My Favourite Amazon Reviewer
James F. Colobus from Pittsburgh, PA is the 3,986,423rd top reviewer on Amazon. He wrote 60 reviews between the years 2000 and 2004 and has been inactive since, with no trace of what is presumably a pseudonym, left on the internet. He also unknowingly helped influence and shape a lot of my early musical tastes.
What I loved most about his reviews was how autobiographical and interconnected they were. He had a recurring cast of characters, often featuring his two high school friends, Chris and Cynthia, and other friends and acquaintances. Different albums would be reviewed through the lens of different periods in his life, peppered with personal anecdotes that helped me really understand how people relate to impactful music.
I could relate to James' experiences discovering Rush's Signals album in junior high during the early 80s, GnR's Appetite for Destruction and Metallica's ...And Justice for All in high school through the mid-to-late-80s, and Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power as a broke college student finding his way in the early 90s.
For example, his Appetite for Destruction (Guns N' Roses' debut) review added the context of a band coming out with something fresh and original, and the authentic perspective of a real fan who got to be there at the inception. He got to appreciate it, watch it flounder, see Sweet Child O Mine hit the charts, and experience the band gain mainstream acceptance and ubiquity.
James showed me that you could like a diverse variety of music, and appreciate it for what it was, whether you had a chain wallet or not (I did). His reviews ranged from Limp Bizkit to Ryan Adams to Metallica, and he always had an understated objective appreciation for the albums regardless of genre or target demographic. I like to think that I adopted some of that mentality myself, and it helped guide me through understanding and developing my own sense of musical appreciation.
I don't think I can phrase it better myself, so to quote that (to me) legendary Appetite review of his:
As a shy person myself, Axl shouted all the things I and countless other kids like me in America wanted to shout but couldn't. Even if I wasn't dancing with Mr. Brownstone, taking the Night Train, or dating a girl whose daddy worked in porno, at least I knew Axl was."
- James F. Colobus, 2003
Oh, and here's a link to his profile, if you want to check it out yourself.