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!