Oh Please Shut Up
Music today sucks.
For those of us who gather inspiration from music, these are trying times. You find yourself going to music stores & listening to new releases at the wall stations. You download tester mp3's. You read on the latest happs and up & coming acts at label sites, online mags, review sites, fan reviews, list servs, and forums. You keep your ears & eyes open to music chatter. You watch music vids. You sample albums online and link to related artists.
And at the day's end, you find yourself more than just a little bit disappointed. As the months and maybe years pass, disappointment turns to frustration; frustration to anger; anger to cyncism.
I'm almost cynical.
More than anything, I'm drained. The music industry today, above or below ground, is sucking the life out of me.
Everything sounds like something else. And when it doesn't sound like something else, it's due to a conscious attempt at sounding different for the sake of sounding different. On a related tip, you have your art for art's sake heads. Their work isn't art, but they've sold themselves and their pretentious fanbases on the belief that it is. That's bullshit. Is the music industry today nothing more than one, big incestuous orgy?
Did they think I wouldn't notice?
CASES IN POINT
[[El Suckage:Snow Patrol. ANTICON. The Libertines. Sage Francis' latest. Plant Life. Frou Frou. El-P. Le Tigre. Van Hunt. The Von Bondies. Mr. Lif. Death Cab for Cutie. Living Legends's latest. The Postal Service. Amel Larrieux's latest - as much as it pains me to say that.]]
These are artists I've sampled or have given a serious second listening to recently. But Jeezus, even the more recent crap I do like (Keane, The Killers) sounds like the crap I don't like - only a more tolerable form of it. Mainstream music doesn't even deserve mention in this entry.
Lately I've sustained myself w/ old favs. I've been gradually expanding my collection of their respective bodies of work. I've been reading articles/reviews on them and have been looking into related artists. More than that, I've been trying to become more historically minded, music-wise. I've been going back to musical roots & hitting up classics. The tried & true.
Why? - b/c it all embodies what music was meant to be, what it should be, and what it should do to listeners. I don't know what music today is, but I know what it's not. It won't live long enough to leave a legacy, and it will never move me.
After the UH Library, Soundwaves & Olive Garden, I drove home. I popped in Radiohead's OK Computer and remembered what it felt like to hear genius again.
Maybe a miracle will happen...
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"Music has always been my backdoor to life. It is important for people to find something that excites them. I like the concept that if you do what excites you, you will be rewarded generously - whatever form reward takes, which is not necessarily money; it could be spiritual fulfillment or whatever is important to you. I think that there exists a backdoor for everyone, and it's going to be very different, depending on what they've experienced in their life."
-Brandon Boyd
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