SKF NOTE: Writing Modern Drummer music album reviews was not for me.

Growing up, I enjoyed reading and learning from album reviews in music magazines, notably Down Beat. At first, reviewing albums for MD seemed a fun idea. List the album title and record label, the recording date, and the personnel, ending with my brief impression of the album.

Easy. Right?

Not for me.

Disney’s Thumper the Rabbit’s life philosophy got in my album review way: “If you can’t say something’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.”

One moment of one day I find an album lacking. Does that mean every listener will find the album lacking?

Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet, the John Coltrane Quartet, are just two examples of musicians with albums I didn’t like at first. Mostly because I didn’t understand what I was hearing.

Today I own pretty much every Miles, every Coltrane album.

In the 1970s I dismissed Maynard Ferguson’s albums because his looked like an old cat trying to look hip.

Then, in the 1970s, three different times, on NYC’s legendary WRVR jazz radio, I heard killer contemporary big band tracks, without knowing the band’s identity. All three times it was Maynard Ferguson’s big band.

I realized how wrong, petty, and foolish I was to have snubbed Ferguson’s music because of his appearance. I’ve tried to never make that mistake again about any musician.

I have a group of albums I find as fresh today as they were when I first heard them decades ago.

On the other hand, I have been very disappointed re-listening to albums I thought were great 40 or 50 years ago. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s first album, “Are You Experienced?” is one example.

Am I saying “Are You Experienced?” is a bad album? Am I dissing The Jimi Hendrix Experience? Not at all. It’s just that, my hearing “Are You Experienced” for the first time after decades, simply didn’t match my overwhelming enthusiasm for that albums in 1967.

Music changes. Music tastes change. I change. My music tastes change.

Bad album reviews never change. They are forever.

So, way back when, I pushed my MD desk chair back away from my electric typewriter, and haven’t written a music album review since.