A dilemma: I am finding it increasingly difficult to hate music

I realize now that most of what's changing are my tastes, not my inner rage or my critic. I have better self-control, now, and a great deal less envy and juvenile disrespect for pop than I once did, but that doesn't mean I don't still find the demons when I need them. They are right here in the webbing of my fingers, and they still come out when it's time to get rude about somebody else's idea of funky rhythms - they've just gotten better at picking their battles, and they've matured a litte.

Perhaps your tastes have just changed, Nate - try listening to something that really, really sucks and see if you can stand it. If your predicament is anything like mine you'll shortly realize that it's not the you hate CWOT-pop any less vehemently, just that you're slightly more restrained, bcz yr all grown up now and energy is better spent on other things than furious rants concerning the unsalvageably diseased livestock that is Groove Armada.

Very. Sometime I'll dig out Neil Tennant's brilliant essay on hate as a driving motivation in art.

My reaction to the world and the vast amounts of shit therein provide most of my motivation regarding my art.

Hate is good. Love hate. Without hate, we'll all be listening to Celine Dion.

Just bear in mind that there is more to life than hate - it's only an aspect of what makes me an artist. There are other things that elicit feelings of love, happiness, etc. But hate - damn that motivates!

I ABHOR magazines that refuse to give bad reviews. Someone recently made a distinction between a 'critic' and a 'reviewer' and I applaud that. I'm a critic. Most of what you see in magazines are reviews - bordering on advertisements.

I'd like to read Neil Tennant's diatribe, Ned. Interesting PSBoys trivia question, off the topic - does anyone remember what Bono said when a reporter asked him what he thought of Pet Shop Boys cover of "Where The Streets Have No Name"? My eternal, unconditional respect if you remember...

I still hate crappy music, but I don't go out of my way to express it, really. And my definition of "crappy music" mutates without warning; ask 1998 me if I planned on liking Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" and Loverboy's "Turn Me Loose" in five years and he'd laugh and laugh and laugh and then he'd tell you to fuck off. How does this shit work?

Oh shit - did I just suggest a new thread?

Allegedly he said, "What have I done to deserve this?" *rimshot*

You kooky American puritanz.

You can like everything as much as you want! I STILL HATE. And so do you, you can't be telling all the truth. ;-)

At my old age of 24, I'm not above admitting that I think Take It Easy, Peaceful Easy Feeling and Lyin' Eyes are damn fine country rock songs. I'll take them over Croscy Stills and Nash ANY fucking day - now, THAT'S shitty music. Those harmonies make me cringe every time I hear them - Suite: Judy Blue Eyes may be my all time least favorite song. I react to it the way I imagine McCartney devotees react to Two Virgins. I'm not saying The Eagles are a great band - hardly - but they've become scapegoats. Let's rally to make those fucking assholes (well, maybe not Crosby - he's done fine work elsewhere) in CS&N the hate projectile.

Of course, it goes without saying, that all bets are off as soon as Neil Young enters the picture. Neil could command me to kill, and I'd probably do it. Especially if it was Stephen Stills I'd be killing.

Eat a peach,

Roger Adultery

I don;t think this is neccessarily getting, I'm already old. I think it might be symptomatic of a lack of enjoyment or engagement in the rest of my life.

Not hating anything is not a problem. Not loving anything is a problem. Just being reasonably blah towards everything is the worst problem of all.

d00d, you know Eric?

I love a lot of music passionately as an art form.

I hate music made for money (ie a lot of pop like Avril. But not missy elliot or anyone original like that who has some cred and has broken into the mainstream but keeps things fresh and tries to push pop forward etc.)

Basically if i think the band is trying hard and loves music too i think thats cool. Doesnt mean i'll like their music..but i'll give it a chance.

Oh on another note I also don't really like the bashing some bands get just because the journalist is in a bad mood. NME does this a lot, sometime careless music costs lives does too (it can be a bit elitist. but still that and rock sound are the best music magazines around that i've found. Keep the cool magazine up Mr E. True)

AND not forgeting MUSIC KICKS ASS! it so much fun to listen to.

I think that the only worthwhile critics are those who genuinely love music, are open to it, and don't play by other people's rules. It sounds like you're well on your way to becoming a really great one. Let the bullshit go, man. You don't need it.

I like the way he makes war sound like a movie, "brought to you courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" - he's missing a "That's all folks. Afghanistan, as you were." Which is funny interesting because maybe America does think of war like this. Or your government. And maybe Toby Keith keeps forgetting all that Slavoj Zizek he reads, cos when he says things like 'Old Glory' and capitalises the colors of the flag then you know he has.

But he's a funny looking guy and that goes far. I mean who doesn't like a funny looking guy with a sweet voice. Bet he sounds nice on the radio too. Like really uncomfortably sweet. Aw shucks, kinda. And his ill-thought out patriotism, its hard to dislike a guy who is so harmful.

But he is moody, don't let me fool you. Look, page 3 of the sleeve to 'Unleashed', that's a guy that's upset he's had to give beer to his horses, I mean, he doesn't want to fight, he just wants to win, probably. I mean it's not like we can tell, his eyebrows aren't that expressive.

So, stop hating on him. He's pretty good. I really like him. First time I heard him he was called Ryan Adams, or maybe it was Whiskeytown, but he had less syrup on his voice, a little more like parchment paper, maybe, and sounded like a punk rocker who could only sing country. But then, I lost him, got fed up with him, found other friends, and turned back in his direction, and there he was, revealed again with his butterscotch blond voice, and his crotch full of patriotism, he'd replaced his punky sympathies with scattershot bellicosity. And you know what? I still liked him.

I like his pretty voice.

I was going through this from about last summer to around Christmas time. Yeah, objectively speaking, pretty much anyone working at a professional level can be appreciated on their own terms on some level if you give them enough time. And taking this attitude does help open you to things you wouldn't have necessarily noticed otherwise. Especially if you're mostly dealing with pop/rock-type music, there are so many similarities so why bother drawing lines. All the same, do you really want to be totally objective and rational about music all the time? Yeah, any hate comes ultimately from unreasonable biases but people are unreasonable and biased so you're going to hate some things at some points and it does tell you something. It's usually a specific transitory emotion. I might hate something one moment but love it at a different time or in a different context. In fact I only really feel confident criticizing something if it's something I once liked and thus understood. Often when I really hate something it fascinates me until I start loving it (unless it's post-rock or Sarah McLachlan).

I, too, can think of at least a couple Eagles songs I like ("Those Shoes" in particular... gotDAMN), but yeah, CSN... eh.

I am working on a review that was recently assigned to me and one of the bands I have to review does inspire quite a bit of irritation and frustration in me because they sound derivative and listless, like they're just not trying. Which brings me to something I asked at the end of the first post -- how and why do the reasons for disliking music evolve with this sort of attitude adjustment? Why could I not accept Daft Punk in 2001 but worship them today? (I think Sundar sort of scratched the surface, actually...)

There's nothing wrong with not letting bad music RUIN YOUR DAY. I kinda like the fact that I was able to go "um, whatever" when I saw Coldplay's "Clocks" video. Rather than screaming THIS IS WHAT'S WRONG WITH ROCK AND ROLL GOD YOU ASSHOLES!!! Though I did that when I saw the new videos by the Ataris and American Hi-Fi (actually, the Ataris one just made me laugh a lot).

Also, there's a lot of music I don't like that I don't hate. Poor work and offensive work are not necessarily the same thing.

[*nb I have no equipment and probably couldn't play it if i did. i also don't have "boys" in the sense i implied above, i think. the point still stands.]

totally OTM. isn't this obvious to everyone, this is what's happening? it's a pretty simple equation as far as i can see - we are all hearing more music than ever, and the inevitable result is that we get used to it. nothing that has been recorded can't be understood and appreciated (if not loved) by its own intended audience. thing is, in 2003 notions of 'intended audience' are pretty meaningless, because so many people are hearing so much music so much of the time.

so, all it comes down to is, the more you hear, the more you understand everybody's reasons for making the music they make, the more you appreciate it.

it doesn't mean you don't still love whatever it is you love, it just means that ignorance/under-exposure to a particular style is no longer enough to make you automatically hate it. this is good, probably?

this is because the corporations which release such music employ huge teams of drugged & orphaned listenability-optimisers, working thru the night on the mathematical formulae that will ensure each song recorded is 'not minded' by the greatest number of people.)

As a side-note, I think working on music has diminished my capacity to hate as well. Maybe I'm wrong, but I always feel like a lot of people who don't play underestimate the amount of work it takes to make something sound not ridiculously awful -- by which I mean that even the most supposedly rudimentary no-skill punk song still takes a lot to not sound like a complete unlistenable mess. (Even things that sound sort of like complete unlistenable messes take a lot of work!) I mean, is it just me, or is there sort of an assumption that boring by-numbers stuff is as easy to create as silence? Because that's really not true, which means that even the most boring by-numbers stuff still has a lot of work and content in there that can be thought about and sometimes appreciated, even if the material as a whole is completely dumb. Pretty much anything that gets released has something to recommend it in there. Pretty much all music is enjoyable on some level -- it's more a question of whether you think people should be enjoying music on that particular level or not.

I don't think hating stuff is a bad thing, and I'm occasionally pretty impressed when people have the conviction to say "I know what this band is doing and it's a terrible, terrible thing." But I can't really bring myself to feel that way about much of anything these days: there's always some voice in the back of my head saying "I don't know, maybe you should think about why some people like this." If I can't even figure out why others would like something, that usually makes me less confident about hating it, because obviously I'm missing whatever its good qualities are.

Ha Ha
You are my antithesis, nabisco

scene -- sam goody's in a large suburban mall.

Pyrrho enters the record story, drinking an Orange Julius and looks around lost until he goes up to the cash register to speak to the record clerk.

Record Clerk (leaning on counter paging through Spin while speaking): Can I help you find something?

Pyrrho: I was hoping to find Britney Spears' Oops! . . . I Did It Again but I didn't seem to see it in any of the racks.

Record Clerk (looks up exasperated, recognizing voice): But you've been in here every week for the last three months and bought a copy of that every time . . . why would you need another?

Pyrrho (calm and smiling): I was hoping this time it might be better.

One step to finally feeling that great joy of hating music again:
Buy a Moonspell album.

No matter...either way I enjoy reading them

He described them as the Ladybird Velvet Underground. Ladybird for those who don't know is a publisher of pre school childrens books.

Well, if you meet punks who have no verve, no hooks and seem to be intent on recreating a style for 14-30 tracks an album vs. wirting 14-30 songs, then yeah, you shd be pissed. If I saw a punk band with the lack of stage presence and enthusiasm for their music as most electronic acts I'd throw shit at them. In that case the magic has a lot less to do with equipment and methodology than it does with the live performance and the timbre of one's yelling. In my opinion. But I think you can see where I'm coming from.

and yeah 90% of the punk backcatalogue sucks dick anyway, I'dprobably be quite ticked if someone made me listen to all of it. Just like any genre you care to name.

I'm trying to remember which group I mentioned trying to review that was derivative and tired and not trying very hard. The D4?