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

Video is silly, but I consider this the height of 80s hair metal

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

[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.

[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.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Hair metal was a bit gender subversive in that it had masculine men donning make-up, long hair, fishnets, tight leather etc. But it was still a male supremacist scene to the extreme, except for Lita Ford I can't name one hair metal star who was a woman. Plus hair metal videos had all kinds of objectification and physical abuse of women. In fact the only more misogynist music scene I could think of in (gangsta) rap/hip-hop.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

I appreciate Green Day for introducing me to punk rock, but I even more appreciate them for killing the grunge fad.

Hair hair hair...

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Well, on topic I admit that I liked Van Halen quite a bit at the time:



And Motley Crue:



But it all starts to sound the same... :-(

Right after Lennon was shot...Reagan POTUS, so welcome to the 1980's.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

I'm so out of it. The 80's eh? Good windowpane, nice connections. Dancing at midnight in the forest rain...anyway.

Was it King Crimson capturing my attention then?



Or was it The Residents?



Or Maybe Snakefinger (Phillip Lithman)



Or was it Renaldo and the Loaf?



Or perhaps Laurie Anderson?



We were still dreaming of Utopia:



We were all left Waiting for the Worms...



We were playing Jeux Sans Frontières!