree with a critic that has no respect for pop music.

sounds bitter to me. I'm sure he had his own band that failed miserably. I know Tom Artrocker from Artrocker magazine hates just about every band he reviews especially the Clash. He'll introduce us to new bands like Glasvegas than he'll tear them apart as soon as they release an album that starts to sell.

While Scaruffi does seem to be extremely biased against "pop," he does love Exile In Guyville, Jagged Little Pill, Appetite For Destruction, Master Of Puppets, Downward Spiral, and Live/Dead. While they aren't totally mainstream, it shows that he doesn't give low scores merely because an album is popular. He just wants popular music to keep a sense of grittiness.

Well, see, The Clash are a good example.

He loved their debut. Gave it 8/10, which for his standards is very excellent. He didn't give anything after that more than a 7/10, though none of them got bad scores. For him, he missed the attractive rawness of their first LP. I can see where he's coming from. London Calling has a polish to it, even a few outright pop songs like "Train In Vain," while their debut was all raw anger and messy guitars. And actually, I do listen to their debut more than London Clash. So he doesn't hate the Clash at all, he just loved them the most when they were truest to their roots, as Kevin mentioned as well.

London Calling*

"polished" along with overproduced is a word overused by indie critics. I don't mind polished. Why does it always have to be such a negative word. Pet Sounds wasn't exactly lofi.

That's also fine. It's just a matter of different tastes. Scaruffi happens to fit mine more than any other critic. I listen to Double Nickels On The Dime and Zen Arcade more than I listen to Pet Sounds.

If you relate to that last sentence, this critic is for you.

so who are the "critics" that give the most 3.5 star reviews for Rolling Stone? That magazine has turned into a glorified version of Teen Beat.

Hmm, just read the essay of Scaruffi about the Beatles and, although I can agree to a certain point to a lot of his affirmations (yes, yes, we are grown people, we know by now that The Beatles didn’t invented modern music) I still got two big problems:
First of all, the way in which the affirmations are made are looking to provoke the Beatles fans, not really to establish an argument. The quotes I include in the next paragraph are a good sample. In fact, some of the points lose credibility for the bitter way in which are formulated.
And secondly, the two main points of his argumentation are at least arguable, if not false:
a) The Beatles were conservative and retrograde (“The Beatles had the historical function to delay the impact of the innovations of the 60's”, “had completely missed the revolution of rock music” or “represented the reaction against a social and political revolution” are some of the quotes): arguable. They obviously were not avant-garde as other bands of that time (but why should they? They chose to play pop songs and doing this they widely expanded the limits of this style). And they not only participated in their current times but were a major influence (it’s true that “Beatles fans went crazy for twenty seconds of trumpet, while the Velvet Underground were composing suites of chaos twenty minutes long”, but the fact is that this twenty seconds from the most notorious band of the time were way more influential that any twenty minutes from an underground band, probably it’s easier to be bold when you’re unknown).
b) The Beatles were not good at making music (“The Beatles were the quintessence of instrumental mediocrity”, “the artistic value of the Beatles work is very low” or “we also know what the Beatles were without Martin: four mediocre singer songwriters”): even more arguable. Probably they were not the best players of their instruments (except McCartney, a great bass player and a quite good multi-instrumentalist). But this isn’t so important, as punk showed us, not to mention that the versions of their songs by technically gifted jazz or classical musicians always fails to achieve the fascination of the originals. And there’s one thing I can’t agree: Four mediocre singer songwriters!!
Shit, finally he succeeded in provoking me. Death to Scaruffi!!! Only joking, of course.

Yeah, I found those to be the two main points of contention: the importance of musical SKILL to make quality music, and the lack of importance of melodies and pop structures. I still disagree with him that -- although they weren't necessarily skilled as instrumentalists, and even though their artistic experiments were confined within normal pop songs -- that those things killed the artistic qualities (and importance) of their music. I admire Scaruffi's extremity of opinion, but he goes a bit far about the Beatles.

Scaruffi is a critic (a great one) and thinks "The critic is the real artist" and stuff like that, so when phenomena like the Beatles (with so much not-"serious art"-ness) threatens (in legacy, even) overwhelming negation of the critic, he resorts to a preamble of critiquing the critic before getting down to the more direct business saying the Beatles' musical endeavors are "mediocre" and merits are "dubious". I think he overreacted - an ongoing denial of the fact that the artist precedes the critic. The Beatles enable Scaruffi. The Beatles spawned Scaruffi (and many like him). Scaruffi loves the Beatles.

Seriously, it (scaruffi.com) is a great website. He just doesn't quite get rock and roll. I don't think he's done enough drugs.

...Mike

The original post is pretty much everything exactly as it happened with me. I think that his harshness towards the beatles is less of a criticism of their music as it is a criticism of their being exalted as the-greatest-band-ever-period. I think if they were never called that he would've been much friendlier to them, which is an unfair way to criticize them, but i'm sure if one brought it up to him he wouldn't care.

Also, I e-mailed him a few weeks ago regarding his ratings for the 00's since they are significantly lower than any other decade (nothing more than 8/10). I said:

Do you intend to update your 00's music ratings at the end of this year, or do you genuinely believe that this decade has produced no albums that are 9 material? I don't mean for that question to sound accusatory if it comes off that way, I'm merely curious.
Keep up the good work!

and he responded:

he concept of the album has changed dramatically
it's unfair to compare albums made in an age in which making an LP was
extremely expensive (and therefore you had to be very selective) with
an age in which making a CD costs a few hundred dollars (and therefore
you can make one whenever you feel like, regardless of how good the
material is)
many great musicians are spreading their music over many CDs that in the
past would have been summarized on just one LP
that LP would have been a 9/10
those CDs are frequently not even 7/10

so it sounds like that he doesn't think that the quality of music, or musical invention has significantly slowed, just that the quality of the album itself, if that makes sense. what do you guys think?

I tried to defend my credibility in my e-mail (my non-accusatory stance) cause somehow I feel he gets a lot of crap in e-mails for his reviews

also, in terms of London Calling, his review of that album is very positive especially regarding it's "encyclopedic" take on rock music calling it "a milestone recording" , though he says what holds it back is that it is a bit "redundant and monotonous" (in the original italian which i can kind of read, knowing spanish very well), which i think holds some truth. also he says the song London Calling makes Joe Strummer "the Dylan of punk," which is a great compliment.

I don't get this explanation. If the artists had to be more selective, then why is it that a lot of bands released two or three albums per year in the 60s and 70s, while this is very rare nowadays?

However, I think a problem is that the CD is longer than the LP. It seems like most artists are not capable of making more than 40 minutes of good, consistent material.

For me I would use 'polished' as a positive or a negative, only in each case it means something totally different.

When I use it as a positive I mean, a lot of attention to detail and hard work in really optimizing the sound rather than just spewing it onto tape fresh out of their heads. Arcade Fire, for instance, is very polished, in a good way. A lot of indie bands could stand to be a lot more polished in that sense.

When I use it as a negative I mean so heavily and obviously edited it's completely drained of emotion. Things like Rihanna and Lady Gaga, where it's obvious they stitched together only the 'cleanest' sounding bits of about 500 takes. Where the background music sounds like about a ten second loop over the whole song and every single note the singer sang has been adjusted by a machine to be perfect on pitch. Music 'polished' in this sense may have a great hook or two but winds up being empty and hollow sounding. There are a handful of pop artists I think would be recording great music if they just had real instruments being played in the background and recorded all tracks on the same take, unmolested by mechanical hands.

I for one do give tremendous bonus points for sounding completely unique and original, so I should really check out this guy's 9/10 list.

And I do think pop music can be great. But only when it thrives on emotional power of delivery. I think a lot of the reason the Beatles were great was that they mastered the 'pop song' in the mop-top years, and it acted as the 'spine' that kept their songs accessible so they could build layers of experimentation on top of it.

It just so happens in today's musical culture, 'pop' means 'Your sound has been pounded into an emotionless mush'.

Edit: I just looked at his 8's from the 00s. I was intrigued by the top of his all time list, though a lot of his high choices are stuff I heard and place more in the 200-300 range of all time.

Then I saw "8/10: Mars Volta - Frances the Mute".

And I think I've completely lost interest. All he seems interested in is masturbatory randomness of noise.

His anti-Beatles tirade reeks of intellectual dishonesty and intentional short-sightedness. He pretty clearly ignores some of the Beatles most innovative pieces such as Eleanor Rigby, Tomorrow Never Knows, and Strawberry Fields Forever just because they contradict what he says. He attacks the Beatles for innovating within a pop music format, despite the fact that it's their ability to be artistically daring in commercially appealing songs that made them so damn extraordinary.

It's the failure of many innovative and artistically great musicians (such as Scaruffi's beloved Capt. Beefheart) that they are unable to make their music accessible. Even a rock music novice can deduce that there's something special about the Beatles after their first listen.

One thing Scaruffi does get right is that Sister Ray is maybe rock's true masterpiece. That song is a work of art; ugly, rough, and honest.