At first, George S annoyed me in much the way AirTanuki describes above. His reviewing style presumed a sort of objectivity that really doesn't and can't belong. Dylan, Stones, and the Beatles were assumed to be at the top of the heap, and by definition, no album by a "lesser" act could surpass the finest works by these artists. But after a while, I realized that while I rarely agreed with what he said was good or bad, I could still count on his reviews to give me a very good idea of what to expect with an unknown album, which made his site very useful. I also found that as arbitrary as his "system" is, he is remarkably consistent in following it, which to me is just as important as providing an entertaining read. Once you figured out what he meant by "adequacy" (the term was meaningless to me at first - to me it meant "enough-ness", wtf?), for example, you suddenly had a pretty reliable, objective measuring stick - whether or not you agreed with it.

I thought at first he was a young (to me) snot who loved to talk about albums in their historical context without having been part of that historical context, having only read about it in books. Reminded me of all the bright young pennies I ran into at business school who knew all these management theories out of textbooks without having worked a real day at a real job in their lives (I had). But in a way, that made him a clean slate. Imagine approaching the Beatles discography, for example, without any prior biases. Just start with album #1 and work your way forward. What does that sound like to fresh ears? George gave us an idea what it sounds like to him, and it's an interesting perspective. With few exceptions, he approaches albums freshly and objectively, without significant prior experience influencing his assessment. There's something reliable and useful about that.