on the limited value of the memoiristic approach to music criticism

"for some of us music is your life, rather than something that accompanies life. The adventures are in music, rather than a separate category of life that then has this incidental soundtrack. Records don’t become biographical markers, an index of the passing of time. Well, okay, some do, and there are adventures and experiences and woes happening concurrently, to which in some cases a song gets attached, whereas in other cases, that doesn't happen. But most of the music that matters to us exists in its own autonomous realm of significance unto itself. Our memories are of getting into the music - discovery - being taken places by the music - rather than the other stuff that was going on in our lives in a completely separate channel"