When he was reviewing Springsteen on his mp3 page he was really hard on the guy and admitted he wanted to give him a “roach” rating. At the time he changed it people were shocked because he ALWAYS bashed Springsteen not only in his reviews but on Babble (where, mercifully, almost nobody else liked Springsteen) but because people couldn’t stop to think for a few seconds that he had given Wild, Innocent & The E Street Shuffle and Darkness On The Edge Of Town four out of five stars and would have obviously been converting one of those. Also back then a lot of Babblers really did follow his updates and score-conversions pretty closely, to the point of noticing when he’d changed scores without telling anybody. Oooof!

Amusingly, the song he named as his favorite Sprinsteen song is “Adam Raised A Cain,” which I personally barely like at all and which I find a stunning choice for a guy who was always complaining about Bruce being bombastic and inadequate (it’s a big loud slow guitar stomper.)

The only confirmation I can think of regarding a score George never got around to giving was that he never finished converting his Kate Bush page; he stated on Babble at some point that The Dreaming would have gotten a 14.

I’ve seen Rimas Lazutka’s name but the guy that made me really want to avoid the FB OS group was that autistic kid who’d post pictures of his breakfast and go HI HOW ARE YOU every single day. I can’t remember the last time I checked it.

So his readers were giving him shit for the post-2000 reviews? The people he befriended over on the Facebook group who were sucking up to him even worse than Babblers were doing in 2002 and whom he effectively replaced us with? Huh. I don’t think it’s offhand to think the Arcade Fire would have gotten a really huge score though, he absolutely GUSHED over Funeral.
I myself like Funeral and The Suburbs and think the band is talented but am not addicted to them. I’m grateful they didn’t just stick to bombastic rockers but I am not wild about the dance music they shifted into.
Of course, I’m not the best at explaining why George loved AF so much and disliked a lot of other post-2000 favorites; oftentimes, it simply amounted to whether or not he hated the band’s vocalist.
He did review Sufjan and didn’t like him much, as I recall.

Maybe he will post here again on his 50th birthday which will be July 4 of next year. Assuming WWIII doesn’t break out of course.