Jon Pareles NYTimes Defense

The Article I'm Defending!
What first struck me about this particular article was the fact that it helped me become interested in a topic that I am normally not particularly interested in. Electronic music, and especially ambient music, is not a genre that I particularly enjoy or find my self interested in. The wording that Jon Pareles uses in this article to describe the sounds of a live ambient show paints a vivid picture. I was curious, though, as to whether or not the picture that I had in my head was actually accurate. To my delight, but not my astonishment, I found a cut down version of the show that Jon Pareles was reviewing on YouTube. What I found was that, amazingly, “background wash of pink noise like interstellar dust and puffy tones, pitched and unpitched, arising out of the static” sounds exactly as one might expect it to sound. What really impressed me about this article, though, was the length. Something that I have been having trouble with in this class has been fitting my reviews into their allotted word-count. Jon Pareles, though, does a good job of accurately describing something that’s very hard to describe in a succinct and straight-forward manner.
What, though, offers a source of authority when talking about what is a good or a bad live music performance? Knowing, inarguably, whether or not the music was on pitch can help and Jon Pareles, using his possession of perfect-pitch, can do this. In an interview with www.rockcriticsarchive.com Pareles recounts his love for music; “I had always been attracted to music—I have perfect pitch---and started playing the piano when I was 6.” This kind of love for music combined with a storied career in rock-n-roll critique gives Pareles this very authority. He speaks in such a matter-of-fact tone in his article and this sense of authority is, I think, where it comes from – and it makes it believable. Another thing that gave Pareles this authority came from my research in his past. His experience originates in Rock-n-roll music critique yet here he is talking coherently about ambient electronic music. Again, pointing to his long-time interest in music, with involvement in his college radio-station, and even a degree in music from Yale gives him a ground on which to stand on.

The show he reviewed.
A list of other reviews by Jon Pareles.
An interview with Jon Pareles.