Well, the way I look at it is that you can do two things: you can listen to music for pleasure or you can analyse the crap out of it (isn't there a reason why the word analyse begins with "anal"?) ;) Personally, I prefer the former.

If someone hates my music taste, fine, **** them. I know what I like, to quote Mr. Gabriel, and that's what I listen to. I'm quite aware that not everyone will like what I do, but that doesn't invalidate my musical choice. If we all listened to the same thing there would be no need for or point in a place like Music Banter. I do take some recommendations here, and generally speaking I pay more attention to the words that recommend than the music --- which is possibly a bit silly, as I could determine, probably, with one press of a "play" key in a few minutes what it might take me ten or twenty to read, but that's how I prefer to do it. However, someone slagging off the music I like might occasionally get a response, but generally I would just think they were entitled to their opinion and leave it at that.

I'm not into deep analysis of music. My reviews are, or try to be, more than just "ooh what a guitar solo" or "this guy can really play the keys", but I don't delve heavily into the raison d'etre of a band or what their music is symbolic of. I prefer to look at it on a much simpler level. As I think I've stated before, where someone will sneer at band B for being a carbon copy of band A, as long as I like band A and band B sound as good, I really don't care. Most of the time. In fact, once I find a band I like it's gratifying to find another who sound like them: double the pleasure for me. Parodies, or bad copycats, however, are another matter altogether.

I would be, in any case, academically lost in some of the discussions/theories even sometimes treatises put up in various journals here, and I can recognise my limitations. That stuff is way over my head, and all I want to do is slap on my headphones and listen to the music I like, and then tell you why I like it. Or not, as the case may be.

As one of the (many) sections in my journal has it, "keep it simple".

And now, I go back to whatever it is I do... :)

I love this comment. I loved it so much I threw it in here and left if for a week. I sat on it. Its the sort of populist rage that runs rampant on any musical community. "Remember when this band was good? Then the ****ing radio played them." The radio, as you're aware, is Adolf Hitler.

But Gotye is not Kings of Leon. I'm not defending the man in any capacity, it should just be noted that sane people will understand that these are not similar artists. No judgement - just different.

So at first measure this seems like an old, familiar argument. When something gets popular it becomes ****. Why? Well this is a rant for another time, but it should be known for the purposes of reading this that when you make a statement like that it says more about you than it doesn't about the band/artists/act you're attacking.

But back to the point. The sentiment, is irrational from the jump. Historically, Kings of Leon blew up when they appeared in a car commercial. Was Sex on Fire bigger? Of course it was. But what you should really be concerned with here is that Sex on Fire is the best song on a ****ing terrible album. Why does that matter? Because the radio's playing cover-up man for what the real symptoms are.

What we're to suppose from a statement like this is that the radio is the downfall of the artist here, which is really the chicken before the egg. Whether the artist gets played on the radio or not shouldn't determine our opinion of the artist, what should determine our opinion of the artist is whether or not their music sucks. It so happens that occasionally a downgrade is music is accompanied by radio play. I'd like to cite REM.

But the grave sin of the comment quoted above is not a misappropriation of blame, but of a mis-association and blame. Gotye is as bad as Kings of Leon? Where am I? Who's the President?

So Gotye got a hit. Thats true. Kings of Leon got a hit. Also true. But here's the Pepsi test.



Gotye



King of Leon

My apologies. That last one sounded like what i imagine riding in a pickup truck in Missouri to feel like. What these dickheads don't get is looking like the Avett Brothers but sounding like Creed doesn't cancel each other out. Dear Kings of Leon, go **** yourselves.

But if you can block that out and get back to the previously posted Gotye video. Is it a fair comparison?

No. So why the hell did I write a blog post about this? Fair point, sir or madam. Fair point. What I was trying to do (and didn't want to soil a thread with) was point out here how a blind rage toward commercialism mutes and blunts your critical mind. I hate to sound like a Monk of MB but if you can't steel your tastes to remain in-line with your principles, you're going to be rootless and float unmoored through an "it all sounds the same" depression.

What I can't stress enough is that looking into the microcosm and declaring a pandemic is going to achieve nothing but personal ennui when it comes to music. I hope I've expressed myself well enough. For the good of our children.

Happy Meditating.

I'd agree with a lot of that. It's good to look at the music simply as music. Talking in general about music I don't mind going beyond that, but if it's about a specific piece it's a bit presumptuous to read lots of things into it when we didn't even write it ourselves. I suppose we all to some degree though try to identify with music we like, normally on some emotional rather than intellectual level. Some take this a step further though and worship everything by an artist which I can find annoying trait.

Its February 2012 and Whitney Houston has died. It's a popular fad for the contrarian set to be vocal about their disinterest or happiness. I assume its mostly affected; I say that, I'm accused of being an ******* and met with graphs and chart about how its perfectly reasonable to feel that way.

The internet takes another chunk of civilities face to an early grave.

If you didn't see it on MB (and I didn't check to see if it happened) you probably saw it somewhere else or around the office place. its not unreasonable, Newton's Law of Motion says "o every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction." This is no different.

But if there was something to be gained from a senseless and early death, or at least something for us to chew on at the musical trough its at least these two things: The existence of the genre "Adult Contemporary", and American Society's need to dig up the past to show homage when its, at best, niceties in the wake of a passing, and at worst, the Grammys trying to make a buck.

But first things first. Adult contemporary. Ostensibly there to fill the dead silence of department stores and to drown out the screams of dental patients to the waiting and terrified patients in the lobby. If this were Luther Vandross I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But only the aforementioned contrarian set would posit that Houston didn't have talent. The woman was called "the perfect instrument" and while she isn't my cup of tea, and she's inspired to many rehashed, half-assed imitators on the Idol shows, theres no denying she could have done nearly anything with those vocal chords.

When writing on a music form on the internet, it most likely takes a Jesuits discipline to remember there needs to be a balance to what rattle through out headphones to make the world go 'round. So calling a spade a spade, Houston's work was certainly craft, and whether or not there was passion is for you to decide. It was certainly conditioned ("ok this track needs to be passionate") but it isn't disqualifying. And if anything it harkens back to a time when music was created more like films than the garage-born DIY stuff we see today. Houston's music was "American Graffiti" while many of what would follow her reign at the top sends to be the sonic equivelent of a soap box racer. Tin Pan Alley was written by Writers, played by Performers, and sang by Singers. Why is this different than Houston and why do we consider it less?

If there is any performance that settled the argument it was her Super Bowl performance of the Star-Spangled Banner. A song crafted with such a ridiculous arrangement (vocally) one might be on to something to refer to it as the vocal equivelent of the Rach 3 (Rachmaninov Piano Concerto 3).



No jingoism intended. The song happens to be very difficult to sing correctly, and as an American, we've been punished by countless no-talent hacks botching the god damn thing so badly they ought to be tried for treason. But I digress.

Its a curious thing to say, 50 years on, that what we appreciate in the here and now (the 30's) is more valued than what we've seen since the Studio's of the 70's mastered shlock. Theres some digging done on this issue that requires more time and interest than some mad jackle on a throw away blog of rambles and grumbles.

and further more, is it this too-little too-late mentality that requires that we go to the grave after ever artist dies and dig up some deep respect we have for them? As one friend posted on his Facebook "Who intentionally listened to Whitney Houston in the past 12 months?" if we're being honest with ourselves, it was probably less than 1% of the American populous.

So why the Grammy play-up? Is it just the human condition of wanting what we've lost? Is it a postmortem concession for an industry that abandons as quickly as it propels? Houston's is a genre that no longer carries water. While it may have been the Resurrection of Tin Pan Alley (or 2.0 as it were), it didn't survive the 80's. It had something of a revival in the late 1990's with a coffee house make-over. But by then the game had changed, and the nation had clearly changed. Houston was good, but in the newest incarnation she wouldn't be taken seriously.

Talent had gone, surplus to requirement. Good players were not needed to play boring chords on an acoustic guitar. Was what we're seeing sweep across the landscape a human lament for a genre that, having left its own for dead, had played by the rules so well, did everything right, and were still abandoned by a disinterested public?

The question that should remain is not about Whitney Houston but about music in general. Is there a purpose in sticking within the western scales and digestible time signatures? Has music moved well beyond craft in an age where I can get 12,000 views singing off-key versions of Foreigner songs into my webcam.

If Whitney is to be mourned, then let her be the figure-head of craft. Let her not represent a genre lost to time and filled to the gills by throw-away, over produced garbage. Instead let her be a symbol for everyone who worked their figures to the bone to be a session musician. Is there no room for them any longer?

Is there No Country for Old Men who play the saxophone any more?

Great write-up! I'm not quite sure I get the Tin Pan Alley/Whitney Houston comparison but I enjoyed your writing. :)

Well what I meant to draw a comparison to was the connection between the divided up labor of creating a song. Its not, for example, Springsteen, who's sitting in his Chambers penning up his emotional manifestos.

I probably should write up something about whether or not divided labor, in this regard, weakens the product or makes it more universally appealing. Something to think about anyway.

Not wanting to quote your entire piece (extremely well written, by the way!) on Kings of Leon and the "played it on the radio and ruined it" phenomenon, but I would like to say that yes, I agree that people often do consider a song/artiste ruined when they play them on the radio, but why? After all, radio is, or was, the main medium through which artistes get exposure to the public. I know I'm coming from a much earlier time here, but I got into artistes like Chris de Burgh, Bob Seger, Dan Fogelberg and even Jeff Wayne via radio. It was the place to hear new music. So really, in some ways, back then, NOT hearing a band on the radio was their ruination, or could be: if you didn't hear them you may not know of them and consequently --- in an era before MTV never mind YouTube and itunes --- you had less chance of ever hearing them.

If the complaint had been, though, that a band/song/artiste was ruined through TOO MUCH radio airplay, I might agree, and yet as you say that's really a personal thing, where someone hears so much of song A by Artiste B that they won't buy or listen to album C. Case in point, my good friend James Blunt. Everyone (and I mean everyone) hated "You're beautiful" --- including me --- but was that because the song was crap? Well, yes, but really people didn't think the song was that bad, per se, but playing it every ten minutes or so on the radio drove people to murder their families. Almost.

As a result of this, many many people decided they hated James Blunt, and yet I listened to his "Back to Bedlam" album and was amazed by how good it is, mostly, with some excellent tracks. Now, "You're beautiful" remains an annoying, simpering, annoying, inane, annoying, nonsensical, annoying song, but it should not define either the rest of the album or the possibility that someone will never listen to his music.

What about Britney? At the same time as they were forcefeeding us "You're beautiful", the same could be said about "Toxic": it was never OFF the radio! And yet, no-one wrote in asking, nay demanding that it be taken off the airplay list, as they did about Blunt's song. Is this because Britney conjures up images of sex and fantasy? Is it because she was a more established artiste at the time than James? Is it, (is it?) because she's a girl? The two songs were equally annoying, equally earworms and equally bombarded across the airwaves like a salvo on Homs (sorry, poor taste I know, but you have to stay current, don't you?) and yet it's Blunt whose record sales (miniscuely) suffered and who became the poster boy for hatred of the radio.

So what does all this prove? Who knows, but I do know that if you let one bad experience colour your perception of an artiste you may be doing yourself, and them, a disservice, and I also know that it's not the artiste's fault that their record is played so often on the radio: what? Do you think they control the playlist? If so, then surely every major or upcoming artist would be ensuring their songs received maximum airplay every time?

In the end, radio is not to blame. You are, if you're so shallow that you end up hating an artiste due to oversaturation on the radio (a single/track, fine, an artiste deserves more of your attention and patience), and let me let you into a little secret if you keep hearing a song too much on the radio. One's called the tuning knob, and the other the off switch.

Try them some time. You'd be amazed how well they work.

And now, I go back to whatever it is I do... :)

Maurice Chevalier & Leonard Joy Orchestra - Louise 1929 - YouTube

i'd be remiss if you weren't aware something like this existed.

"can it be true? Someone like you could love me - lousie!

For Urban
 

What counts for diversity these days?

Anytime I see someone posting about bands on the edge, or something new and invigorating, it really sounds like its not too far removed from the mainstream music that (usually) they detest. If we need anything on MB (and in life), its musical Monks. We need people who can push themselves to listen to things way outside of their spectrum. And I don't just mean moving it toward more artsy-noise, indecipherable to the masses, but people who listen to things that play against type.

Take the video in my last post for example. How many people would have that on their iPod next to some Wu Tang clan and Oscar Peterson? Probably not many and I think its what makes people's taste in music boring and terrible to talk to them about.

I wonder then, how is it that people find new music? Since I brought up the video above, I'll tell you that I found it digging through a Facebook group about what Boston used to be like. In one photo of a particularly unseemly woman who used to be an elected member of City Counsel, someone had posted that video (given that its her name) and made some humorous comment about it. My question now is, do other people not trip over music like this, or what they do, do they just ignore it?

I'd love to hear back from people on this one but I'm pretty sure I have a better chance of riding a dolphin to work tomorrow, so lets just go with me speculating. Maybe people don't think of it as music, or if they do, maybe its music of a by-gone era, a relic, and it has no worth to them. Like a used up glowstick found on a street after the parade, this once had a purpose, but we've moved beyond.

As I said, I'd love to hear from people how they find new music (if its interesting, if you post boring **** I will haze you), and hopefully what you consider "range" in your music.

I would. I don't own any Maurice Chevalier but I do have some Bix and Tram on my MP3 player along with the Wu. I don't have a whole lot of symphonic vocal music from back then, mostly instrumental, but I do like it on occasion (see video below). I "discovered" the stuff from back when I relentlessly searched for music in record stores. Once I got into Jazz, I eventually wanted more and more so I had to keep working my way back in time. This is when I discovered Delta Blues from that time too (although I hate most electric blues) and I've always got Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson rotating.
Also, I used to work at a cafe bakery where we had a stereo and so I was often in the kitchen alone at 5am looking for something to listen to - and when I got bored of everything that people had brought in, I started searching radio stations and found an AM station that played all the hits from the 1920s -1940s. Most of the other kitchen staff eventually came around to liking that station too.



RE finding new music: This may bore you but...
Perusing youtube and music blogs has become the equivalent of my relentless record store searches of the olden days. I also often resort to browsing all of my own old CDs and records. I'll sometimes spend 20 or 30 minutes searching through it for something that I haven't listened to in 10 or 15 or even 20 years, and when I find something, it's sorta like finding new music.

One final note on by-gone relics, I think that the Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas video game soundtracks (the radio stations in the games) exposed kids to music from the 1930s - 50s that they hadn't heard or thought about before.. so that's pretty cool.

I think a lot of the time it comes down to resisting your "inner critic", that little guy inside you who says things like "You won't like this" or more importantly, and twice as wrong, "You shouldn't like this". It's the sort of inner warning that we (well, I) have that tells us this may not be cool, step away from the radio/ipod/TV/computer, let it go, let it go... okay it's gone now. Wow for a moment there you were in danger of being REALLY uncool! You know, like, you maybe came close to listening to a Westlife song! Never mind that it is actually a good song, you can't be seen to be listening to Westlife! For example...

It's why people might be surprised to hear someone like me, whose music taste is far from eclectic, can listen to an Andy Williams (God rest his soul) or Barry Manilow record as easily as Iron Maiden or Saratoga, or that I enjoy a nice classical symphony as much as an acoustic country song. My range is of course limited, and I admit and accept that, and there are genres I may never get into (who does, unless you're Jackhammer?) but I do like to try. Which is why I delved into the scary world of boybands in my journal and will think next year about looking into jazz.

But at the same time, this has to be balanced out. I wouldn't listen to some new music just to be cool, or seen as cool, and I sure as Hell wouldn't listen to something I hated, and knew I hated, just because someone else thought it was good. Similarly, I'm quite happy listening to what a lot of people might consider boring music --- AOR, Prog, some metal --- and it doesn't bother me that they think that way. I don't think "Oh I should be listening to the more hip music". That's not how I am. But I am ready to listen to new styles, within certain limits. If I see "punk" or "hardcore" or "screamo" shown as an album's genre I'm unlikely to go near it. To quote my avatar, I know what I hate.

As for where I find it? Surprisingly, most of the music I've discovered in the past few years has been through album-selling semi-legal websites. I check them for the new releases, hear a little and decide if I want to buy. Prior to this I got into some amazing (to me) bands via the now-defunct Allofmp3.com, who would have a link saying "If you liked that you might like this", and most times they were right.

To answer your main question, there's not much I would consider "not music" but I would click, to be fair, on few if any links in anyone's thread or journal. I prefer to find music myself, though I of course will take recs. Naturally, it's great to do it the other way round, ie turn someone on to a band you love and they don't know.

As for "range", well as I say I try to expand but I know my limits. I think the biggest and most important factor in the music I listen to is I have to like it. If I don't, then it doesn't matter how cool it is. I clicked a while back on some Sun Ra and I did not like it one bit, so now I know. Or maybe I don't: maybe I'll try again. But in general I know I don't like jazz, nevertheless I know little about it which is why the "Stranger in a strange land" feature for next year is looking more and more likely to be a dive into that world.

Hey, I can only drown, right? ;)

Oh, and I think your dolphin is fuelled up and ready to go now... :laughing:

I do listen to as many types of music as I can, early blues, 60s female singers, grindcore, acid jazz, I could go on and on.

I don't really post here a great deal about half the stuff I do listen to simply because a lot of the time I don't know what I think of most of it. I have no idea what makes a jazz or soul record great other than someone else's opinion. I'm sure with repeated listening I'll work it out in time,

The thing I miss about rock music is just playing an album and listening to it in a totally unbiased way, and that's because I've spent about the last 30 years listening exclusively to rock music. I can't just pick up an album and judge it on it's own. I'll always judge it by what I've already heard.

Listening to other stuff allows me to do that. I can just go to some blog or download site and just keep looking till I find something that looks like it might be interesting.

so that's pretty much how I discover new stuff.

I listen to stuff like that all the time, Big3... though I'm far more inclined to listen to jazz or blues from the same era over symphonic pop music.

And I find new music by listening to a band I like, listening to similar artists on Last.FM, listening to albums from an artist that gets my interest, and repeating. Or by just browsing this forum, I'm sure more than half of what I listen to, I listen to because of MB.

Does Slayer rot your brain?
 

http://www.pimpstarlife.com/wp-conte...ayer-xmas1.jpg

Slayer's come up 3 times in recent conversations, and its time I ask that question I've been burning to discuss, regarding the people I have to psychoanalyze.

1. "Slayer /end of thread"

This was a post made on a Facebook Status. The status said "Ugh, its way to early fo ****ing Marron 5." It was presumably made at a coffee shop or while listening to Pandora. And its not out of character, the woman who posted it is is more into Janis Joplin and Joanie Mitchell.

The tradiational responses followed "Oh it must be Always O'clock." A laugh riot Facebookers are. But then, at the bottom of the list of responses sat "Slayer /end of thread."

Now as Facebook works, this was the last post because no one wnated to discuss it more. I'm not going to try and figure out if this post had something to do with it, but it could be - slayer seems to be a giant redflag is social conversations. Not because of what the band is, but because of how its invoked.

Slayer seems to be the universal antidote to things slayer fans don't like. OH Maroon 5? I prefer slayer. I'm playing Christmas music to celebrate the season? Oh really, I'm celebrating the season by playing "Dead Skin Mask." Hooray, Halloween is here! Halloween is here everyday when you listen to Slayer. Hey Kim, congrats on your Engagement. Yes, congrats Kim, I've bought for you a signed/framed poster of Slayer's 1991 tour as a gift for this monumental life change.

Slayer seems to be how disaffected people act in the world. Like some lucky rabbits foot clung to in the Valley of the Shadow of Life, Slayer provides an "everythings ****ty, brutal, and raw" in a world of Starbucks commericals, Hallmark Cards, and your grandmother pinching your cheeks.

Why is she pinching your cheeks? Doesn't she know you're an iPod away from becoming a Viking Demon on the Battle Fields of Hell?

2. "Well, lets compare the most recent Slayer album with Reign in Blood"

This comment came from a recent bar patron I started talking to about the new Batman Films. How did we get from Batman to Slayer? Because to a Slayer fan, everything is only 2 degrees removed. And to say degrees is a bit of a misnomber. Its more like one degree, because Slayer is everything. And you're always talking about things.

He was saying Bane (from the final of the new Batman films) was a terrbile character. Then I, trying to lighten the mood, said "well at worst, he's much better than the Bane from Batman & Robin."

(As an aside, you can always tell who's emotionally damaged by their response to a mood-lightener. My comment should have been a "no ****" thing we could all agree on, instead, this man who has something to prove says the following")

"Well you cheapen your own argument by saying that. I mean, thats like saying the New Slayer Album is better than the new Justin Beiber."

The irony here is so cosmic my heart almost collapses on itself. "What I'm trying to do is compare the newest slayer album with Reign in Blood."

You can imagine the rest. From there I told him I was fascinated with Bane's voice and cadence, his timbre and his accent. He told me I sounded like a wonky English Professor and went back to coloring his drawings in his moleskin, festooned in his loose-fitting hoodie in a bar built for the after ork crowd.

And I make the decription to point another attribute out about the Slayer crowd. Its not about having your aesthetic interests, its about evangelising. Why was this disgruntled misanthrope sitting among neckties and cocktail dresses, aggresively going after peopels interests; of those willing to give him a break and speak with him. Slayer it would seem ordained him to go forth and spread the anger.

3. As you can see, this one came from here. And if you click the link button in the quote, you can also see this has little to do with the thread to date. This was also this persons first post on the boards. His first post, and his first and only word in the thread was "slayer."

The thread had to be requested to be unlocked. Everyone to date was commenting on the "Rap is rubbish, but rap with metal is awesome." And frankly, the OP came from a Slipknot fan who's not that different than Slayer. But Slipknot lacks Slayer's longevity and iconic stature as the perrenial "Anti" that Slayer has occupied since somewhere back in the 1980's.

So there it is, Slayers music I enjoy. But the fan base has some obsessive and Freudian sexual fascination with the band that seems to not only occupy their rapt attention, but also plugs in, like a virus to a healthy cell; like the alien broodling to its host body, to fill and occupy the emotional voids these people can't handle.

Have trouble talking to women? Thats ok, you're just too brutal for them.

Can't find a decent job? Its not the piercings in your face, its that you were meant to slay the weak in this life, keep drawing in your basement. Some day it will happen.

Tired of not looking like a viking? Listen to more Slayer, it will make your beard grow faster and you're look more muscular in less time.

Long story short: **** Slayer. They're rotting your miserable brain.

Edit:

This no **** happened after I went to post something in the MPG.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...ps552f62b3.png

I'm a Slayer fan and I agree with a lot of what you've said here. I do, however, think some of "Slayer /thread" type of comments are more tongue-in-cheek than you're giving them credit for. Slayer's name has become cultural shorthand for "classic, face-melting metal" in much the same way that Philip Glass' name has become shorthand for "artsy music that the average Joe doesn't get". As a result, people often invoke it simply for effect.

Reign in Blood /journal

I quite like the idea of using that in real life to win every argument.

\m/ The genre war gets br00tal! \m/
 

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4...w3fo1_1280.jpg

A rite of passage in any budding music snob's life is the deep ponderence of the "what does this even mean" element of genres.


But if genres mattered as little as snobs thought they did, we'd stop using them. And in the age of the Internet, sections in the store aren't as viable or potent as they had been in the past. But the genre argument still comes up in music fairly often, and like the common cold, has so many permutations that its sentiment is cropping up in new and exciting new comments like "They don't really sound like anyone else" or anything containing the word fusion not referring to jazz. And oddly enough, the genre war doesn't seem to crop up in movies, books, or art (paintings) nearly as often as it does in music.


My guess would be that most snobs would be far less aggressive if we just stripped out the genre and wrote in its place what all non-snobs read in the first place. Instead of punk, if we wrote "fast, talentless, and angry"I'm sure it would convey the point a little better. If the smooth jazz section instead said "over produced tripe made to drop granny panties" most people would shrug their way to a "more of less" agreement. And as I mentioned, the rest of the planet reads "jazz" and "punk" that way already. It isn't prescriptive, its directional. So why anyone gets pissy about it I'm not really sure.


But I bring all this up because my favorite subject - metal - seems to have taken the ball and run the other way down the field. I have a respect for metal that's difficult to define. Its artsy and technical, but not a pretentious pile of horse****. It can be dramatic, but its also fairly self-aware. And while I'd like to set a few of its fans on fire for being woefully out of touch with nearly everything around them, Metal doesn't give a rats ass what's popular - they know what they like and you have to give them that. They (as a concept here, don't ever think it) are who they are.


But what the hell is going on with its sub-genres?


If most snobs are screaming "It can't be placed in a box!" about their favorite music, then metal fans are looking for shackles. While all other genres are seemingly dissipating into a sea of noise, metal is moving toward an ever shrinking set of Russian dolls. Metal is how Zeno's Theory is applied practically to the natural world. But what's the purpose?


While I'm genuinely asking this question, I'd suspect its actually an attempt to achieve what the other genres are trying to pull off. By shaving things down to the core element of the genre, they're trying to differentiate between bands...but wouldn't the bands name do that just the same? And wouldn't this work worse than the diffusion of the other genres? And wouldn't both be improved if they stuck to the old monolithic genres to use as starting points?


I don't know. Long story short, I still don't get metal sometimes.

This summary is absolutely perfect.

Thanks for your comment. And thanks to the Mod that approved it.

http://www.nypost.com/r/nypost/blogs...de-tv-show.jpg

While I’m waiting for Burning Down to post a link about something called Lollicore, I’m letting my mind wander and I’m wondering: Does melody have a built time timing?

I’m asking because of something my German professor said to me once. “If it was in French, it could have been over in 30 minutes, but in German theres a pacing to the language that only lets you go so fast.” It was in reference to some song from a musical. That was 10 years ago so I couldn’t possibly remember what was said or what it was about, but it was the first time I recognized consciously that language had some inherent distance to it, depending on the language of course.

And then BD’s comment about it being K-Pop on Speed. Would that work? I’m currently still waiting on the link (I’m not looking at MB) but it makes me wonder – does Pop work that sped up? When I was a younger man, “pop punk” bands were trying it constantly at live shows – some even had the balls to record it. But in each instance, it was a very tongue-in-cheek, “hilarious” wink to the crowd – just as much as the knee-high tube socks and Chuck Taylor’s.

Can pop, implicitly played at a tempo above (lets say) 220 bpm? If it can, does the melody loose something? I’m sure some of the academic music folks (BD for example) might be able to link me to some higher-theory, but screw it – what do you think?

When great bands get ****ty
 

In some of my more high-profile fights on MB, I'm generally defending Metallica, The White Stripe's later CD's, Mackelmore, and Ke$ha. They are, as far as I'm concerned, quality artists who produce great work.

But then there are bands I won't even pretend to defend. And when those bands go to pot, its a terrible depressing thing. That leads me to TV on the Radio. Riding home from work today my iPod's shuffle feature decided to hook me up with a few TVotR tracks in close proxemity.

1. "Wolf like me"
2. "Blues down here"
3. Satellite"
4. "Young Liars"

Life was good. But when the party ended, I was forced to recognize that this is a band who couldn't handle the heat, and should have exited Brooklyn. instead they succumbed (I'm guessing) to the paranoia-hype of the indie-stry and cashed in Dear Science and 9 types of light. And whatever you think of those two, there is one universal truth about them and its that "Return to Cookie Mountain" - they ain't.

I think the thing that really sells me on them having lost their way was a statement I read in some review of one of these later albums that said "they're finally having fun and made a dance record" or some **** like that. I was furious. I don't mean this to become an off-topic tirade, but there is something in the sub-cultures of music where some ****ty idea takes on its own heat and fury and becomes expectation. Everyone, apparently, at some point says something really feel-goody and Hallmark-like such as "Oh just make a dance record already!"

Its the sort of corn-ball line found in ****ty sit-coms designed to be watched by Grampa and the kids and everyone can laugh and feel good because there wasn't a dick joke. The "just make a dance record" mentality is what leads good bands like TVotR to get real ****ty (imo). Because you can see how a band like this would make a dance album doesn't mean they should. In other words, you can go to a junk yard and find all the pieces to put together an automobile, that doesn't make the junk yard a car lot.

Similarly, all the parts of a dance band are in TVotR - that doesn't make them James Brown, and for christ sakes it should not encourage them to try.

I can't think of another band that received the same death sentence as TV did here, but let's go with the opposite. For years they foretold of the rap album Beck was supposed to put out. Oh he did "Mellow Gold" they said, and then he did "Midnight Vultures. Its a natural progression." But praise be to the great alien race of Scientology, Beck knew better than to put out a ****ing rap album only to have it drown in the wake of Jay-Z and Eminem's path of destruction. Beck had zero business putting out a rap album and thank god he didn't. This is the sort of hairbrained scheme cooked up by people like Rob Sheffield in his bedroom between Pavement and MF Doom albums when he thinks he's ****ing hip.

But he's not hip. Is he? And neither would a Beck rap album be hip. And this leads me to my point.

We get in a lot of fights here about genre. Its fine, thats what music nerds do. But we always settle on genre's have a use though shouldn't be held tightly to, and here is why - genre's are like ethnicity in America. Your mothers half Irish/Italian. Your father is half Dutch/English. But neither of them those things really. And if you went to those countries and said "Oh my mom's Irish" they'd say "No she ****ing isn't, you Yankee moron."

Beck isn't rap, and TV on the Radio isn't dance. They're influenced by them, and they should be. Good for them. But attempting to become completely what you are in part only makes you a fourth of a band. And we can find those in every subway station in America. I hope, for their sake, TV gets back on the badfoot and remembers what depression tastes like. Until then, I'll be dancing to Ke$ha, and playing "Cookie Mountain" when it rains.

So basically what you are saying is that you don't like when bands step outside of their comfort zone and experiment a bit even when they aren't really straying too far just trying out a part of what they are influenced by.

I understand that certain bands should stay in their lane and continue what they excel at but creatively it becomes a drain. I don't get why fans are always trying to pigeon hold their favorite bands into sticking only to the particular sound that they enjoy and not trying different things every once in awhile. Sure, it might not turn out that great but at least they tried. This kind of reminds of the backlash that Muse received for their last album The 2nd Law.

I don't think for a moment that's what he's saying. Urban was very specific about the "d" word: I heard him say why does everyone have to make a dance record? That's not the same as experimentation: in fact, that's the opposite. Dance music is so generic and corny that it's seen as the safe option, which is what I think our Hatemongering friend is saying --- why go the safe route INSTEAD of experimenting in another direction OR sticking at what you're good at?

That's how I read it anyway. No doubt Urban will tell me if I got it wrong....

Yeah I do remember saying that, but that was more aimed at pop acts than what I think Big3 was talking about.

I think bands experiment for 2 main reasons.

1. It's always been in that bands nature.
2. They've run out of ideas.

To give an example of both, Primal Scream pretty much embody No 1. Each album sounds very different to the one before it. At their core they're a Rolling Stones influenced rock band but they've always added extra things to it with each album so when you do buy a Primal Scream album you're never quite sure what you're going to get anyway, they're released both good and bad albums but I've never really seen them get a backlash over it.

Compare that to a band like DJ said, Muse.
Muse basically made a decade long career of making records that sound like a cross between Radiohead & Queen, and probably beaten all the life out of that concept by taking it as far as they can go with it. Any experimentation or change with that formula was very minimal. They spent a whole decade doing this, so when they do decide they want to do something different to that their entire fanbase thinks 'What the hell is this sh*t?' because it's so different and comes as something of a shock.

That's basically why I think some bands can get away with it and some bands can't.

God-damn it! Wrong journal! I've been so into Urban's "Now" series that I melded him with the Big3 (now there's a frightening/powerful concept!) and attributed Big3's words to Urban.

Sorry guys: hope no identity crisis ensued! I meant Big3, not Urban, though it's interesting to see you both more or less share the same view.

I love Clutch, and you should too
 

I've been a fan of Clutch for awhile. They had received some one-off play an eternity on one of the major rock stations in Boston (R.I.P.) and its weirdness hit me hard. A "Shogun named Marcus", in title alone, was something that just appealed to me. At the time, bands were outlandishly serious. If you believed their songs, most bands on mainstream radio had terrible childhoods, it made them depressed adults, and they were usually angry.

As a teenager that was around during the beginnings of the internet, radio was what we had, really. But this song came out of nowhere. I had been lucky, all things considered, to grow up near a college radio station and was only slightly out of range of an "alternative" station (actual alternative, in its literal definition), and I had been familiar with bands like Primus and Green Jelly, but with songs like "My name is mud" and "The Bear Song", you could tell they were being tongue-in-cheek. When I'd heard "Shogun name Marcus", this was serious business, but it was also a little bit weird, and I ate it up like it was my first meal in year.

There was a good deal of time between when I'd heard that song and when I'd really started buying Clutch music. I had heard "Careful with that Mic" on the Hard Rock station here, which would be more inclined to play bands like Clutch, but since songs like "Mic" were a little less than the grave-serious rock of Staind, Limp Bizkit's later, sad-sack music, and the "high-brow" intellectualism of System of a Down, it got minimal play at best. Still for all the clever nature of both "Shogun" and "Careful", both songs never had a "See what I did there?" attitude. In so many ways, it had a rebellious attitude, but since they were speaking out against the sad-rock of the day - which seemed like the revolution at the time - it had a very punk attitude. It seemed to say "hey guys, maybe we ought to really look at what we're doing here and see if its what we mean."

Clutch seemed to hit me hardest as I was coming up in my musical journey. They seemed to be there with me. They liked a bunch of different genres, but they also had one foot solidly planted in the hard rock-grave. Only now, so far along would I realize Clutch seems to be a great example of how to be yourself by while also exploring your interests. You know, its so easy to get caught up in the movements of fads, or even your own evolution. I can remember a time where I denied myself music I enjoyed because I would say things like, "That music is for stupid people" or "Isn't it time you grew up and listened to more adult music." It was always a struggle because I had who I wanted to be/become in my mind, but I knew deep-down I'd loved music like this. When I'd finally gotten over myself (or more accurately, become disgusted with the people who said the same things I was saying) I'd learned to fully embrace bands like Clutch, or even Tool in some respects that didn't think hard rock had to be about sex, depression, or being a tough guy.

Today, I'm almost evangelical about them. Mostly because too few people listen to them (despite their continued chart position on released - #15 on this latest album) but also because I think they blend genres incredibly well, to a point that I think they're a gateway band - either to a multitude of new genres, or back to a primalism that we can get too far away from when we appreciate too much with our minds and not enough with our spirit.

From Socrates to scotch, the wild west to martian diplomacy, from sexual prowess to ghosts, Clutch delivers. Their albums should be found in the draws of every hotel across America, and you should hear two songs every morning with breakfast. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Rise of the Machines
 

"There's going to come a day when we wake up, and on the horizon there's going to be this huge wall of white silence, slowly rolling toward us" - Patton Oswalt

So let me being by saying that this "piece", if you can call it that, was inspired by an incredible podcast I'll link below. While I think everything RadioLab does is incredible, nothing they've done before this was made for MusicBanter quite so well. Music, racial questions, gender equality, old school, street cred, the evolution of a genre; this ****ing thing has. it. all. Check it out: Straight Outta Chevy Chase. You don't really have to listen to it to get this, but it might help. Let us begin.

Much hay has been made for centuries now about the generations coming up, and typically how they're absolutely useless. Its humorous for grandparents, once decried for "not getting it" to hear their own progeny complain that their kids don't have taste anymore. Time shambles on, nothing really changes.

But a weird thing struck me today as I listened to this Podcast. Really, a few facts:

1. 2013 was the first year, since 1958 when they started tracking Billboard hits, that a Black Artist didn't have a number 1 hit.

2. This is due in large part to EDM: a faceless, wordless, wall of sound that isn't intended to "be" anything. The wall rolling toward us may not be silence, but its everything else implicit in that quote.

One has to wonder where we'll go; If this might finally be the generation that gave up on the struggles. Has technology, moving so fast and nearly ever present, finally removed the itch of boredom that causes people to be curious about things? We could stay positive and suggest that, like the "de stijl" movement (thanks, White Stripes!), maybe this is just the form reaching an end. Maybe we should conclude that for every 60's hippie rebellion, it all died in a horrible, useless, do-nothing 1980's of an ending with all the revolutionaries giving birth to their own Alex P. Keaton. When I started to wonder about this, I was dismissive thinking "no one wants to read another cranky old man's rant." But something about the lack of a black artist hitting #1 was weird to me. On one hand, it might a homogeneous mix of culture for the future generations. Just as California tends to be America's cultural run-off, so too might EDM be the final port on the drainage line to empty out any and all remaining ****. Maybe its the pile of ashes a brave new world will be born from.

But can we move on without humanity? I'm not talking about EDM here, its soulless and I think 98% of it is complete ****, but all great music heretofore has required some element of human bones, wrapped in flesh, sweating on their instruments. Even if that instrument was a pad of paper. And it required people in rooms coming together to do things. To frame this another way, I read a video game article many years ago about a PAX-like conference where games of various sorts were played in one conference center. Two games were chosen for the article: HALO and Super Smash Brothers. One was an on-line game with a vast, unified player-base and, as it happens, almost a uniformed meta play-style. The other was just for consoles. The end result being that regional players seemed to have different styles, and this coming together created unique and interesting outcomes that both players had never seen. The latter has been music up until now. The former, it would seem, is where we're heading. If that's accurate, I fear for the future.

A smart ass comic once said "you can celebrate how unique everyone is, so long as you don't point out anyone's differences." Its a great idea, but it leads us all to be something like the BK Kids Club Gang. Diverse in appearance, but homogeneous in culture, and we're all shilling out for the same processed crap thats going to kill us one day. (I'd be Lingo, by the way). Mathematically speaking, we're achieving a permanent equilibrium. When all colors are used together, everything just comes out brown. And I don't know if we can live through another decade of EDM's "brownness" I'm hoping to Christ I'm wrong. I'm hoping that music will collapse on itself indefinitely until it explodes again. And not in the hipster, lets play **** people used to play, way. Not diversity for the sake of diversity, but honest to christ, move away from your keyboard, play things out of tune way.

Then again, maybe machines are already the future. Maybe machines are whats left, and whats next...

See, this is what I love about your journal. I can update every day with reviews,. sections, features, some humour, but it's basically mostly the same stuff. You on the other hand update once in a blue (screaming at the) moon, but come up with something totally unique and insightful. I read everyone's journals but usually skim though most to get the general idea. Yours, when I see an update, I stop what I'm doing and concentrate, knowing I'm going to be reading something both worthwhile and important.

You're a true innovator and something of a voice for generations, a voice crying in the wilderness kind of, and that's one of the reasons why I always look forward to your very sporadic updates. You don't post often, but when you do --- BAM! Right to the heart of the matter, no bull.

Excellent post. As ever.
:clap:

Jeez, Troll. Thanks for the kind words. I'll sig that since I'm a shameless attention whore. I owe ya one, man.

I will just type out a shorter version of what I mentioned previously that didn't end up posting.

There are a few things that I disagree with.

I don't agree with you trying to just cast aside EDM as being faceless and discrediting using technology as an instrument because it clearly is one in this day and age. It has been for quite some time actually. Since you are quick to cast aside EDM as an entire genre of music you also are casting aside all the differences and intracies that occur within the genre that makes me more like your Super Smash Bros example that you even realize. You don't realize it because you don't really listen to EDM too much so you can't decipher the different styles and they all end up sounding the same to you because "Boo Technology right?".

I feel like the whole black artist not having a number 1 hit has to do with how Billboard decided to change the way that certain aspects of collecting data for chart positions work.

If I wrote that gravity was awesome, you and Engine would come in here and say we should all live in outer space.

Thanks your the bump, your words, and the assumptions. Did you listen to the podcast?

Of course I did but it was awhile ago. I mostly remember it focusing more on Rosenburg and the state of hip hop and his little history with hot97.

MAGIC! Act
 

It’s been awhile since I ranted, but thankfully for the fans of grump, I went and saw a cover band last Saturday night.

One of my biggest pet peeves in music is the easy topic. The musical straw man. That song that posits a completely one-sided argument and then, with all the deep thought of an Ikea instruction manual, presents a life-philosophy that too many fans pick up as an ethos as if it’s either a brilliant position, was said by a brilliant person, or both. You know the type, the people who quote rock stars and then use their full names after it as if they were anything other than a bunch of high school dropouts who read On the Road. Cue MAGIC!

Nothing strikes me as more disingenuous than a band whose organization seems built to be the love-child of Sublime and the Barenaked Ladies: Quirky, in love with a groove, and far too serious to be given a pass. It’s the sort of act that the marketing department and Columbia masturbates to. A sound born for the suburbs, top 40 radio, and minivans. The kind of music that says “Hey, it sounds like Jamaica if we got rid of all the black people.” In short, it’s white flight in a 3-minute, radio friendly unit shifter.
First let’s talk about the clown of a front man, Narsi. I’ll give him credit for writing his own stuff, and other people’s. Beyond that, he should be charged with war crimes. To start, here’s a list of who he’s written for: (from Wikipedia)

To be honest, I was a little shocked he hadn’t written for Jason Mraz or Maroon 5. And when I realized he hadn’t, I half wondered if MAGIC! began because they wouldn’t buy his offerings. (Thanks a ****-load, Maroon 5). But you get the idea looking at that list that he was 5 more hits away from selling to Rhianna who seems to be the pop act with Island-sounding music and standards – Selena Gomez famously got her hand-me-downs on “Come and Get it” replete with type-cast “na, na, na’s” that have become a borderline gimmick for Rhianna. So from the jump, MAGIC! has the feel, both in paper and upon hearing them, that they’re a musical after-thought. A band that is hitching it’s applecart to the most economically viable vehicle for musical profitability. Imagine a Black Eyed Peas for the Starbucks set.

Then there’s the stuff beyond their music. For starters – their name. Exactly how long did someone think about the name MAGIC!? Probably not long, but since you may be wondering why it matters, let’s address that as well. Nothing smacks of having been run by the corporate office like punctuation in band names. Whether it’s PANIC! At the Disco or Ke$ha – it’s a gimmick. Secondly, it’s in all caps, which is (to me) like not filling in the field on the madlib. Am I supposed to scream this name? That’s what all caps and an exclamation point says to me. Except that the band is the opposite of screaming. Even the intended demographics aren’t interested in screaming the name even if that’s what they meant to convey. I’d suspect that given the nature of the band, which is the materialized version of a human Xanax, they thought they needed a name which said “hey, we’re not the one-hit wonder trash you think we are – get. Excited.” Except that no one but teenagers would, and they’ll get excited for anything so long as it’s on their side of the sandbags in the endless high school war of defining yourself but the t-shirt you have on.

And speaking of High School, the sanitized version of Benny & Joon that takes place in the music video is close enough to Romeo & Juliet that these fans can somehow find a connection to what’s being yammered at them by their Charlie Brown teacher all class. If one positive thing comes out of this miserable video, it might be that the class battle present in Shakespeare is somehow cemented in the withering minds of the Angry Birds set. Maybe when Monsanto is giving them cancer, they may have the one and only epiphany of their lives on their death bed. Thanks, MAGIC! The “woman” they’ve put in the video is certainly attractive (which is strange because beautiful, scantily clad women rarely sell products) , but is little more than a bit role. Similarly, her father show’s up to say “Yeah, listen you dirty bohemian, you’re not marrying her” which is awesome because the premise is “it’s because you’re poor” but the reality is “this is a dream, and you’re too much of a Spicoli to ever land this Manic Pixie Dream Girl of suburbia.” This interaction leads to the most punishing assault on the critical mind of the listener: “Don’t you know I’m human, too.” And right there, you’ve encapsulated the worst elements of the hippie movement, and that of the people who believe they are Channing Tatum from Step Up. A perennially persecuted class of folks, too uneducated to recognize their own laziness, and too egotistical to ever question their lot in life.

The actual words are asinine. If that father is really the CPA they’ve dressed him as, then I’m just guessing he’s aware he’s not speaking to an elephant or spider plant. The message behind them is missing the point. He’s aware you’re a human, and that isn’t the part he’s objecting to. If this situation at all marries a reality at all, he’s most likely protesting you knocking up his daughter who struggles to make ends meet while you play call of duty while eating Doritos (getting stoned optional). As if that wasn’t bad enough, we then move into “say yes, say yes” as if this guy desperately wants the father’s approval. In what reality would that person care about something like that, let alone propose marriage? Answer: One in which 13 year old women, sold on the concept of a lady waiting for her prince charming, eat up like Kobayashi at Nathan’s. Which is really the whole point of this ramshackle enterprise, to sell the willing consumer enough shlock to get the dollar bill across the proverbial counter and into the bank account so this guy, who thinks he’s Prince by the way (we do not give nobody’s single names in America, sir), can reach a high level of sales for his middle ground music and dump the rest of the accountants he’s got backing him up on tour.

What MAGIC! has really made me appreciate, though, is the influence a pop artist might exert on a given song. At worst it’s another layer of revision that makes most songs a lot more bearable. I think the main problem with the music MAGIC! is putting out is that, when Narsi creates music, an artist still has to option it and make changes as any director would do with a script for a film. When his own project has come alive, he’s judge, jury, and executioner - there’s no way the free-riders in the band are going to question the gravy train. And unfortunately for us, we’re on trial.

Tl;dr: MAGIC! is a band for the Beiber crowd to get ethnic to.