That's how they get you...

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!

Image taken from www.spin.com

For those about to (fake) rock...

(Me Rock Banding under the randomly chosen moniker Digital Friday
inset: Judy Nails, my favorite character to play as on GH)

"You know, Shaun, if we spent as much time on a real guitar as we are going to in the next couple of months on this thing (Holds up Guitar Hero II controller), we'd be pretty damn good at guitar!"

Yeah, I guess my friend Nate was right. I would be a pretty mean guitar playin' machine if I had spent half as much time practicing on my Ibanez as I've spent on my PS2. But where's the fun in that?
I mean, think about it, in games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution, one can take on the persona of a bunch of different, although stereotypical, avatars and rock out to the best of your (fake) ability, to dozens of recognizable songs. Not to mention that as a white male I can play as a black guy with dreads or a really hot chick. But why do we play these games instead of actually picking up a guitar?
My American Pop Culture professor says that minstrelsy and transvestism are good enough reasons to do so. (And that comment on my paper made me mad that I hadn't thought of something so witty.)
Basically what it comes down to is instant gratification.
Today, as I had promised him he could, my friend's little brother came over to check out Rock Band. He was very impressed with the drum kit that comes with the game, as was I when I first brought it home. This kid actually owns a drum kit but chose to come over to my house and play the game instead. Why? Because he rocks at it!
Starting out on EASY mode, he picked the song "Say It Ain't So" by Weezer. (An instant favorite of everyone who I've played the game with so far--probably because its easy as pie.) I picked up my (fake) Fender stratocaster and we started to rock. He hit about 89% on his first try at the game, I kicked it up to expert and hit around 95-96%.
Neither of us, well I can speak confidently about myself, my younger friend might be a different story, would be able to do anything close to that on our first try playing along on actual instruments. I've actually tried to play this song before and trust me, it didn't sound anything like Weezer--or even guitar for that matter.
We queued up our next song and he turns to me and says, "I'm going to bump it up to Medium. That was too easy!"
Approximately 3 and 1/2 minutes after putting the game in, he has already felt some sort of accomplishment besides smacking small pads shaped like drums in time with a great tune.
That feeling of being too good for a difficulty level is a pretty sweet feeling, and it's not just a youth thing either.
After my 4.5 hour RB session with Jordan, my sister called while i was chowing down on some dinner. She and her boyfriend were going to drop by for....you guessed it, a little ROCK BAND action!
Our band, Mondo, took to the stage and opened up with more Weezer. My sister took to the skins, which is particularly hilarious when I consider her complete lack of ability to find any beat in real life. Her boyfriend picked up the bass and I took to the six-string.
We all scored over 90%. My sis on EASY, her man on HARD, and me on EXPERT.
"Dude, if I play bass on the next song I'm gonna kick that shiz up to HARD." (I'm not lying that's pretty much a direct quote...I didn't pick him.)
So we kicked it up a notch, in song choice and, for Mike, in difficulty.
We failed. (Don't look at me i didn't make any mistakes but Mike hit hardly anything, I should have warned him sooner that he'd have to use all 5 fret buttons.)
"Alright, alright...I got this" he said as he clicked RETRY, surprising both me and my sister. On just our second attempt at something that kicked our butts the first time, we managed to score a 5-Star rating.
Let's face it, it's a lot easier to play 5 frets on one string than it is to play approx. 21 frets on 6 strings. We're just too lazy and too hard on ourselves to try and play real instruments anymore. We don't play real sports because our guys are ranked all 99s in Madden or NHL '08 (Though to my own surprise I've finally learned how to make Shaun Kreider, a 22 year-old Left Wing from Dublin, Ireland, a 79 ranking overall so that I'm still available at draft time and then ratchet up my stats with practice and a good head coach.)
In all video games we can be who we WANT to be and not who we are, and when you get down to it...that's just way more fun!