Trampled By Turtles.

           For some rambling thoughts on the band, go here.

It's probably time to actually use this blog. 

     I'll admit I'm a contradiction when it comes to music. There's certain things I admire and respect in some artists that I detest in others. I love to see some bands progress while others I want to stay exactly where they're at. And when someone suggests something I might like-"Oh, you'd love 'em. They sound just like The Ramones"-I may not even give it the time of day. It just depends on what it is. The Ramones have spawned a zillion bands. Really, I'd just rather listen to them. Besides, I already like about a half dozen sound-alikes, I have no room for more. But then there's stuff like the new Beach House record Bloom. While I wouldn't say it's an absolutely brilliant record, some of it is highly listenable to me, but very Cocteau Twins-sounding. Almost anything new is derivative of something. But since the Cocteau Twins haven't made any new music in a long while, I'll enjoy the new Beach House, just because I'm such a sucker for that sound.

    It's a given that my musical taste is a vast, wide spectrum of different sounds rising and falling, colliding, fighting for space on my mp3 player. Anymore I cringe when someone asks what type of music I listen to. If I were to say I like Wu Tang Clan, then I must love hip hop, all of it, to the exclusion of everything else. I like the old sarcastic answer "I like both kinds. Country AND Western."

   I would probably say that overall my musical spirit lies within an ideal DIY/punk ethos. When I say punk I mean my definition: limited technical musicianship but a vivid musical "imagination", freedom from preconceived notions of what music has to be, and a disdain for compromise or music as commodity. 

    No, I'm not a hater of everything popular/mainstream/commercial just for the sake of it. There's lots of popular music that enjoy. But a lot of it is just soul-less drivel manufactured by the record industry to sell units. 

    So when I say my spirit lies in punk, yes, it means I love the Ramones, Dolls, Voidoids, etc.(fathers of the orginal movement). But I hear it in a lot of other things too. Once again I'm talking about the adventurous spirit, not a specific sound. I hear it in Coltrane. I hear it in Neil Young. I hear it in Massive Attack. I hear it in Spacemen 3. To me, what gets labelled "post-punk" was far more punk than the original movement. That's where some of the most adventurous and original music lies in my opinion: The Fall, PiL, Joy Division, The Birthday Party, and on and on. 

    Ok, that being said, there's a whole boatload of other music I enjoy just as much. I love the dinosaur bands that punk originally set out to destroy: Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Rush, etc. I truly love these bands, and not in an ironic way. 

    I'm sort of going out on a tangent here. Not sure where this is headed, we'll see.

    I don't understand why one would limit themselves in their listening experience. If I profess a love of the Ramones why does it have to mean I prefer them or that sound over Pink Floyd or Yes? Can I like both? If you truly don't like something, that's fine, but I've never been one to deny something I enjoy because it might go against the grain of my (sub)cultural identity. I've always been merely a rabid music fan, not a punk, hippie, indie rocker, etc.

   Another thing I don't understand is people denying something they like because it's "too popular now" or "too many hipsters like them". I'll admit when something truly great gets popular, it gets shoved down your throat by radio, tv commercials, etc. I think it's also healthy to be skeptical of hype especially in the indie world. I suppose a lot of people don't want to be a part of a club that anyone can join. They want to find that small exclusive club that makes them feel unique. But I will say this: there are douchebags in every clique. Anti-hipsterdom is still a form of hipsterdom, and way more annoying. 

  I used to wear my music tastes/knowledge on my sleeve, and would try to educate the clueless co-worker on what I thought was good music. Now I just don't care. I don't have the time or the energy. In an information age riddled with false claims of what "real" music is, an indie hype machine partially ghost-written by major record companies, and calculated pop radio hits programmed into people's psyches, it's hard to compete. A shallow VH1- informed history of rock is hard to debug.

  Anymore people's lives are so fast-paced they don't have the attention span to sit down and listen to a song by someone they've never heard before, let alone a whole album. I enjoy reading about music almost as much as listening to it. There used to be somewhat of an art to a record review. You describe the music without trying to label it. Nowadays, it's one paragraph of text, then the genre type (nu-gaze, ambient dubstep, etc) or If you like so-and-so you'll like this. It's all quick, dismissive, and marginalized. 

   Music is so special. It's something I believe we were blessed with to elevate us. It comes in so many different forms. Treat it with respect. And explore.