music snobs

I think that a lot of people view me as a music snob. Here, I'll try to get to the root of why I'm called this, and why so many others are, as well.

The "snob" part is interesting, because despite the inherent negativity, you hear the term music snob attached to pretty much anybody that simply knows a lot of music. For films, the most common term assigned to somebody that knows a lot about films is film buff. The connotations associated with each term are completely opposite!

To me, you have two things working against audiophiles (fuck this biased nomenclature!):

1) The divide between "indie" and "mainstream". There are a thousand examples of the ways these two forces clash, and I won't go into them. However, anybody talking about a difference between the two is a fool. Modest Mouse have been on Sony for years, and are still one of the most referenced, most loved "indie" bands around. At the same time, you have any number of boring piece of shit bands playing it safe on the indie labels, so really... what is the difference? Sure, your average Merge/Matador/K Recs, etc band is going to be better than your average major label band. But to talk about music in these binary terms really creates a negative atmosphere in any talk about music.

2) Assholes. Clearly, people have bought into this ideology, viewing music as competition, trying to outdo everybody else. There's no community for these people, only enemies. At the same time, this need to be more indie than all others actually leads to these assholes listening to LESS music!

How does it look when all of these music snobs are putting down everybody else, and don't even really know all that much music? Not good.

I completely understand the backlash against music snobs... whatever. It's fine. I just hate being lumped in with all the assholes.

Audiophiles are an entirely different form of asshole, and I'm proud to be one.

Art Brut

My hands are cut, bruised, and swollen from slamming them on the stage last night, trying to coax a second encore out of Art Brut. My throat is raw from yelling all the lyrics to every song. If you look a few posts back, you'll see that I don't normally do that sort of thing at shows. But this was a special case. You can't not love Art Brut. Or at least, I can't not love them.

Fuck Arctic Monkeys. Fuck The Fratellis. Fuck The Long Blondes. Fuck The Pipettes.

Long live Art Brut!

Bert Jansch

Ok, so this is my first drunk blog post. If it's a little bit incoherent, well, you know why.

I went to see Bert Jansch tonight, and it was pretty awesome. Strange though, because the only material of his that I know is from two albums both released in 1965, and his latest from 2005 which I found inferior if only because his voice has changed in the 40 years since he started out.

I was introduced to Bert Jansch through a few songs that he has on the soundtrack to The Squid and the Whale (excellent movie, highest rating), and so I basically just wanted to hear those songs done 42 years after he originally recorded them. He played one of them, and I guess it was underwhelming.

Some things that Jansch has going for him though:

1) He sticks to his genre. He's a folk singer-songwriter, and that's still what he does.

What's Dylan doing these days? Fucking shitty blues records that critics get a boner from, when it's really just blatant homogenized blues that says nothing. If his name wasn't Bob Fucking Dylan he'd be playing Pinky Winkerbeans on open jam wednesdays with that shit. (full disclosure, I've tried listening to Modern Times maybe twice). Worse than new Elvis Costello, also producing critical boners throughout the interweb.

2) He wrote a better heroin song than Neil Young's "Needle and the Damage Done", called "Needle of Death", 7 fucking years before Young did! (2 years before Velvet Underground's "heroin", but comparing Jansch to VU is like comparing apples and dildos, so I figured I'd let it slide)

3) This has nothing to do with Bert Jansch, but I was very close to getting into a fight at a 60-something year old folk singer's show. I know folk shows are like librarian conventions, with shhushers and stinkeyers, which is both funny and ridiculous, but this guy deserved to shed some teeth.

If he's in your town, I highly recommend seeing Jansch. Also, he's really friggin' old, and walks like a 17 year old cat, but when he dies, he won't crawl under your steps to do it. At least I fucking hope not.

I will move my legs, but that's about it

I go to a lot of shows. One thing that I really hate seeing onstage is when bands try to make the audience do shit for them. For any band members reading this, I will tell you right now, if you want me to clap for 30 seconds in some kind of intricate audience rhythm section, you're out of luck. Fuck doing shit for bands!

I'm not gonna sing your fucking chorus for you. That's why I paid money to see YOU!

I'm not gonna "make some fuckin' noise"... if I'm compelled to make noise, I will, but I don't follow commands, dick.

And have you ever been to a show where they make you do something really fucking stupid? "snap your fingers for this part".... NO! I think Feist did that once. Leslie Feist seems even more bored with her own music than I am, and that's saying a lot.

Here is what I will do: I will shake my right leg. When my right leg gets tired, I will switch to the left leg. If you've really got your shit together, I might glance over at my friend and mouth the word "whoa". Asking for anything more is deserving of having change thrown at you. Ask Datarock. Though they weren't really demanding, they just sucked enough to deserve having change thrown at them.

You Probably Think This Blog Post Is About You, Don't You?

So I was thinking about that Carly Simon song "You're So Vain" today, and I had the same frustrating train of thought that I usually do when I think about that song: the chorus makes no sense.

She only ever talks about one person throughout the entire song, then the chorus says "you're so vain, you probably think this song is about you." Well... it IS about him. His thinking that the song is about him has nothing to do with his vanity. Here, I can probably narrate his thoughts as he heard the song for the first time:

"Hey, this is that Carly girl that I met at that party... and she's singing about someone wearing an apricot scarf?! Ok, WTF, how many people does she know that wear apricot coloured scarves? Hmm, yeah, this song is definitely about me..."

The lyrics could make sense, but the chorus lines are misleading. By saying "you probably think this song is about you" directly after "you're so vain," the two ideas are connected in the listener's mind. However, being vain and thinking the song is about him (which it sure as fuck is) are not mutually exclusive.

You probably think this blog post is about you sucking balls at writing lyrics, Carly Simon. And it is.