Friday, May 27, 2005
I Don't Care About Your Craft
One thing I am mightily sick of is musicians who think they deserve a cookie or a medal or something for spending years slaving away learning an instrument.
I don't care.
Fuck your 'struggle'.
Is there anything more boring than rock musicians and fans pretending that 'craft' actually means anything? That 'emoting' through your guitar while you insouciantly flick your bangs out of your eyes is somehow meaningful?
No, the only thing that matters with music is end result.
Stop pretending that you are doing something that hasn't been done 10000 times before. You aren't.
I don't care about your 'message' either. If I want to learn, I'll read a book. Your lyrics are just window-dressing for the music. Let's face it, music fans don't deserve a pass here either. Most lyricism is nonsense. It may be fun, but stop pretending it's going to make you smarter.
Your emotions don't matter. I care about my friends and family, not some random musician. I am not 'touched'.
IDM, too. 'Intelligent dance music'. Christ, give me strength. I don't care about your 'experiments' or your 'journeys into sound'.
This is why the rave end of electronic dance music is the most honest music out there. It's loud, it's crude, it exists only for partying, and doesn't pretend it is anything else.
And I don't care about 'deconstructing' the music. I like the surface. I like the sounds. I like textures. I'll let my imagination do the rest. I'm interested in histories and pathways, but I don't care about music critics' need to connect everything up for silly 'theory' purposes. Maybe you're angry you're not working in a philosophy department, but you should be proud. You get to listen to and write about music for a career, which is surely by anyone's standards than having to wade through the latest silliness from Zizek or similar voodoo linguist?
I don't care about where music fits into some 'cultural studies' paradigm. Whether some rapper talking about shooting people is 'actualizing his resistance' or some nonsense like that, or whether a metalhead hailing Satan is 'defying bourgeois codes of conformity'. Fuck that. The 1960's are over. The revolution is not coming. Marxism is an ideological corpse, and dressing it up with over-wrought language isn't going to bring it back. At least you are getting to hear some tunes.
I don't care.
Fuck your 'struggle'.
Is there anything more boring than rock musicians and fans pretending that 'craft' actually means anything? That 'emoting' through your guitar while you insouciantly flick your bangs out of your eyes is somehow meaningful?
No, the only thing that matters with music is end result.
Stop pretending that you are doing something that hasn't been done 10000 times before. You aren't.
I don't care about your 'message' either. If I want to learn, I'll read a book. Your lyrics are just window-dressing for the music. Let's face it, music fans don't deserve a pass here either. Most lyricism is nonsense. It may be fun, but stop pretending it's going to make you smarter.
Your emotions don't matter. I care about my friends and family, not some random musician. I am not 'touched'.
IDM, too. 'Intelligent dance music'. Christ, give me strength. I don't care about your 'experiments' or your 'journeys into sound'.
This is why the rave end of electronic dance music is the most honest music out there. It's loud, it's crude, it exists only for partying, and doesn't pretend it is anything else.
And I don't care about 'deconstructing' the music. I like the surface. I like the sounds. I like textures. I'll let my imagination do the rest. I'm interested in histories and pathways, but I don't care about music critics' need to connect everything up for silly 'theory' purposes. Maybe you're angry you're not working in a philosophy department, but you should be proud. You get to listen to and write about music for a career, which is surely by anyone's standards than having to wade through the latest silliness from Zizek or similar voodoo linguist?
I don't care about where music fits into some 'cultural studies' paradigm. Whether some rapper talking about shooting people is 'actualizing his resistance' or some nonsense like that, or whether a metalhead hailing Satan is 'defying bourgeois codes of conformity'. Fuck that. The 1960's are over. The revolution is not coming. Marxism is an ideological corpse, and dressing it up with over-wrought language isn't going to bring it back. At least you are getting to hear some tunes.
3 Comments:
wow. what brought this on??
I was in a bad mood and was re-reading this thread on Dissensus, a lot of the arguments contained within reminded me of how much I hate 'critical theory'. Then I started thinking about other things I hate in music, so I started ranting.
I'm thinking about doing a sequel called 'Get Over It - You're White'.
I'm thinking about doing a sequel called 'Get Over It - You're White'.
Weird, I was just thinking the other day how hardcore/metal is probably the least important kind of music being made right now. We sell a lot of it at the store I work at, and I always just wonder what the kids see in it... I mean, I know they could turn right around and ask me the same thing about rap, but at least that shit is FUN...
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