Blog Archives
Music Nerdism Part 2
“Kill the Emos“
Today you can argue that one can still get this music per subscription to extra channels of cable or get that satellite radio crap, but really, what has happened is that music itself has been commodified and packaged where the music industry, not the artists themselves, say who you get to hear and what you should like. If you have money, you can afford to hear subcultural resonance, if you don‘t– HELLO KESHA! Commercialism and tin foil hats aside, we are getting gypped. (Don’t even get me started on small-town DJs).
Today‘s vacuous and post-apocalyptic landscape of reality television and the public‘s fascination with media whores of all calibres has eroded the fabric of entertainment as we used to know it. Now if you display any sort of “insider” knowledge on the next cool thing, you are a hipster. The negative connotations of such need not be emphasised in this piece of writing. Why bother? I have already heard what the mainstream has to say about it. The fact of the matter is this: we are an ignorant species despite our “civilised” demeanor. The more knowledge the average person does not know about something, the more one rejects it. It‘s better to throw rocks and scream like a monkey at the fire that burns rather than learn what it can do for you.
If you follow my metaphor you will see that what I really mean is that music and art are the provocateurs of critical insight. Our lives, our governments, our society as a whole; depend on the willingness to question what others tell us. To demonise something like one‘s taste for music that is “cooler than the shit you listen to“ is to play into the mob mentality mindset.
This can go awry in terrible ways. Emo kids in Mexico still get the crap beaten out of them for being douchey little emo kids. It‘s a problem that any Telenovela (Spanish Soap Opera) is not afraid to have a “serious dialogue” about. I kid you of course, but I did see an episode where a tearful mother asked her daughter if it was really true, “Eres..Emo?” (Are you Emo?)
-DJ Moshi Moshi
Music Nerdism Part 1
The quest to be taken seriously.
When I was a kid, my best friend and I would get together and listen to records, tapes and cds at her tiny Houston, TX suburban home after school. Yes, we did listen to that Iron Butterfly drum solo for “Inagaddadavida.” Yes, we did play Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven“ backwards. We experimented. Music was so important to the shaping of our lives from that point onward. We weren‘t just listening to her dad‘s vintage collection of classic rock vinyls either. Those, my friends, were the fundamentals to music. We were staying up all night to watch MTV back when music was still a basic cable commodity and the internet was the wild west… essentially a burgeoning frontier… But we’ll get to that later.
“Empty-Vee” now differs so much to what used to exist back then. For one, it had plenty of real music programming. Late nights were filled with music of all persuasions ranging from riot grrl, punk, hardcore, avant garde, trip hop and much, much more. King Missile, Green Jello, Sonic Youth, Faith No More, Portishead, Sex Pistols, Built to Spill, Etc. The world of music was rich with opportunity. Now you couldn’t find a music video if your life depended on it. The Buggles wisely warned us of these problems. “Video Killed the Radio Star“, ironically, is covered by one of the shittiest country music singers I’ve ever heard. I won‘t bother to name names in this case, but FUCK! Way to anally rape our revolution and pour sugar down the creative gas tank. The fact that I can‘t escape that music because I’m shopping in the grocery store makes me want to claw the stock boy’s eyes out, screaming obscenities like a crazy cat lady.
Clean Clean by The Buggles.
-DJ Moshi Moshi
