Let's talk about music!

Today, whilst squandering my duties at work and haphazardly selling ugly sunglasses to over-privileged pre-vacationers probably occupationally based in the financial sector, I stumbled across an article in Esquire entitled "50 Songs Every Man Should Be Listening To." They claim that their music editors are "your friend," and not your "pretentious friend who nods in approval instead of to the beat" or "judges everything against Pavement."

Now, I have often been, I'll admit, accused of being the former (I never really did get into Pavement). But this list sucks. This list sucks a lot.

Okay, I'm lying. It doesn't suck a lot. That, actually, is the problem. It isn't write-off, know-nothing shitty. It's not even close to that. It sucks just enough to be genuinely irritating; enough to be really obnoxious. It's all that because it's so admirably close to being on the right track but while missing the track completely. And its jab at "pretentious" listeners only sweetens the case. Because, for all it's "every day" appeal and claims to simple, modest, appreciation-with-no-strings-attached aspirations, the problem with this list is that, with a handful of exceptions, it's fucking boring moreso than it is bad. And such is the conundrum with modern music, in my humble (or pretentious) opinion.

Actually, fuck it. Remove those parentheticals from the above statement. If I'm pretentious in the way Esquire seems to define the word, then so be it. A musical critique should be be somewhat pretentious, written by someone who can tell the difference between formulaic crap dressed up as "the next big thing" and something that's actually original. Originality, even, isn't necessarily required for something to be good. It doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. I don't need that every time I flip a record on. Just something that is self-aware; something that is damn good at being what it is. Lil' Wayne (#20) is not self-aware. The new Guns 'N' Roses' (#24) only appeal is its comic lack of self-awareness. Franz Ferdinand (#33) and Coldplay (#34) are just piles of boring and blah.

And yet, a lot of the stuff on here is not bad at all. Mos Def (#1), My Morning Jacket (#7), Neko Case (#9, who gets a pass for having been in the New Pornographers), Fleet Foxes (#18); these are all bands that do not in fact suck, and are actually kind of good. But they just don't move me. They don't make me get out of my seat and want to sing/dance/yell/cry/throw chairs/be at peace/reflect on the passage of time/write/generally be thankful for my auditory senses, the way music -- music with real heart -- is supposed to.

I think I might have gone off on a tangent. The real problem with this kind of only-kind-of-bad list as that it propagates the wrong idea. Mainstream music, in the past few years, has been improving to a vast degree, embracing large parts of what had previously been the "underground" and assimilating its pieces a few at a time, from its pop-sensible edges (Death Cab For Cutie and Modest Mouse come to mind). Why is this a problem? Actually, I have no issue with what tweens who whine about "selling out" and "the man" so ubiquitously and scornfully call "the mainstream" -- so long as it isn't bastardizing the bands it's taking in. Honestly, I've enjoyed both the aforementioned bands perhaps even moreso since they went major. The issue to me is now that the mainstream listeners have discovered the "indie" genre (sort of a misnomer now, since most of the "indie" bands on Esquire's list are not "independent" at all), they are becoming content with a lot of the buzz bands that are really just slightly more accessible but watered down versions of their less well-known contemporaries. For example, ever since Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco have turned "emo" into a dirty word, fans have seldom bothered to look deeper at phenomenal releases by bands like Look Mexico, Alegernon Cadwallader, and Minus the Bear (who are, rightfully so, slowly getting their due), just to name the first few that popped into my head.

Sure, it's easy for me to sit back on the sidelines and sound smug, but it's not that I'm downing anyone for liking any of the bands on Esquire's list. There's nothing wrong -- nothing whatsoever -- with liking whatever it is that moves you; fuck all what moves me. But I do believe that anyone who truly claims to love music has a responsibility to themselves to dig below the surface, beyond what is easily accessible and dangled in front of their faces, to find the roots from where the bands they like now derived (for example, my friend's father, a rabid We Are Scientists fan that had no idea his favorite band's name was derived from the titular Cap'n Jazz song). I mean, these are the kinds of things I love -- when I fall in love with a band, I need to know all this stuff. I dig. I scour. Sometimes it just gives me a better perspective on the music I love. More often than not, it leads me to more bands I'll end up loving, and so on, and so forth.

To cite -- of all absurdities -- Blink-182, I once read an interview where they made what I thought was a very poignant observation: that they were like "My First Punk Band;" that they had fun with what they did but hoped ultimately that it would help get kids off the conveyor-belt pop and nu-metal that was so rampant at the time and lead them into the bowels of independent music, to develop a rich library of music to enjoy and appreciate. Around the same time, Bob Dylan publicly declared that if he were to have grown up in this era (this was the tail end of the '90's, I believe), he never would have been inspired to play music. But I did grow up in this era, and I did fall in love with music. But it wasn't because of pop or nu-metal, it was because of kind but "pretentious" souls who took the time to point me to bands whose hearts and souls connected to mine; and from there I was able to plum the depths and developed an appreciation of music I never would have had otherwise.

Certainly, I like a lot of bands that many other true music lovers abhor; just as others whose musical appreciations surely match or exceed my own steadfastly worship bands I just can't see the value in (I think I mentioned Pavement earlier). I just think that a mainstream not full of crap makes people lazy. It breeds musical half-enthusiasts. It's not bad enough to send people in droves to find a niche or a counter-culture that suits them.

So blast your headphones. Enjoy your Fleet Foxes and your Josh Ritters and your Blitzen Trappers and your Libertines and your Glasvegases. But don't let it absolve you of your responsibility to take up your shovel and dig for gold. No matter how knowledgeable you may be, there is always more to find, and always more to love. Just as it should be.