Back In Black

Hello my young trendmongers, it is I, Greggary Peccary, back after a long break. Sorry to keep you all waiting (no doubt you all sat waiting with baited breath for my return) but things have been up. In the tragic news, my grandmother has passed away, and I spent about four days at home. I saw some family I hadn't seen in two years, and that was okay. No more commentary on this.

I've also been debating quitting my part time job at ALS-UP which is taking care of mentally handicapped people. I had to stay at work twelve hours yesterday, and there was almost a fist fight and we held a guy down for four hours. No more commentary on this.

My roommate has also been trying to find somebody to sublease the place, as she wants to move out. I'm not sure why, it honestly really makes little sense to me. She's saving a little money on a place she hardly ever stays at (she stays at her boyfriends) but there are so many disadvantages to her new place. No more commentary on this.

I'm also on a diet. No more commentary on this.

Okay, now that I've started four different topic threads and closed them all, perhaps I should move onto something I feel comfortable discussing. Yes, something banal, impersonal, but also quasi-intellectual and deep. Let's talk about music and music snobbery.

My big love in life (besides trendmongering) is music. I own more CD's than most people have listened to in their life, have read books about my favorite artists, put myself into debt trying to collect all I want, and am slowly learning the art of playing and composition. However, I don't consider myself a snob, and really dislike people who would consider themselves such, in honor and pride, saying they simply have "better taste."

From my perspective, I naturally have better taste than anybody else. Of course! The music I like is the "good music" and everything else is garbage eh? Anybody who cares at all about any sort of art form and has invested themselves into it naturally feels this way. From painting to movies, millions of experts exist, that clamp at the bit trying to prove everybody else wrong and stupid.

All right, fair enough. But the point is, that to be a true critic, to truly understand what you like and don't like and why, you have to investigate all angles of your art form. You can't JUST listen to indie rock, rate it all as GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL ART while bashing everything else based on the fact that it's not indie rock. This is just scenesterism, elitism, and it's closed minded, narrow, and harmful to art. For the continuation of all art, and for it to progress, healthy dialogue must exist.

For music, this means popping in a Britney Spears CD and listening to it, while attempting to judge it as music, not as pop art. Now, I'm no fan of Britney Spears or any of that type of music. And I haven't sat and listened to one of her albums to judge it. But I think I will have to at some point, to understand it, before I completely dismiss it without knowing why I hate it so much. So many critics just dismiss things without even experiencing it: I myself have fallen into this category, shamefully, but I do try to see things from many angles.

I knew a guy who bashed a friend of mine because he liked indie rock, punk, heavy metal, funk, country, blues, prog rock, and techno. He said that my friend had "bad taste" because he liked too many things, and didn't focus on just indie rock. This is exactly the problem with music and art in general today: too much narrow focusing on one genre or style at the cost of an entire world of art.

Naturally, people generally like a pretty specific type of music and sounds. I, for example, like music that pushes the envelope on song form and length, and that incorporates ideas from jazz and classical. Art rock and prog, I guess you could call it. But one of my absolute favorite groups of all time is The Who, I love AC/DC, the Beach Boys, and ABBA. And I definitely had to go outside my narrow focus to discover my ability to love them. By understanding something outside your range, you can either expand your range, or confirm it, but understand what you don't like about it. I hate modern country, but it took me years of exposure and video watching to understand that it was the emotional posturing and fakery that made me hate it so much, the "we're real salt of the earth" type postures that seemed so fake because they were. Without tooting my own horn, I think that this is what one needs to do with all art forms. One must constantly be experiencing new things if one is to understand what is good and what is bad. And snobbery will fail to create this type of atmosphere by it's very nature.

Join me next time for when I talk about sports!