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

[fengi.livejournal.com]

To me, IMS is a form of pop itself - constructing grand generalizations and theories which only need to be convincing for the length of the post and usually relying on selectively narrow examples, contexts and definitions and elided contradictions. Like how IMS writers often criticize the idea of authenticity while using terms like "corporate rock" which depend on it. One can say any IMS essay itself rocks or sucks.

Yet like the pop trends it scorns, IMS can be critiqued for as a questionable cultural artifact. It exhibits a status anxiety and polices boundaries in an artform prized because it is fluid and challenges all boundaries, including socioeconomic ones which any snobbery, no matter how charming and well intended, reinforces.

I cannot deny my deeply rooted IMS side but I also try to take a crate digging Freeform Radio DJ attitude, although one might argue these are merely two aspects of the same phenomenon.

[sabotabby]

IMS fascinates me, because "authenicity" is so arbitrary. Lady Gaga is acceptable to most IMS, post-rock isn't (but was a decade ago). Hair metal is coded as heterosexual; New Wave as queer. I mean, New Wave is queer, but so is hair metal, and hair metal was arguably much more working class and no more white.

I find most "authentic" bands these days sound exactly the same and aren't at all musically challenging. And, of course, "challenging" does not equal "good"; Rush were challenging but the musical equivalent of nails on chalkboard (this from someone who digs industrial and death metal). This leaves the political as the major criterion for IMS, which itself deserves to be critiqued to death.

AOR does universally suck, though.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

[sabotabby]

NO.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Ahahahaha.

Yet if you ever do want to engage some Canada AOR pride, may I suggest Pass The Mic, Tom?

[sabotabby]

Look, we gave you guys Skinny Puppy. And Godspeed You! Black Emperor. And Leonard Cohen. And K'Naan. And Arcade Fire. And all those hipster bands you guys listen to. We get a pass on Bryan Adams, okay?

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I have an soft spot in my heart for Adams after Tipper Gore was so deeply offend by his "Cuts Like A Knife" video which she attacked with Fredric Wertham overkill and misguided literalism while ignoring the more open misogyny of other soft-rockers she praised (like Billy Joel).

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

At the risk of looking daft; what is IMS?

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Insufferable Music Snob. Like so many self-mocking terms it is at least a tiny bit unashamed about the trait being mocked.