The Rock Album Survivor Reviews Thread

[Frownland]

*hubris

Similar, but very different.

Originally Posted by JGuy Grungeman

To be honest, when it comes to a genre, I can usually tell what makes the sounds of an album get the term, even if it's hard for me to explain. I guess what fascinates me about genres is that there are far too many tags to describe music, but you'll often find many bands in the same genre with very different sounds. For hard rock, KISS and AC/DC are good examples. Prog, Yes and Kansas. Very different. SBut they still follow the general rules of the sounds that they are tagged in. That's because music is all abourt different sounds.

Hard rock is another similarly meaningless term. It's still valid, but it encompasses so much at this point that hard rock or alternative alone gives you barely any information about the sound.

[JGuy Grungeman]

Over-confidence? So, what's so over confident about a guy who has a set sound for alternative music? Basically, I think it's a pop-rock based genre with influence from post-punk, punk, andf folk rock. Alternative's lyircs usually follow social concern. Pixies followed some of the alternative rock rules, but they largely influenced indie rock, which is a far morwe debatable term.

Basically, having an idea of a sound for a genre just means I can tag it easier. A genre tag is a shorter term used to describe music that has something special about it. So what's more pretentious? The genre term, or trying explain the sound without it? I'm sorry if genre tags annoy some people here, but this is a music forum. And alternative is one of the leading brands of music out there, and there is a reason other than the original "underground" status that alternative is so popular: becuase of the sound. I'll explain a spound with whatever method I use, and it's not a part of any form of pretentiousness.

[Frownland]

Jesus Christ dude I take it back, sorry I hurt your feelings.

[JGuy Grungeman]

... You didn't really hurt my feeling. I'm just annoyed that no one ever bothers to tell me what's so pretentious about a genre tag.

[Frownland]

I never said pretentious and I never said anything about genre tags being pretentious in themselves.

[JGuy Grungeman]

Over-confident, pretentious, self-righteous, hubris, etc. No one tells my why genre related topics and the deconstruction of a sound and a brand of music is any of the above. I use pretentious because that's the word I usually hear.

[Frownland]

You are frequently incorrect in gauging what a song's genre is (at least in my experience with you here so far) and you claim that you are well versed in identifying genre. That is why I call you foolishly overconfident. I'm sure you'll take this well and vehemently agree with me.

[JGuy Grungeman]

What I said was I have an idea in my head of what a genre sounds like, even more broad genres. Plus,l I've made it clear that I'm not good at explaining things like that. In fact, I was totally winging my alternative rock explanation. I never siad I can identify everyone's idea of a genre. I'm not worried about anyone else's ideras of a genre. Strill, two different ideas of a genre's sound of relevancy makes for an interesting debate. So I do talk about it.

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by JGuy Grungeman

What I said was I have an idea in my head of what a genre sounds like, even more broad genres. Plus,l I've made it clear that I'm not good at explaining things like that. In fact, I was totally winging my alternative rock explanation. I never siad I can identify everyone's idea of a genre. I'm not worried about anyone else's ideras of a genre. Strill, two different ideas of a genre's sound of relevancy makes for an interesting debate. So I do talk about it.

Okay now I'm willing to use the word pretentious. Genre isn't nearly as subjective as you make it out to be (although I agree that there is a small degree of subjectivity to it).

[JGuy Grungeman]

Uh-huh. And why?