As it does every month, my SPIN magazine came a couple weeks ago. As it does every year, it wrapped up 2007 in music.
It used to be that I would agree or disagree with their 'best of' lists because I knew of better bands, or songs, or albums, or because I had heard of everything on the list and it just didn't do it for me.
This year, I only own a miserly 4 albums of their top 40, and have only really ever heard of about 20 of the others. (I use 'heard of' to designate albums that I have listened to or at least have one song I have heard) Through these totals I realized that I don't know crap about indie music anymore. And you know what?
Good!
SPIN used to present a good alternative to all of the dreck that was out there in the mainstream. Now it represents all of the dreck that is out there not in the mainstream.
Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Arcade Fire, Fiest. It's all in the pages of SPIN and its all the rage. I remember getting an issue or two, here and there, a couple years back and it would tell me about bands I'd never heard of, and never would. Bands that were too cool to be mainstream and not at all about to be popular. It was a great feeling to know about bands that the rest of the world wouldn't give a hoot about.
Now, I read SPIN and its all about stupid popular bands that play non-mainstream music...which is now mainstream. And the thing that really makes me mad is that I still haven't heard of most of them. Oh well.
With that said, there are still some great bands that I wouldn't know about without the aid of music related magazines.
Every month I sit down with a pen and paper near-by, flipping through the pages and writing down all the bands that sound interesting. I usually end up with a list about 12 bands long.
Those that make the cut from the magazine to the paper are checked out via MySpace (don't get me started on the pros and cons of that) and/or their official sites. From there my list gets weened down from those that sounded good and those that sound good. Only a few remain but the magazine, that I get for about a dollar an issue or so (through a bunch of renewal offers) ends up costing me about $45 bucks a month!
Is the cost we pay to keep in the know really worth being able to say "oh I knew about them back when they were playing the Troc to only 20 people" or "I have their first album."
The short answer is its not but its still a kind of cool feeling. The long answer would go through a laundry list of ways that that "knowier than thou" mentality, that horrid pompous elitist attitude is the crux of the problem with today's music scene, as well as a bunch of reasons why its fun to humiliate the less knowledgeable.
Basically its like that scene in High Fidelity when the guy who played Mr. Turner's best friend on Boy Meets World (Sorry I don't know his name but the comp is just barely fast enough to keep my blog running right now) tells Jack Black and John Cusack that their elitist. To which they answer "no." Then he says that they make fun of everyone who knows less than them, which is everyone. To which they say "yeah."
So the long and the short of it is that none of us like to be elitist pricks, but its too fun not to be sometimes.
However, the bottom line is, and always should be this, Listen to whatever the f**k you want to and don't let anyone tell you you're not good enough to do so.
It doesn't matter if you get your bands from SPIN or Rolling Stone or even this know-nothing behind the keyboard. It's all about the music, 'nuff said!
It used to be that I would agree or disagree with their 'best of' lists because I knew of better bands, or songs, or albums, or because I had heard of everything on the list and it just didn't do it for me.
This year, I only own a miserly 4 albums of their top 40, and have only really ever heard of about 20 of the others. (I use 'heard of' to designate albums that I have listened to or at least have one song I have heard) Through these totals I realized that I don't know crap about indie music anymore. And you know what?
Good!
SPIN used to present a good alternative to all of the dreck that was out there in the mainstream. Now it represents all of the dreck that is out there not in the mainstream.
Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Arcade Fire, Fiest. It's all in the pages of SPIN and its all the rage. I remember getting an issue or two, here and there, a couple years back and it would tell me about bands I'd never heard of, and never would. Bands that were too cool to be mainstream and not at all about to be popular. It was a great feeling to know about bands that the rest of the world wouldn't give a hoot about.
Now, I read SPIN and its all about stupid popular bands that play non-mainstream music...which is now mainstream. And the thing that really makes me mad is that I still haven't heard of most of them. Oh well.
With that said, there are still some great bands that I wouldn't know about without the aid of music related magazines.
Every month I sit down with a pen and paper near-by, flipping through the pages and writing down all the bands that sound interesting. I usually end up with a list about 12 bands long.
Those that make the cut from the magazine to the paper are checked out via MySpace (don't get me started on the pros and cons of that) and/or their official sites. From there my list gets weened down from those that sounded good and those that sound good. Only a few remain but the magazine, that I get for about a dollar an issue or so (through a bunch of renewal offers) ends up costing me about $45 bucks a month!
Is the cost we pay to keep in the know really worth being able to say "oh I knew about them back when they were playing the Troc to only 20 people" or "I have their first album."
The short answer is its not but its still a kind of cool feeling. The long answer would go through a laundry list of ways that that "knowier than thou" mentality, that horrid pompous elitist attitude is the crux of the problem with today's music scene, as well as a bunch of reasons why its fun to humiliate the less knowledgeable.
Basically its like that scene in High Fidelity when the guy who played Mr. Turner's best friend on Boy Meets World (Sorry I don't know his name but the comp is just barely fast enough to keep my blog running right now) tells Jack Black and John Cusack that their elitist. To which they answer "no." Then he says that they make fun of everyone who knows less than them, which is everyone. To which they say "yeah."
So the long and the short of it is that none of us like to be elitist pricks, but its too fun not to be sometimes.
However, the bottom line is, and always should be this, Listen to whatever the f**k you want to and don't let anyone tell you you're not good enough to do so.
It doesn't matter if you get your bands from SPIN or Rolling Stone or even this know-nothing behind the keyboard. It's all about the music, 'nuff said!
Image taken from www.spin.com
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