Getting to Know You through Your iPod
If you’re a sadist-cum-tyrant like me (and you know that you are; you’re just too much of a pussy to admit it), then you are also a snob. I myself am a snob of no less than 73 distinct and fractious malefactions. One of the finer points of my dicklike dirk is my over-annunciated loathing for Music That Sucks, especially when it comes to people identifying themselves by their Music That Sucks.
It is not a good idea to advertise yourself online by your musical tastes. No one wants to read the following in a personal ad: “I like knitting, roller-blading, Ethiopian cuisine, and Korn. Go me.” Not even Jonathan Davis wants to read that. Seriously. Once you’re that rich, you learn what embarrassment through fandom is.
It is hard to love when fighting the good fight against Music That Sucks, and all its black-seeded hounds: that which is Trendy, Trend-Spotty, and possibly Trend-Worthy. It is hard to love because invariably you will find that the lost soul whom you think you can love is her/himself in love with one or more of these musically undead terrors of the Wicked One. MORE>>
Music That Sucks has always gotten in the way of my date-trolling, whether it is conducted in Meatspace or Cyberspace. And I am not a High Fidelity sort of boy, who stays up late searching for the perfect Tom Waits song to represent my feeling(s) for someone, or Nick Caving my heart out in two-fisted scoops as I go about the dark artlessness of making mix-tapes. Because the song doesn’t exist. And the doe-eyed gothling who makes the mix-tapes of my heart? He doesn’t exist either.
A quick travelogue of my many missed chances at love, thanks to Music That Sucks:
Twenty years ago it was Rush. Listening to Rush is the musical equivalent of reading Dungeons-and-Dragonsesque sci-fi-fantasy – in particular, Gor-dom, a fate far worse than any Neil Peart-inspired boredom. Gor people are like the kinky version of D&Dsters. They are weird, creepy SCA guys who videotape themselves playing with lightsabers, and, of course, they are also Rush fans. And Rush is the soundtrack to Gor. Never underestimate the power of Geddy Lee, the shrill-voiced screech-master of Rush. And Rush, like many of the Gor precepts that are shrouded in prehistory, have been around for-fucking-ever. They were there before Canada was.
My unambiguous odium toward Rush cost me many a big-haired, tightly acid-washed date in the 80s. So I mostly dated Hüsker Dü fans.
Ten years ago, I was sure that ska music was actually an alien retrovirus sent across many a dwarf galaxy in order to weaken us intellectually and through the use of mind-altering chemicals, so that said aliens may one day conquer us without firing so much as a single particle-degradation beam. But I also don’t get angry when my Mom smokes pot; when she hits the bottle and goes back to the rock. I do what any self-respecting Misanthrope would do: I turn her in to the local constabulary.
My ska-enmity cost me many a date with pink and bald-headed girls with lots of piercings in the 90s. So I mostly dated librarians who listened to trance. (Which I also hated, but not with the fervor reserved for Ska.)
Today, in the Bushed-out figure-eight of the Aughts, it is indie rock, or its splinter cell, Twee, that inflames the flagrancy of my foul-temperedness. Quaint and dainty, too-cute for anything less than jihad, Twee is what happens when suburban white kids have nothing else to rebel against. Twee is the death of irony and good taste. Twee makes baby birds cry. Twee makes Hulk smash. Twee makes the Us of Reason hate the You of Phylum Asshattus.
Furthermore! (Yes, there is a ‘furthermore’. Get used to it.) I am quite convinced that twee-rockers (and please note that in this instance, the term ‘rockers’ is used with ironic intent) have perfected unto me a perfect torture known as the Indie Chord. The Indie Chord, you see, is only one small register up from the Brown Note. It won’t leave your pants beshat, but you’ll know that something is full of shit. One could say that it is in the ear of the beholder.
I am not yet sure what my anti-Twee stance is costing me; if I had to venture a guess, it would be all the sex-positive girls who like Jane Austen and Italo Calvino, who harbor secret girl-crushes on the digital vox of Loreena McKennitt. And that’s okay. There are a lot of self-loathing girls with Daddy issues out there who listen to old Bob Dylan records. And there will always be a couch in my heart for each and every last one of them. And for the Twee girls, once they’ve reformed their ways and start humming Gutter Twins songs. And by the way, if Will Ferrell and Tom Waits had a baby and fed it nothing but heroin, you’d probably end up with Mark Lanegan.
Just saying.
But like all other things in the springtime of amour, we’ll just call it art until something better comes along.
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mixtapes, now thats up there with gay fish !
Comment by UNCLE-MUD-BUTT | May 20, 2008