Brief soapbox rant on music 'journalism'

Ahhhhh. I'm a lucky fella to have pretty open-ended taste in music - folks don't realize how important that characteristic is when one of your main interests is writing about music. Yeah, I don't write anything that's read by millions, and I'm sure I never will - but the sheer fact that I'm often 'assigned' promos or bands to cover means that many times, I'm required to write about bands that I've never heard of before (let alone heard). For music snobs, this can be a nightmare, and I've heard the stories from other writers about receiving an envelope of promos where approximately half a song out of 13 slabs of plastic and vinyl is legitimately listenable, heh. Every so often, I trip across something that REALLY rubs me the wrong way, but for the most part, even if I don't like something stylistically, I can step back from that and attempt to describe the music in terms of people who might take interest in it. A few folks I've met pretty much despise modern music, so they turn to writing about it in all avenues possible in a very spiteful, mean-spirited tone, thinking that they're Lester Bangs and that they can bring about sweeping change in the industry just by writing a few half-funny ramblings in website and fanzines (and I don't think anyone realizes that while lots of folks, myself included, enjoy Bangs work today, it really didn't amount to a hill of beans as far as 'changing the industry' in his time anyways) ...So maybe I just feel strange being a music lover writing about music when a majority of the people 'writing' about it these days are cynical, sarcastic and ironic to the point that a good 25% of music write-ups I read online sound more like SNL writer applications than they do music evaluations ... I mean, yeah, I've had things that have sent me to the deepest ends of polarity when it comes to reviewing, but those instances are most certainly the exception, not the rule.I guess I figure that any noticeable issues are game to be criticized - but at the same time, I know that musical taste is subjective. I somehow expect folks to lend some sense of credibility to my opinions/knowledge about music when I'm very open to the fact that one of my favorite three albums of the last dozen years is Candlebox's Lucy - so it's not like I'm snobbing on folks. I just always assumed that whether I dug something or not, someone out there probably would, and it's really not that hard to criticize something while also expanding on the elements within it that someone else might appreciate. ... Holy rant, heh. I didn't intend for this to be such a soapbox at all, so I suppose I'll just get to the MP3 ... I wrote about The Lovemakers for a SPIN artist profile a bit ago (click here to read it), and I still find myself revisiting the band's Misery Loves Company EP pretty frequently - it's like Roxette crossed with early Depeche Mode for half the EP with a really nice guitar ballad tossed in as well. The last song on the disc is an insane wall of rock, sounding like Jack White and Gregg Rolie pounding out some early prog-era Journey sounds (the write up says as much, too). I'm off to be a productive worker bee now - I'll leave y'all with "Save Me" ... Enjoy!