The Bands You Like Suck.

[loafergirl]

Well, how about this:

How come it's you same uppity pseudo-intellectual pus-bags who, when YOUR music is attacked, instantly go all world-peace and start trotting out, "Well, nobody can judge any music because it's all in the eye of the flaming beholder, nyaaaaaeaeewwweewe", but you think nothing of sitting around in a giant sticky circle jerk going on and on about (and I'm just picking him as an example) how awful Eminem is, and how music has really devolved, and that "rap crap" is a load of garbage, and we are far, far too special and important to have our ears molested with that kind of noise?

Nobody ever says, "Well, I don't care for it, but to each their own!" If somebody says something SUCKS, and you AGREE, you'll pile on like the rest of us, you hypocritical, holier-than-shit sons of WHORES.

How you like me NOW?!??

Does anyone else remember Ben being there the last time you had a conversation about music with someone else? I don't. Because believe it or not, and if Jonsey was as sober as I think he was at the time he can back me on this, when Vanilla Ice was playing at Jeff and Cathy's wedding and people were mocking it I said "to each there own" .

Suggestion to Ben, who I can only now picture as being a want-to-be-angst-ridden teenager tediously grasping for more things to be grumpy about; if you hear someone have that conversation BITCH TO THEM. JESUS, you've got more w(h)ine than a vinyard, follow thier example, bottle it, cork it, and wallow in it later.

-LG

[Angroid]

WHEN I WAS BEING PROGRAMMED, MY DRUGGED-OUT PROGRAMMER SLIPPED ON SOME BONG WATER AND KNOCKED HIS HEAD LOOSE AND NEVER FINISHED MY PROGRAM. SO AS A RESULT, I CAN ONLY COUNT ONE-DIGIT NUMBERS.

BUT THAT IS OK, SINCE IT WON'T TAKE ME LONGER THAN 9 SECONDS TO KICK YOUR ASS!!!!!!!!!!!!

RRRRRRrrr!!!

[Eric]

Rather than saying anything else about taste and standards I have to recount this little story. Just because the discussion brings it to mind. Even though it doesn’t concern music. I’m not trying to speak in parables or anything. Although maybe it gives some insight as to why any mention of “standards” sets me off.

While in In Rochester I attended a writer’s group for awhile – something I wouldn’t usually do – but the fellow who formed the group had half a dozen horror novels out from Tor Books so he knew something. This was before my wife and I finally managed our very (very) modest success selling our novels to an indie publisher, although we already were regularly selling short stories in anthologies and magazines.

There was a guy in the group who was obsessed with getting published this novel he’d taken seven years to write and was then rewriting. He was equally obesessed with rules and standards. For example, anyone who used anything other than “said” for dialogue wasn’t a real writer. He was as certain of it as my old Baptist Aunt was certain that all Catholics were going straight to Hell. If you ever had someone so much as “exclaim” or “sigh” you were a hack. Period. Everyone knew that.

Of course, that meant my wife and I were mere hacks, albeit published hacks. But I suppose in this guy’s mind it was better being a real unpublished writer than a hack. And the fellow who had the Tor books out was also a hack, not only by reason of various stylistic misdemeanors and felonies but because horror was a genre and another law was that all genres were unworthy and anyone who wrote in a genre was a hack. Vampires? AHAHAHA!

So the published horror writer tried to give the unpublished literary genius advice but, as you might imagine, none of it stuck. I tried to convince this guy that the horror writer might have something useful to teach him because he demonstrably knew something about getting published. But no, the literary genius knew what the standards were. He would constantly read the horror writer’s books to mock them. In one book there was a reference to someone’s eyes growing “round.” Mr Literature found this hilarious. The absolute smoking gun to prove utter incompetance. Well, at least people know what you mean if you say “his eyes grew round with fright.” So how bad is it? But that phrase was a cliché or some equal infraction of the rules of Literature.

Anyway Mr Literature, having been rejected by about 200 publishers – despite his high standards - finally paid iUniverse to store his book in their computers in order to print the occassional copy for relatives -- except an uncle who he doesn’t want to know since it recounts how he was secretly screwing the man’s daughter while he staying with him -- oh, did I mention that the “novel” is actually an autobiography? Part of his problem was he couldn’t understand why a lot of people would rather read about the life of a vampire roaming the night looking for blood than a middle-aged guy working in a cubicle twelve hours a day to buy a bigger house. Real writers write about real life. Everybody knows that.

Mr Literature is now happily posturing at various wannabe author sites, expounding on how real writers, who meet literary standards, have to find alternative ways to gain the publication that has been denied them by the unwashed hordes of clueless hacks the unwashed horde of the public insist on reading. If anyone manages to get published it is practically proof they’re no good.

Sigh. In the old days, when someone paid the printery to print up a few cartons of books only the local weekly mistook that for publication.

So you can see, maybe, why to paraphrase the famous German critic Goebbels, when I hear the word standards I reach for my gun. However, I admit I have worked the phrase “round eyes” into each of our hack mystery novels, as an homage, and so Mr Literature will not be disappointed if he checks one out of the library sometime to prove to himself just how substandard it is.

Eric

[Protagonist X]

An elegant corollary of Eric's anecdote, ideally suited to the topic of music, may be found at the following link:

http://www.brunching.com/features/accou ... taste.html

It is funny.

It is also apt, and wise.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

There was a guy in the group who was obsessed with getting published this novel he’d taken seven years to write and was then rewriting. He was equally obesessed with rules and standards. For example, anyone who used anything other than “said” for dialogue wasn’t a real writer. He was as certain of it as my old Baptist Aunt was certain that all Catholics were going straight to Hell. If you ever had someone so much as “exclaim” or “sigh” you were a hack. Period. Everyone knew that.

Whoops, I thought I had a reply posted to this, but I guess I didn't save it. It only said:

That has got to be one of the most self-deluded guys in the realm of entertainment, much less literature. I always look at the use of "said" as simply something that makes every other description of talking more effective, by being so plain and uninformative on its own. There is almost always non-verbal content that is happening when someone is speaking to somebody else and sometimes it's even more important than the actual words -- in real life, and in novels. How can you lock yourself off to describing that?

Even if you were to have a conversation between an emotionless droid and your protagonist, you don't need to describe the droid's speech in terms of straight "said"s. You can have the protagonist project his own feelings on the droid or something.

Maybe... MAYBE if I were writing a screenplay and the actors that were going to perform it had about a billion times more pull than I, and would wave off my take on my script like Curt Schilling waving off some catcher that was just an emergency call-up from AA ball or something I could see it. But even then that's just an admittance of defeat on the author's part.

[Worm]

Ben, we get it. You are a hard assed ass hole who doesn't care about other peoples opinions and in doing that you are totally original ... it is just the same old crap. Everyone is a rebel with out a cause fount of knowledge. Frankly, I am darn glad to admit I'm a bit of a doofus, I am not cut throat because it is a Message Board, and I like those bands and am not a music nazi (yes yes I know using the nazi angle who am I to insult your originality) Look, I really don't care enough about the bands enough to argue that. But, you do realize your putting on an act ... even if you don't think you are putting on an act.

[Worm]

Look, after reading all of Ben's posts I have realized that taste in music is directly linked to intelligence and unless you listen to Ben's music ... you are a filthy moron guilty of any corporate crimes against humanity and yourself he accuses you of. Look, I like music that I think sounds good. I hear URT in "A Crimson Spring" and I bought the CD. You guys can analyze your music and say "I like this music because the CD is made out of a fucking steel polymer and the lyric book is recycled paper" ... you don't listen to music for something to bitch about ... listen to it for something to make you feel better to slowly reverberate inside your head and maybe ... JUST MAYBE make you feel a little better. Now I know good 'ol ben will reason that I am a jerk off trying to reason with him yet he is beyond fact, life, and reason. He is ben and he is on a message board ...

[Roody_Yogurt]

That's pretty fucking cool that someone other than Robb (who used the music) and me (the one who met the band under unusual circumstances in the first place) bought the album, which validates the whole musical hook-up, IMO.

[AArdvark]

I hate it when music gets political.

Counterculture is fine but theres a line. (Oooo, im so lyrical)

I wonder if music has really changed anything anytime by bieng political. Ya don't see AC/DC trying to wake the masses, and they can Rock. (not as well since Bonn Scott choked on someone else's vomit, but they rock)

Would you vote for Mr Stipe if he were running for public office? (the only real way to make things change)

Not I, thats for sure...



THE
GENERATION
LAST
AARDVARK

[loafergirl]

No, Michael Stipe looks dowright ill and he's an admitted drunk. BUT he may inspire someone who is politically minded to not be such a fuck up, and that is beautiful.