Keith Gerling wrote:

>Most of the contemporary music I purchase is dreck, which never
>DOES redeem itself.

The odds are that most of the music composed in any time period would be
"dreck".  All we can do is read the reviews carefully and use our "hunches"
to make some good buying decisions.  There will be plenty of bad decisions,
but one good purchase offsets a few bad ones:  emotionally, not
financially.

>I certainly wish there was a way of auditioning these works before laying
>out the hard cash.

But auditioning isn't likely to give a listener a good "long-term" view of
the work.  I think you have to keep playing and playing the work in order
to reach a reasonable conclusion.

>Maybe we should unite and create an MP3 library of this stuff....

Isn't the sound on MP3 on the deficient side?  If not, that's a good idea.

Don Satz
[log in to unmask]