If I complain a lot about indie rock, I assure you, it’s because I care. I’ve come to realise that I have an almost paternalistic relationship with indie rock, where I constantly bitch and moan about it because I truly do want what’s best for it. Most of the best music of the last twenty-odd years has been indie rock of some stripe, so it irritates the shit out of me the way it’s being reduced as a genre to being a bunch of bearded shmucks writing awful, fake-sensitive, vaguely quirky lyrics and bland, unmemorable melodies who are just good-looking enough to accrue a sizeable fanbase of preteen girls with IQs equal to their height in inches.
Problem A with modern indie is pretty simple, it sucks. On a purely musical level, it’s just so inoffensive and vanilla. At this point, it’s just a bunch of white twenty-somethings ripping off totemic 60s pop to diminishing returns. And what’s with the sudden influx of folk singers? Folk music is, by and large, awful. It had its moment in the sun half a century ago, it produced some good music, it’s now dead. Now, decades after the invention of the amplifier, I sort of expect new shit. There’s a reason nothing sounds like Elvis anymore. It’s been done, move on.
Another grievance I’d like to air is that modern indie rock just has none of the combative spirit or attitude that produced much of the great indie of the past. Most great indie rock was made by assholes, and there’s a reason for that. As a form, it’s just well-adapted to smug misanthropy. I’m not necessarily suggesting that it’s all gotta be abrasive and inaccessible music (though that would help), it has a lot more to do with attitude, which is sorely lacks. This generation needs a Morrissey, someone to say shit that offends people, someone to articulate all the alienation and unhappiness and anxiety felt by the more intelligent members of society. Instead, we get a bunch of shitty hippie singalongs about how great togetherness is that stupid people listen to when they get to college and want to feel intellegent without actually bothering to think. Where’s Moz when you need him? The whole idea of indie is that it should have a fanbase of people who hate sports and are sarcastic and dislike mainstream culture. Now jocks listen to indie. Fuck.
Finally, it’s lyrically awful. Whatever happened to indie rock lyrics that had literary merit? I’m one of those English major assholes who expects pseudo-profound lyrics to actually be profound, and poor-pitiful-me whining to be convincingly sad. Most modern indie rivals bad stoner prog rock for dumbass lyrics that bros fawn over because they think they’re smart. You know who has better lyrics in any given song than everything on both both Bon Iver’s albums? Fucking Gucci Mane. The guy who blurts out “GOOCH!” several times per song. Jesus.
I rant about Bon Iver a lot, but he’s not even that bad. His first album was insultingly terrible, but he’s actually making some progress and trying new things, which is something his contemporaries seem to fear more than grim fucking death. But he still kind of sucks. And who are his contemporaries? Mumford and Sons, who I would gladly argue are literally the worst band ever to play music, including every last myspace emocore brat pack in existence. Also, and again I’m including BrokenCYDE etc, in this, they have dumber, more gullible fans than any other band in the world. The kind of people I’m happy to say I’m better than. At this rate, I’ll probably end up listening to metal in twenty years, as it will be the best thing out there, and I’m compelled to listen to at least some current music so I don’t turn into one of those old people who think music was better back in the good old days.
In closing, if you’re some douche with dreadlocks and a Fleet Foxes t-shirt who smells like weed, two things. A) Fuck off. And B) Fuck off.
Post-Script: I think Sonic Youth have called it quits. That can’t be a good omen.
Friday, 25 November 2011
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
"Punk Is Dead" - Charles Darwin
When we talk about evolutionary theory, we talk about a shitload of biology that I really don't even approach understanding. Chromosomes and shit. But there's also a theoretical component that I find fascinating, not least because it can be understood without having to memorize terminology or numbers, and can be applied to humanities fields along with science. The idea of natural selection can be applied to sociology, anthropology, history and such because it's a malleable theory, and one that possesses a certain inherent truth that can transcend a bunch of science-y bullshit I don't understand. So can it apply to all the shitty bands I listen to?
It shouldn't be too great a leap of imagination to analogize genres of music, say, 2-Tone Ska and Drone Doom Metal, with random species, say, the jackal and the panda. If we follow the development of genre classifications the way a biology researcher would follow the development of hummingbirds, I figure we'll get basically the same general conclusion. First, this ought to clear up the notion that different genres of music are just free-floating things that come ingto existence arbitrarily on their own, without influence from the past. Not that anyone is claiming that, but fuck it, it's cleared up now. It also helps to fully dispell the notion that there is some sort of linear path that music could be said to follow, ever, at all. Like species, the evolution of music is convoluted as shit. No musical great chain of being, no arbitrary ranking of genres, just a gigantic tangled web.
The analogy between genres evolving into other genres should be fairly obvious, but I find it odd that no one's ever proposed a natural selection type method driving genre volution as in the evolution of species. If a style of music can influence future generations of musicians (produce offspriing), it can survive. If it is unable to adapt (I'm looking at you, yodelling), it becomes extinct. Another parallel that can, potentially, exist between species and genre is the issue of breeding compatability. In the animal kingdom, a horse and an alligator can fuck and produce nothing, but a horse and a donkey can sire a mule together, so it should follow that such rules apply within the musical kingdom. Metal and hardcore have fucked (rhetorically) and given us grindcore and crossover thrash. Ambient and techno have borne out ambient techno. Conversely, if anyone's tried to fuse hip hop and polka, they have failed miserably. Of course, to assume this analogy is perfect is to kind of not give science enough credit.
Music isn't governed by the same sorts of laws as, I don't know, genetics. For genetic anomalies to occur, improbable mutations have to take place that defy human imagination. For musical anomalies to happen, all we need is some asshole with a guitar. To my knowledge, no species can just suddenly ressurect some gene that was prevalent three hundred yeaars ago into its gene pool. On the other hand, bands can bring in the influence of antiquated genres, or fuse entirely separate styles, sometimes to surprisingly successful effect. However, these bastard genres rarely end up having any influence on the future. I love The Pogues, but I can't seriously say there have been any good bands to fuse punk with celtic folk since. I apologize if I've chagrined any Flogging Molly fans or whatever, but fuck them. Wierdo genre combinations don't work because they're good ideas. They work because they happen to be pulled off by people who are, in and of themselves, gifted songwriters. The reproductive fitness of genres ultimately has more to do with how adaptive they are and how wide their appeal is, and not whether or not they happen to have a few people oln baord who are really talented.
Another bullshit notion that the birth of rock music was some sort of catalytic event to which we should attribute, like, everything that has happened since. It seems a little silly that, to this day, we call the majority of music (insert preface here) rock, wehn really, it bears no more relation to old time rock and roll than it does to god knows whatever other genres. In genetics, once speciation has occurred, we don't still refer to the animals as being new kinds of the animals they evolved from. So, in music, it seems kind of idiotic to be referring to, say, math rock as a form of "rock" when it clearly has evolved into something entirely separate. This also applies in metal, where bands like Emperor and Mayhem still apparently qualify as a subgenre of "rock," and other entirely new musical species like shoegaze, which, again, is still considered a form of rock. What the fuck? The "rock" influence is clearly nominal at best in cases like these, and we could just as easily fall under the umbrella of "country", considering that influence is only a few years behind rock. Stupid, eh? The aburd overuse of the "rock" genre tag exists because people continue to believe the dumbass creation myth that when Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley and such started playing, something that totally transcended and destroyed everything that came before was created. Therefore, it's completely rational to assume that any genre that could be argued to have rock as a distant influence is thus rock as well. How dumb. If that were truly the case, Michael jackson would just be an elaborate version of monaistic chanting, Defend that statement, assholes.
It shouldn't be too great a leap of imagination to analogize genres of music, say, 2-Tone Ska and Drone Doom Metal, with random species, say, the jackal and the panda. If we follow the development of genre classifications the way a biology researcher would follow the development of hummingbirds, I figure we'll get basically the same general conclusion. First, this ought to clear up the notion that different genres of music are just free-floating things that come ingto existence arbitrarily on their own, without influence from the past. Not that anyone is claiming that, but fuck it, it's cleared up now. It also helps to fully dispell the notion that there is some sort of linear path that music could be said to follow, ever, at all. Like species, the evolution of music is convoluted as shit. No musical great chain of being, no arbitrary ranking of genres, just a gigantic tangled web.
The analogy between genres evolving into other genres should be fairly obvious, but I find it odd that no one's ever proposed a natural selection type method driving genre volution as in the evolution of species. If a style of music can influence future generations of musicians (produce offspriing), it can survive. If it is unable to adapt (I'm looking at you, yodelling), it becomes extinct. Another parallel that can, potentially, exist between species and genre is the issue of breeding compatability. In the animal kingdom, a horse and an alligator can fuck and produce nothing, but a horse and a donkey can sire a mule together, so it should follow that such rules apply within the musical kingdom. Metal and hardcore have fucked (rhetorically) and given us grindcore and crossover thrash. Ambient and techno have borne out ambient techno. Conversely, if anyone's tried to fuse hip hop and polka, they have failed miserably. Of course, to assume this analogy is perfect is to kind of not give science enough credit.
Music isn't governed by the same sorts of laws as, I don't know, genetics. For genetic anomalies to occur, improbable mutations have to take place that defy human imagination. For musical anomalies to happen, all we need is some asshole with a guitar. To my knowledge, no species can just suddenly ressurect some gene that was prevalent three hundred yeaars ago into its gene pool. On the other hand, bands can bring in the influence of antiquated genres, or fuse entirely separate styles, sometimes to surprisingly successful effect. However, these bastard genres rarely end up having any influence on the future. I love The Pogues, but I can't seriously say there have been any good bands to fuse punk with celtic folk since. I apologize if I've chagrined any Flogging Molly fans or whatever, but fuck them. Wierdo genre combinations don't work because they're good ideas. They work because they happen to be pulled off by people who are, in and of themselves, gifted songwriters. The reproductive fitness of genres ultimately has more to do with how adaptive they are and how wide their appeal is, and not whether or not they happen to have a few people oln baord who are really talented.
Another bullshit notion that the birth of rock music was some sort of catalytic event to which we should attribute, like, everything that has happened since. It seems a little silly that, to this day, we call the majority of music (insert preface here) rock, wehn really, it bears no more relation to old time rock and roll than it does to god knows whatever other genres. In genetics, once speciation has occurred, we don't still refer to the animals as being new kinds of the animals they evolved from. So, in music, it seems kind of idiotic to be referring to, say, math rock as a form of "rock" when it clearly has evolved into something entirely separate. This also applies in metal, where bands like Emperor and Mayhem still apparently qualify as a subgenre of "rock," and other entirely new musical species like shoegaze, which, again, is still considered a form of rock. What the fuck? The "rock" influence is clearly nominal at best in cases like these, and we could just as easily fall under the umbrella of "country", considering that influence is only a few years behind rock. Stupid, eh? The aburd overuse of the "rock" genre tag exists because people continue to believe the dumbass creation myth that when Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley and such started playing, something that totally transcended and destroyed everything that came before was created. Therefore, it's completely rational to assume that any genre that could be argued to have rock as a distant influence is thus rock as well. How dumb. If that were truly the case, Michael jackson would just be an elaborate version of monaistic chanting, Defend that statement, assholes.
Monday, 10 October 2011
Does "John Mayer sucks" count as an epiphany?
It was shaping up to be a good long weekend. It really was. I had gotten hours of reading done, slept well for once, and, on the musical front, assembled tracks from Black Tambourine, The Shop Assistants, Tiger Trap and The Pastels into a basically perfect blob of indie pop for the bus. To top it all, I found a new Mexican restaurant in Winnipeg, one with vegan versions of almost all their standard dishes no less. But wouldn't you know it, John Mayer intruded on my day. The fucker is wont to do that.
For the second time in about a week, the retail outlet I was frittering away time in was playing a John Mayer album from beginning to end. God, how I wish I worked in one of those used bookstores where they place noise music just to drive away stupid assholes from their cuistomer base. But I digress. Really, the amount I hear John Mayer in public places is like a rock persistently lodged in my shoe. Honestly. But, the whole ordeal made me wonder why I have such a beef with John Mayer. It's not like he's really all that worse than any other lame-ass easy listening adult contemporary shit out there, and I probably listen to an hour of that garbage a day due to it constantly wafting through public places. Ultimately, I guess my problem with the guy is pretty similar to my problem with any other vand or musician I genuinely loathe, instead of just passively disliking. People actually respect him, and encourage him to get on his whole serious-legitimate-musician trip, which just cheapens the whole idea of listening to music for pleasure, really.
It's not that he's genuinely recording the worst songs out there, but I'm actually somewhat indifferent to the recording of bad music in and of itself. Who gives a shit. Most of it never leaves whatever localized area is inhabited by its progenitor and their friends; and even if it does get on the radio, its usually in the capacity of something I might hear while I'm waiting for a haircut, or on a commercial, but still, why do I give a fuck? The Black eyed Peas are the only thing in recent memory so bad and so ubiquitous that just hearing them causes me some level of anguish. What, ahem, grinds my gears is when people treat shitty pop singers like they're fucking tortured artists (artistes?) whose every awful, contrived piece of shit song is profound and deeply emotional. Fuck that. I have no qualm with pop music in general, and if some new soulless pop tune is crafty enough it'll probably be on my iPod, but what the fuck ground do assholes like John Mayer have to stand on as far as creating serious works that yield insights about anything at all, beyond appearing in black and white publicity photos where they appear to be contemplating something? Also, This also applies to Bon Iver, Coldplay, and the flat-out atrocious Mumford and Sons.
I've been accused of being too sarcastic, and using a wall of irony and snarkiness to avoid dealing with the world. That's probably true, but it's a much less wrenching characteristic in a person than fake sincerity. That's basically the problem with any of the previously mentioned assholes, and, really, the singer-songwriter movement at large. There's such a surplus of "maybe-if-chicks-think-I'm-sensitive-they'll-suck-my-dick" idiots in North America. Which is, by itself, pretty beningn. There are a lot of volcanoes in the world, and, as long as they're not erupting and killing people, why do i care? The problem with cloying, empty hacks like John Mayer is that way too many people actually take them seriously. We'll never get rid of them now. If I may generalize, artists like these seem to appeal to younger folks who describe music as "chill" and assume that anything midtempo at a fairly low volume must be intellegent. They also seem to love mamking shitty lyrics into even shittier facebook statuses. You know, because that shit really pertains to their lives. It speaks to them. All art appeals to peoples' vanity, but that takes it too far.
Also, they guy is a shitty guitar player. I mean, Christ, play with some feedback or something. Anytime caucasians claim to be playing "the blues," my eyes get ready to roll. When they're rcih, famous white people... I don't actually need to finish that sentence. Its ending is contained implicitly within its beginning. Even Stevie Ray Vaughan completely, utterly fails to impress me. So he bends the string a lot and died in a plane crash? Big deal. back to John Mayer, though. In any of his songs I've heard that have a lengthy guitar solo, it sounds like the worst parody of Eric Clapton when he just fully gave up and decided to start courting old people as an audience. Fuuuuck.
This seems like a good time to bring up people who have Bob Marley shirts and Bob Marley posters and regularly quote Bob Marley, but aren't actually familiar with any other reggae. Those people should be gassed to death.
For the second time in about a week, the retail outlet I was frittering away time in was playing a John Mayer album from beginning to end. God, how I wish I worked in one of those used bookstores where they place noise music just to drive away stupid assholes from their cuistomer base. But I digress. Really, the amount I hear John Mayer in public places is like a rock persistently lodged in my shoe. Honestly. But, the whole ordeal made me wonder why I have such a beef with John Mayer. It's not like he's really all that worse than any other lame-ass easy listening adult contemporary shit out there, and I probably listen to an hour of that garbage a day due to it constantly wafting through public places. Ultimately, I guess my problem with the guy is pretty similar to my problem with any other vand or musician I genuinely loathe, instead of just passively disliking. People actually respect him, and encourage him to get on his whole serious-legitimate-musician trip, which just cheapens the whole idea of listening to music for pleasure, really.
It's not that he's genuinely recording the worst songs out there, but I'm actually somewhat indifferent to the recording of bad music in and of itself. Who gives a shit. Most of it never leaves whatever localized area is inhabited by its progenitor and their friends; and even if it does get on the radio, its usually in the capacity of something I might hear while I'm waiting for a haircut, or on a commercial, but still, why do I give a fuck? The Black eyed Peas are the only thing in recent memory so bad and so ubiquitous that just hearing them causes me some level of anguish. What, ahem, grinds my gears is when people treat shitty pop singers like they're fucking tortured artists (artistes?) whose every awful, contrived piece of shit song is profound and deeply emotional. Fuck that. I have no qualm with pop music in general, and if some new soulless pop tune is crafty enough it'll probably be on my iPod, but what the fuck ground do assholes like John Mayer have to stand on as far as creating serious works that yield insights about anything at all, beyond appearing in black and white publicity photos where they appear to be contemplating something? Also, This also applies to Bon Iver, Coldplay, and the flat-out atrocious Mumford and Sons.
I've been accused of being too sarcastic, and using a wall of irony and snarkiness to avoid dealing with the world. That's probably true, but it's a much less wrenching characteristic in a person than fake sincerity. That's basically the problem with any of the previously mentioned assholes, and, really, the singer-songwriter movement at large. There's such a surplus of "maybe-if-chicks-think-I'm-sensitive-they'll-suck-my-dick" idiots in North America. Which is, by itself, pretty beningn. There are a lot of volcanoes in the world, and, as long as they're not erupting and killing people, why do i care? The problem with cloying, empty hacks like John Mayer is that way too many people actually take them seriously. We'll never get rid of them now. If I may generalize, artists like these seem to appeal to younger folks who describe music as "chill" and assume that anything midtempo at a fairly low volume must be intellegent. They also seem to love mamking shitty lyrics into even shittier facebook statuses. You know, because that shit really pertains to their lives. It speaks to them. All art appeals to peoples' vanity, but that takes it too far.
Also, they guy is a shitty guitar player. I mean, Christ, play with some feedback or something. Anytime caucasians claim to be playing "the blues," my eyes get ready to roll. When they're rcih, famous white people... I don't actually need to finish that sentence. Its ending is contained implicitly within its beginning. Even Stevie Ray Vaughan completely, utterly fails to impress me. So he bends the string a lot and died in a plane crash? Big deal. back to John Mayer, though. In any of his songs I've heard that have a lengthy guitar solo, it sounds like the worst parody of Eric Clapton when he just fully gave up and decided to start courting old people as an audience. Fuuuuck.
This seems like a good time to bring up people who have Bob Marley shirts and Bob Marley posters and regularly quote Bob Marley, but aren't actually familiar with any other reggae. Those people should be gassed to death.
Sunday, 9 October 2011
People who hate entire genres of music wholesale are ignorant idiots.
In the last few days, I've been encountering a lot of people who dislike hip hop. It really annoys me. Not all of them have necessarily been old, but every last one of them has had a significant strain of "curmudgeonly conservative" in them. As you'd expect, most of them are rock fans of some stripe or another. What sticks in my craw more than anything is the rhetorical trick that somehow hip hop isn't "real" music. ie. It uses sampling and loops instead of instruments, the vocals aren't conventionally singing. First of all, any time someone says something isn't "real music," that's ludicrous, unless they literally don't believe that it exists. Furthermore, that attitude clearly stems from the fact that the people in question aren't taking hip hop on its own terms. Any genre has a specific set of values, and of course if you try and judge one genre by another's set of values, you're going to end up making a deeply flawed judgement. So the question is, why are these motherfuckers dumb enough to try to judge hip hop by rock's values?
I'll admit that I have fairly well-defined tastes, and there are numerous genres I don't care for, listen to, or readily endorse. I don't like country because I don't really listen to music for the purpose of hearing someone talk about their day, which is kind of how I see country. And, musically, it just does nothing for me. I don't like the instrumentation or the arrangements, and it doesn't exactly have an abundance of tunes or hooks. But I wouldn't try and judge, let's say, a Marty Robbins record against a Beatles or Smiths one, because it would be, as they say, comparing apples and oranges. Another genre that i don't like at all is prog. I like short, concise, catchy songs, as a rule of thumb. Four chords or less, preferrably. Prog rock groups don't exactly make such songs their aim, so they're already not boding well for me. Other than that, I don't play any instruments, so I get little out of virtuosity. I wouldn't judge a prog rock band's musical ability, because I'd be really, really out of my element on that one. And, being a literar buff of sorts, I place a relatively high value on lyrics, so, again, I wouldn't judge either prog or country on the wittiness, insightfulness or eloquence of their lyrics, since that would be unfair, as I would be taking them on my own terms rather than theirs. They may have shitty lyrics, but that's kind of part of their job description. On the other hand, when I hear a Bob Dylan song where what he's singing doesn't reach "Blonde on Blonde" levels of brilliance, I figure it's time to call out the motherfucker. You see my point.
But I digress. Back to thne anecdotal shit. Despite how obviously childish it is to judge a genre without taking it on its own terms, people continue to do it with hip hop. Why? I guess one reason is that people have a major straw man. I always hear the claim that sampling constitutes "stealing" music from other people. I've heard examples of hip hop where that's the case. Bujt I've heard plenty more where it isn't. Hip hop isn't the central focus of this post, so I won't go into too much detail on it specifically, but I will just say that recontextualizing snatches of random funk/rock/pop songs in hip hop is as legitimate as, for example, recontextualizing found sounds and electronic noise in tape music. I'd define that as "real" music. But it goes beyond straw men. People just do it habitually, and it strikes me as a mainfestation of the belief that whatever they spend their time listening to is, in some way, inherently the best shit ever, and the metric by which all other forms of music should be judged. Classical snobs are probably one of the better examples of this, although the more cliched ones are a rarified breed at this point. But I don't need to elaborate on people who think that Chopin and Vivaldi and shit is some perfect high art, and whatever kids these days are listening to is crude and without merit. Chuck Berry already did in "Roll Over Beehtoven." Of course, irony being the only constant in the universe, classical snobs have more or less been replaced by rock snobs. Marvellous.
We all know a few of these assholes. Rap is crap, Noise rock is just Noise, and Punk is just a bunch of fags with weird haircuts yelling stupid crap. Quoth Homer Simpson, "Everybody knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It's a scientific fact." Actually, Homer Simpson's not a bad archetype for these stupid fucks. They're often bald. They do drink a lot of beer. They are really funny to listen to. Anyway, Homer seems like the kind of guy who figures that he is, culturally speaking, the center of the universe. That is the problem, isn't it? People realize that what other people listen to for kicks is fairly different than what they do, and they mistake "different" with "inferior." And the sad thing is that I'm the one who ends up saying "d'oh!"
I'll admit that I have fairly well-defined tastes, and there are numerous genres I don't care for, listen to, or readily endorse. I don't like country because I don't really listen to music for the purpose of hearing someone talk about their day, which is kind of how I see country. And, musically, it just does nothing for me. I don't like the instrumentation or the arrangements, and it doesn't exactly have an abundance of tunes or hooks. But I wouldn't try and judge, let's say, a Marty Robbins record against a Beatles or Smiths one, because it would be, as they say, comparing apples and oranges. Another genre that i don't like at all is prog. I like short, concise, catchy songs, as a rule of thumb. Four chords or less, preferrably. Prog rock groups don't exactly make such songs their aim, so they're already not boding well for me. Other than that, I don't play any instruments, so I get little out of virtuosity. I wouldn't judge a prog rock band's musical ability, because I'd be really, really out of my element on that one. And, being a literar buff of sorts, I place a relatively high value on lyrics, so, again, I wouldn't judge either prog or country on the wittiness, insightfulness or eloquence of their lyrics, since that would be unfair, as I would be taking them on my own terms rather than theirs. They may have shitty lyrics, but that's kind of part of their job description. On the other hand, when I hear a Bob Dylan song where what he's singing doesn't reach "Blonde on Blonde" levels of brilliance, I figure it's time to call out the motherfucker. You see my point.
But I digress. Back to thne anecdotal shit. Despite how obviously childish it is to judge a genre without taking it on its own terms, people continue to do it with hip hop. Why? I guess one reason is that people have a major straw man. I always hear the claim that sampling constitutes "stealing" music from other people. I've heard examples of hip hop where that's the case. Bujt I've heard plenty more where it isn't. Hip hop isn't the central focus of this post, so I won't go into too much detail on it specifically, but I will just say that recontextualizing snatches of random funk/rock/pop songs in hip hop is as legitimate as, for example, recontextualizing found sounds and electronic noise in tape music. I'd define that as "real" music. But it goes beyond straw men. People just do it habitually, and it strikes me as a mainfestation of the belief that whatever they spend their time listening to is, in some way, inherently the best shit ever, and the metric by which all other forms of music should be judged. Classical snobs are probably one of the better examples of this, although the more cliched ones are a rarified breed at this point. But I don't need to elaborate on people who think that Chopin and Vivaldi and shit is some perfect high art, and whatever kids these days are listening to is crude and without merit. Chuck Berry already did in "Roll Over Beehtoven." Of course, irony being the only constant in the universe, classical snobs have more or less been replaced by rock snobs. Marvellous.
We all know a few of these assholes. Rap is crap, Noise rock is just Noise, and Punk is just a bunch of fags with weird haircuts yelling stupid crap. Quoth Homer Simpson, "Everybody knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It's a scientific fact." Actually, Homer Simpson's not a bad archetype for these stupid fucks. They're often bald. They do drink a lot of beer. They are really funny to listen to. Anyway, Homer seems like the kind of guy who figures that he is, culturally speaking, the center of the universe. That is the problem, isn't it? People realize that what other people listen to for kicks is fairly different than what they do, and they mistake "different" with "inferior." And the sad thing is that I'm the one who ends up saying "d'oh!"
An Essay concerning Human Uuuuugggghhhhnderstanding
If the (clever as fuck) title to this, my inaugural post, did not clue you in, this is intended as a treatise on why I decided to relent and start a blog, what intentions I have for my blog, and why I am better than you. k.
First off, why I started this here blog. I might as well stop being "That asshole who gets in lengthy feuds with bloggers and then signs as Anonymous," and start being "That asshole who gets in lengthy feuds with (other) bloggers and then signs as Jet Jaguar." Really, my intent is largely to post things that piss me off, and to get into arguments. Not arguments where I might convince the other guy of something, or maybe learn to think more critically. Fuck that. I argue to kill time. I acknowledge that I'm a smug, condescending little bastard, and that's becuase I'm really great. Duh.
One thing I will say is that if I do end up getting in a really long argument with you, it means I do, on some level, respect you. I may have a profound disrespect for the opinions you hold, and will probably secretly think that you're an implicit racist or something, but respect you enough to actually have some sort of a half-assed discourse. If I truly think someone is an idiot (ie. a creationist) I just sort of automatically go into "obnoxious troll" mode. If I'm bothering to legitimately engage you or your ideas, it means I thinkt highly enough of you to not just say stupid shit to get a rise out of you. Congratulations, fuckhead.
I'll probably post pretty irregularly, since shit rarely bugs me enough to actually compose an essay-length piece of writing about it that I'd really be willing to defend. I'm far likelier to get into lengthy bitchfests with other assholes with blogs in the comment sections of whatever one of their dumbass posts I happen to take issue with, since then I can just respond to them point by point.
Also, religious motherfuckers, just fuck off. I do not like you, your circular metaphysical reasoning, or your shitty strsight-to-DVD movies. Don't even bother responding to anything I say, i will just make fun of you. As i should.
First off, why I started this here blog. I might as well stop being "That asshole who gets in lengthy feuds with bloggers and then signs as Anonymous," and start being "That asshole who gets in lengthy feuds with (other) bloggers and then signs as Jet Jaguar." Really, my intent is largely to post things that piss me off, and to get into arguments. Not arguments where I might convince the other guy of something, or maybe learn to think more critically. Fuck that. I argue to kill time. I acknowledge that I'm a smug, condescending little bastard, and that's becuase I'm really great. Duh.
One thing I will say is that if I do end up getting in a really long argument with you, it means I do, on some level, respect you. I may have a profound disrespect for the opinions you hold, and will probably secretly think that you're an implicit racist or something, but respect you enough to actually have some sort of a half-assed discourse. If I truly think someone is an idiot (ie. a creationist) I just sort of automatically go into "obnoxious troll" mode. If I'm bothering to legitimately engage you or your ideas, it means I thinkt highly enough of you to not just say stupid shit to get a rise out of you. Congratulations, fuckhead.
I'll probably post pretty irregularly, since shit rarely bugs me enough to actually compose an essay-length piece of writing about it that I'd really be willing to defend. I'm far likelier to get into lengthy bitchfests with other assholes with blogs in the comment sections of whatever one of their dumbass posts I happen to take issue with, since then I can just respond to them point by point.
Also, religious motherfuckers, just fuck off. I do not like you, your circular metaphysical reasoning, or your shitty strsight-to-DVD movies. Don't even bother responding to anything I say, i will just make fun of you. As i should.
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