Grazing

With a tiny bit of space, I have been doing some good work, reading, noting, cleaning, filing, listening. On this last, I have been in a grazing kind of mode. I have listened to an OAITW (6/5/73), some November ’74 JGMS (11/10/74), a ’78 (3/12/78), 11/17/81, 6/4/83b, a few other things (12/5/84 s2).

This batch of listening raises various questions.

First, in identifying variation in my assessment of a given show, what percentage of the variance is accounted for by variation in the actual quality of the show?

I ask this because I didn’t come away from most of these listens very impressed. The second question, then, is what might account for this?

Hypothesis 1: I am in a bad mood/wrong frame of mind/whatever. It has to do with me, the listener.

Hypothesis 2: The tapes, many of which are of relatively recent vintage (in terms of shnid), just aren’t as great as, say, a bunch of Betties (and what is, after all? what is?).

Hypothesis 3: Improbable things happen, and here I just, improbably, drew a bunch of middling cards off the deck all in a row.

Something else?