The house
Editorial policy
The rules the desk works by, written down so that a reader can hold the review to them. They govern every note on the site.
The review has one job: to describe the small acoustic show accurately enough that a reader can act on it. These are the rules that job imposes, and the desk applies them to every note before it is dated and put in the register.
Facts and figures
A figure is either sourced or computed. A sourced figure comes from a primary document that is named at the foot of the note with a link and the day it was consulted: a collected paper, a standard, a statistical release, a manufacturer's own description. A computed figure comes from an arithmetic whose inputs are shown, so that a reader with a tape measure or a stopwatch can put in their own numbers and get their own answer. A figure that is neither is not published. Where a page from an encyclopaedia is the best available document for a definition, it is cited as such, not dressed up as a measurement.
Examples are built
The rooms, verses, kits and evenings that appear in the notes are constructed by the desk for the note that uses them. They are plain on purpose. The review quotes no published song, and it names no performer, group, venue, promoter, label or festival, not to protect anybody but because a general description stays true when a particular one goes out of date.
Photographs
The photographs on the site are illustrations produced for the review. None of them shows a real venue, a real audience or a real event, and none should be read as evidence of one. They set a scene; the text carries the facts.
What the desk does not do
No note is sponsored. The desk accepts no payment, equipment, tickets or hospitality in exchange for coverage, sells no placement, runs no advertising and carries no affiliate link. It publishes no product reviews and no prices; where a manufacturer or a trade name is mentioned, it is mentioned as a document, with its date. It does not book, list, promote or review shows, and it does not publish listings.
Corrections
A reader who finds an error writes to the desk through the contact page. A confirmed error is corrected in the note itself, and where the correction changes a conclusion, the note says so in its text. The desk would rather publish a smaller true claim than a larger one it cannot check.
Links
Links to outside documents are references, not endorsements. Internal links go to the note that carries the next part of the argument, and nowhere else. The whole of the site is reachable from the register on the home page and from the five rooms in the header.