Carrie Brownstein’s blog Monitor Mix is generally interesting, but something about yesterday’s discussion about critically acclaimed artists people aren’t really familiar with rubbed the music fan in me the wrong way. Not because of Brownstein, but because of her readers; something about comment-section types bragging that they’d never heard Led Zeppelin or David Bowie seems deeply, deeply wrong.
It’s certainly OK to have your preferences (I certainly have mine), but I’m not sure bragging that you just haven’t bothered to listen to Bob Dylan, or whatever artist, is something to be proud of. There’s certainly a lot of music out there, and there are just as many–if not more!–lists created every single day that have as their sole function telling you what you should already own and enjoy. But what happened to championing curiosity? I realized a few months ago that I hadn’t heard Patti Smith’s Horses in its entirety (to my knowledge), so I bought it. I don’t love it, but at least, I’ve formed my own opinion.
One commenter mentions how often he hears the line “I’ve heard of him/her/them but have don’t know his/her/their stuff”, a line I’m guilty of repeating more often than I’d care to admit, but that seems more of a honest response to not having heard Santogold or the Fleet Foxes or whatever local band your friend’s cousin is in, and not a strange anti-canon retort. Sure, I haven’t heard every single piece of music listed on Acclaimed Music, but I at least want to try. The chart books clogging my bookshelf almost taunt me with artists and songs that haven’t made it to various artist comps or greatest hits collections; to me, that unavailablility is part of the thrill of the chase. And before you ask, yes, I get sick of the lists too–I can’t even fathom trying to wade through that 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die book I’ve seen everywhere lately. But is the only alternative to pretending you like a band you’re barely familiar with (Slint seems to be the usual suspect) swinging to the other pole and staying blissfully unaware?
In Name Only [Monitor Mix]
Being proud of your ignorance is a virus that has infected every other part of American society; why should “music fans” be any different?
This is something that’s been on my mind lately. I’m a college student who listens to a lot of music, and it depresses me how many people I know who care about it as much as I do have no interest in exploring older music that might be off the beaten path. These people will be listening to the new TV on the Radio before most people know it leaked, or rhapsodizing about MGMT, but you’d be discouraged at how many of them haven’t even heard of bands like Guided By Voices or really any number of bands who are more than five years old, let alone listened to any of their music. I noticed that pitchfork bemoaned the Sufjan Stevens-esque arrangements of the Noah and the Whale album, and I wonder if the lack of range in the listening habits of this new generation of musicians/fans is to blame for how sameish a lot of indie rock is these days.
i’ll admit to falling prey to this disease myself. it took freaks and geeks to teach me the beauty of the dead. i think it’s a function of information overload and a desire to be cutting edge, but only within the hipster accepted boundaries. i think the most bizarre aspect of this phenomenon is with old shit, where you’ve got more kids out there that have heard all the numero group comps (which are amazing of course) but have little to no knowledge of the popular records that those artists were listening to and drawing influence from. if i told you that you’re favorite obscure peruvian psych band listened to blue oyster cult would that persuade you to give them a shot?
And keep in mind that most people aren’t music fans, even though everyone ‘loves music’. They are music consumers. Music is just another product, and if Beyonce falls off the face of the earth then that’s fine because another artist who has very similar songs will come along and they won’t really notice the difference.
There are whole swaths of revered music that I can’t stand, but I’ve at least listened to it (way way more than I would like, in fact) before deciding that I hate country and classic rock.
i can haz beatles?
I’ve haven’t heard much of The Minutemen, Guided By Voices or My Bloody Valentine, but I’m not PROUD of it, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. There’s a lot of music out there.
@revmatty: I’m not sure it’s fair to label more casual listeners as mere consumers. People have a tendency to latch on to the music that surrounded them during important times in their lives: puberty, early college days, etc., and even if they become deeply attached to it rarely venture off into other areas. They love “their” music, but not necessarily music in general. But Dan is talking about people who supposedly love music for itself, whatever genre it fits into, and are curious enough, at the very least, to read what Carrie Brownstein has to say about it. I know it’s hip to buck tradition and to put down the idea of a canon, but whether you believe it in yourself or not, there’s a reason why people put the same artists on those goddamn lists time after time. Because they were great, or at least important at the time, and to write them off with a shrug is idiotic.
The 2.0 version of this phenomenon is folks listing “anything but country/rap/gypsy jazz/drum circles/whatever” or as Favorite Music on Facebook or elsewhere. That never fails to grind my gears.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying “I’ve heard of them but I haven’t heard them.” I actually have a t-shirt that says that on it, now that I think about it. I’d much rather be candid about the depth of my own ignorance than to feign being apologetic or to adopt pride regarding my lack of knowledge. I’ve probably been an active music fan for 6 years now and it’s taken me this long just to get an accurate estimation of my blind spots.
@GhostOfDuane: That phrase/cliche is the immediate moment when I stop reading an OkCupid profile (unless it’s part of a larger trainwreck I plan to share with my friends). It implies the exact opposite of nearly everything I look for or find relatable in a human being. The only people who can say “I like everything but blank ____” with any authority are too well informed to say such a thing.
@RaptorAvatar: “I’ve heard of them but I haven’t heard them” is always going to be true for all but the most well-informed of music fans. I wish I didn’t have to say that as often as I did.
But at the same time, people who begin to like music in their formative years- which seem to be late high school and college now- are never going to be willing to admit that kind of weakness or ignorance. Because it is easy to keep up with new things- leak blogs here, forums there. What’s hard is finding the time to go back into the past and investigate things that didn’t saturate the public consciousness. The picture accompanying this post is relevant to me, as I had never heard of Galaxie 500 past the one line in Exile in Guyville until I heard someone play a song of theirs I wound up liking. It’s not that I consider myself too lazy, it’s just that somehow I ended up being too lazy without even thinking too hard about it.
I don’t even own a TV.
+1 me.
@30f: Agreed. I think pride in not owning a tv is far more obnoxious than pride in anti-canonical listening habits.
Also, for some reason, this jars a stoney/cynical notion from undergrad daze, to wit: What do you think would happen if you were to raise a child making sure at every turn that they never ever intake any disney entertainment?
Welcome to the world of mathies.
The other day I was driving and I heard a commercial that started as such:
“Life gives you complicated questions like ‘What is the square root of an isosceles triangle?’”
I nearly lose my shit when I hear things like this. I mentioned it to a fellow mathie of mine and he had this to say:
“Math is the only thing that you are allowed to be stupid about. If you can’t pronounce a ten letter word then people think you’re an idiot but you say you can’t understand fractions and everyone just laughs and say ‘Ya, math is hard!’”
It’s just as annoying as what you mention in this post.
I think this is a very generational thing - when I was a young punk rawker/ art school wierdo back in the ’80s most folks I knew were hungry both for new sounds and to learn the canon - especially the alternative canon. Most kids I knew who were into music were into everything from the latest dischord and rough trade 7′ to things like the Nuggets series and weird old rockabilly records and the whole Velvets-Dolls-Stooges pre-punk triumverate to the really out there stuff like the Fugs and the Shaggs and all that great off-the-wall shit that goes down the memory hole today. That’s why so much of the alternative music of the ’90s was based on what came before - there was a continuum that helped place groups like NIN or Nirvana in context. I think today’s indie kids have lost that - for whatever reason - and that’s why so much indie rock sounds lame today.
Anytime I hear the following I go crazy:
1) I don’t watch TV
2) When I do, it’s only PBS
3) I only watch Fox News or MSNBC
4) I only listen to NPR
5) I only listen to Sean Hannity and Michael Savage
6) Opie and Anthony rule and all other radio sucks
7) I don’t listen to music after (insert year here, usually sometime after their Jr. year of college)
8) (Insert band here) is the only good band there is
9) There are no good (insert genre here)
10) Who cares what bloggers think? They sit in their (pajamas/underwear) and don’t have real jobs
@Captain Wrong: Bix Lives!
I think Gibson really misread the tone of a lot of the comments following Brownstein’s post. Most of them didn’t feel like ignorant pride to me, more like embarrassed confessions. Most of the commenters seemed to genuinely wish they had the time/money/inclination to get off their butts and hear more music.
Even the “heard of them/haven’t heard them guy” seems to be saying that he uses that line a lot, not that he hears it. Myself, I use it whenever appropriate, than follow it with something along the lines of “What’s good?” or “Where should I start?”
@Dan Gibson: Well, most of those are essentially anonymous comments.
How many kids in the 60s were familiar with Ellington, Basie, Armstrong, Goodman, Shaw, Herman, etc.? For that matter, how many people reading this are?
One person’s important music history is another’s meh.
@Captain Wrong: Actually, I would say that most kids in the 60s had some familiarity with Ellington, Basie and Armstrong because they were part of the overculture at the time - don’t forget that all three were still making hit records well into the 60s and were constantly on television and in the media. And they’re still part of the American musical canon today because important music history remains important music history, no matter how ignorant some people choose to be.
Gee, I thought the standard trope these days was that “the kids” have given up to a large extent on current popular music (because it is too fragmented/not producing anything good/whatevers) and instead are listening to “boring” classic rock like Led Zep.
@Captain Wrong: Fitzgerald’s version of Ellington’s Always True to You in My Fashion is one of my favorite songs.
Anyways, I feel that I’m reasonably good about back catalogs, though it’s intimidating. The back catalog is so huge. That’s where I’m doing my exploration now and it seems as if every album found necessitates the purchase of five more albums.
What I’m really embarrassed about is my lack of depth w/r/t Classical music. I know fewer than a dozen pieces. Laaaame.
@DJorn: How embarrassed can someone be about something when they’re posting about it on a blog?
@Jay-C:
I’ve also come across a variation, or rather, the opposite of #7: “I don’t listen to anything before 1989” is one gem that comes to mind.
@Dan Gibson: [grouphug.us]