Insufferable Music Snob Open Thread

[sabotabby]

It's a guilty pleasure but I'm really enjoying the 80s D00d Music thread on Pandagon.

(I disagree, by the way. About hair metal. I actually think it's kind of subversive and interesting. I don't like it in the way that I like, say New Wave and post-punk, but I don't think it's entirely without merit.)

I always feel like I shouldn't comment on music threads, because while I have some grounding in music theory, appreciation of contemporary music is so subjective that it's almost impossible to be a snob about it. But I have Rather Strong Opinions. And no one else can academically justify their taste either, so there.

Discuss!

Comments

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I am musically inept and don't listen to much music if I can help it, although I can rant about it for hours. But I won't. I know so little about music that I have no idea what the article is talking about, so hey ho. I did try to listen to Gogol Bordello last night, but it seemed a bit boring and unoriginal. Pity, because I love Gogol.

I only like music that is happy and bouncy, because anything at all melancholy sends me into floods of tears within seconds.

[sabotabby]

Gogol Bordello are all right but don't do much for me. All of the music I listen to is angsty or angry. Bouncy music usually makes me feel worse.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

It's odd in an interesting way, that - most people seem to want to listen to depressing or angry music when they are feeling low, whereas I cannot stand it.

I think it is because I am always, every waking moment, making huge efforts to block out all my feelings.

I thought for years I was unmusical, but now I think I am, rather, ultra-sensitive to it, as it wracks my emotions instantly. I really do end up curled up on the floor sobbing in pain if I hear even slightly mournful music. I can control myself a bit, of course, and if the music is spectacularly superficial, like much popular music is, I can brazen it out, but rock and jazz and much classical music, eek, all too much for me.
It is partly because my brother was musically brilliant - one of those child-prodigy types (not extremely so, but enough to be given a choir scholarship to a poncey private school, then a music placement at a state school for musically gifted people, and to be in a ballet at the Royal Opera House, and play many instruments). I can't listen to Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones or, especially, Otis Redding or any other funk and soul stuff, because he listened to them all the time before he died, so I immediately go completely insane with grief and pain.
I cry as soon as I see or hear a piano because he played the piano beautifully. He sat and played for the last time just before walking out of the door to jump off the bridge.
Christmas is extra awful because everywhere plays the Pogues song, and he listened to the Pogues all the time too and they (well, Shane McGowan and his splinter group, the Popes) composed and dedicated a song for him the night after he died. And everywhere plays The Snowman song "Walking in the Air," which my brother used to sing beautifully when he was a choirboy.


AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH! I hate music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have been listening to Bach recently, though.

Actually, angry music is ok. I love Janis Joplin, although I can't listen to her either because my brother was a huge fan and had a girlfriend when he was 15 who killed herself and who apparently was like a reincarnation of Janis Joplin.

Life, eh.