Yay! Let's make a big deal about genres!

August 6, 2006 11:09 PM

"Anyone who tells you music is dead just hasn't been listening to the right stuff." (some links NSFW) -some additional links-
posted by Mach3avelli (81 comments total)

The who and music links are the NSFW ones.

And like how all music posts evolve into sophisticated debate over the merits of ones' tastes, allow me to cast the first stone: your favorite band sucks.
posted by Mach3avelli at 11:11 PM on August 6, 2006

I'd be happier if the links were a tad more descriptive.
posted by empath at 11:13 PM on August 6, 2006

In other words, white people still make music.




(thanks for the links.)
posted by bukharin at 11:22 PM on August 6, 2006

I'd be happier if the links were a tad more descriptive.

It's a collection of links I've amassed over the course of the past several months. It's more of the "sit back, breathe in, and enjoy" variety of links that will hopefully introduce some people to a whole new world of music.
posted by Mach3avelli at 11:25 PM on August 6, 2006

In other words, white people still make music.

Ha, close. Three of the bands linked are from Japan.
posted by Mach3avelli at 11:27 PM on August 6, 2006

A lovely collection, but the title tag within the href is indeed your friend with a post like this.

Anyone who tells you music is dead just hasn't been listening to the right stuff.
posted by shoepal at 11:29 PM on August 6, 2006 [3 favorites]

p.s. I hadn't seen that m83 vid, so thanks for that!
posted by shoepal at 11:32 PM on August 6, 2006

Thanks. This is delicious food for the ear-head.
posted by basicchannel at 11:36 PM on August 6, 2006

*yawn*
posted by matt_od at 11:38 PM on August 6, 2006

Thank you! Great for me, since I don't usually care enough to search for new music. Red Sparowes sound good.
posted by Binliner at 11:39 PM on August 6, 2006

For those interested in following up, here's a painstaking list of direct mp3s I gathered for all sorts of bands in the same vein.
posted by Mach3avelli at 11:41 PM on August 6, 2006

I think it's perfectly understandable to think that music is dead after sampling all of these tracks.
posted by 23skidoo at 11:47 PM on August 6, 2006

I was going to snark that we've graduated from one link TubeFilter to 15 link TubeFilter. Wisely, however, I clicked some of the links first.

That bands like Sigur Ros and so many other experimenters are commercially viable gives me great joy. Living in Asia and thinking about globalization... more and more I think the greatest export the West has to give the world is our vast musical catalogue.

It's not that the rest of the world doesn't make music. It's that nowhere else are there so many recording studios, guitars, computers used as instruments, indie venues and record stores all with everyone trying to do something different. It's solidifying a thought in the back of my head that the internet really has given music a Golden Age, if such a term means something.
posted by trinarian at 11:48 PM on August 6, 2006

it's just getting started, too. A generation of kids are growing up with easily available sequencers, softsynths and samplers that can do on a mid-range laptop what would used take 100,000 dollars worth of expensive studio equipment.

I can't wait to hear what comes out in the next five years or so.
posted by empath at 11:56 PM on August 6, 2006

Stupid.
posted by nlindstrom at 12:11 AM on August 7, 2006

Living in Asia and thinking about globalization... more and more I think the greatest export the West has to give the world is our vast musical catalogue.

Funny, I'm in Canada and I've been most excited about the music coming out of mainland China lately. FM3 has gotten a lot of attention lately, and I've also liked lesser known stuff like Supermarket (超级市场). And the Modern Sky label has been putting out some great "indie sounding" stuff, I particularly like Sand (沙子) and Hopscotch from them.
posted by bobo123 at 12:12 AM on August 7, 2006

I did the "post-rock" thing for a while -- I admit Mono was one of the most insane concerts I ever went to. However, in terms of lasting appeal as opposed to novelty factor, the only band from the genre that's really stuck with me after that phase is Timonium. (sorry for lack of links -- if you want to find anything I recommend Soulseek, although it's *gasp* illegal!)

Never liked GYBE, though. It seemed so ... self-conscious of itself as "art"?

I'm still waiting for a less pretentious term than "post-rock" for the genre.

--------

If you like this stuff like Mogwai and Red Sparowes, I really, really recommend getting Bardo Pond, starting with their first album. Your head will asplode.
posted by Riovanes at 12:13 AM on August 7, 2006

In other news, Slayer's new album is really good.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:21 AM on August 7, 2006

FM3 has gotten a lot of attention lately

Deservedly so. They make excellent ambient music.

I was at Mutek last year and sat at a conference with FM3's Christiaan Virant talking about electronic music and cultural "misappropriation".

He held up his little Buddhabox and chatted wryly about how copyright infringement is so widespread that they don't bother with CDs.

They release that Buddhabox, a little handheld mono speaker box containing a ROM chip with their music in 8-bit form. The boxes are sold at live shows.

Save for reverse engineering the chip's content or playing the speaker into an analog microphone, there's no direct way to copy their release.

Clever fella.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:21 AM on August 7, 2006

I like Godspeed You Black Emperor, but appeal of some of these overwrought bands is limited.

Conversely, Saxon Shore seemed okay, but too chill. Atmospherics gets boring quickly.
posted by spaltavian at 12:22 AM on August 7, 2006

bobo:

I'll check it out. I've been in country a month and all I've heard in Tianjin is some mediocre electronica in clubs (all remixes of horrible pop ballads, decent beats though) and MandoPop... very, very simple shiney MandoPop.

I really wonder if all those people wearing headphones in the streets are listening to the same damn pop songs. Hopefully not. As my Mandarin improves, I suppose I'll find out.
posted by trinarian at 12:29 AM on August 7, 2006

They release that Buddhabox...[snip]...clever fella.

That REALLY makes me want to go buy one, resolder it to a .125" socket, jack it into a sound card, record, and anonymously distribute it on all the major peer to peers and torrent sites.
posted by quite unimportant at 12:44 AM on August 7, 2006

Unpretentious music is dead.
posted by Kickstart70 at 12:55 AM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

That REALLY makes me want to go buy one, resolder it to a .125" socket, jack it into a sound card, record, and anonymously distribute it on all the major peer to peers and torrent sites.

But you don't have the box, and you have a crappy, lossy copy to boot. It's just not the same.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:05 AM on August 7, 2006

That REALLY makes me want to go buy one, resolder it to a .125" socket, jack it into a sound card, record, and anonymously distribute it on all the major peer to peers and torrent sites.

It would be easier to download the samples off their own website here. As far as I can tell the Buddha Box wasn't created out of file sharing paranoia.

And I can understand not being excited by some of the music presented, I really really like World's End Girlfriend and M83 but if someone is looking for new rock music that does the rawk thing, they might be happier with stuff like the new Slayer album and Dragonforce.
posted by bobo123 at 1:06 AM on August 7, 2006

Post-rock is a non-genre. It has been used to describe too many very different bands, from 65daysofstatic to Esmerine (both links go directly to sound files), and is now a completely meaningsless term that doesn't describe anything.

That said, the music is indeed incredible, especially A Silver Mt. Zion.
posted by ethocin at 2:37 AM on August 7, 2006

But you don't have the box, and you have a crappy, lossy copy to boot. It's just not the same.

I know this isn't the point, but I'd be willing to take a punt that the "crappy lossy copy" played through a vaguely not-shit stereo is going to sound better than anything the Buddhabox can produce.

Thanks for the links Mach3avelli.
posted by markr at 3:31 AM on August 7, 2006

it's just getting started, too. A generation of kids are growing up with easily available sequencers, softsynths and samplers

Hear, hear.

I can't wait to hear what comes out in the next five years or so.

I can't either, although it won't be any more incredible than what's come out in the past 10 years. For people really listening with present ears instead of past ears.

To me the big question is: will you ever hear those kids? Or will they just get lost in the swelling tide -- as music-making becomes available to anyone with a desire to make it?

Will social bookmarking be the answer to that question? I'm not sure I would want my neighbors choosing between The Boards and Britney. So let's hope there's a new generation of Lester Bangs emerging -- and that seems hopeful, the way so many of today's 20-somethings are digging back in the vaults and listening critically. Roving bands of mobbing critics / wanderin thro the smoking dusk ...
posted by Twang at 3:45 AM on August 7, 2006

The fact listening to this makes feel white guys music coming to an end as long as they don't steal some more from black, red, or green people
posted by zouhair at 4:01 AM on August 7, 2006

He held up his little Buddhabox and chatted wryly about how copyright infringement is so widespread that they don't bother with CDs.

They release that Buddhabox, a little handheld mono speaker box containing a ROM chip with their music in 8-bit form. The boxes are sold at live shows.

Save for reverse engineering the chip's content or playing the speaker into an analog microphone, there's no direct way to copy their release

I think you misunderstood a little joke there. Buddha Machines have a headphone socket, precisely so that you can record them, or use them in live performance (see here, self-link). fm3 do in fact release a lot stuff on CDs and vinyl. They're directly inspired by similar machines used in temples to provide 24/7 chanting, and as a medium-specific release/tool for other musicians, not conveived as an anti-piracy measure:

But when we designed the Buddha Machine, we were mostly thinking of making our lives easier by having essentially an "instant" sound installation. Avoiding bootlegging never entered into the plan.

Whatever, Buddha Boxes are great - if you see one, snap it up. There's nothing like wandering around in the rain listening to a little swelling loop.

Um, I'll go watch the videos now. All decent bands going by shoepal's handy titled-up remix of the post.
posted by jack_mo at 4:22 AM on August 7, 2006

In the future everyone is in a band.
posted by BeerFilter at 4:31 AM on August 7, 2006

lol Godspeed You Black Emperor. Keeping music alive, eh?

So cutting edge.
posted by thirteenkiller at 4:36 AM on August 7, 2006

Here's some bands that I thought of while watching the videos in the post, all are a bit more wiggy - post-post-post-rock, if you like ;-)

• Yellow Swans
• Skaters
• Wolf Eyes
• Sunburned Hand Of The Man
• And, to complement White Noise Christmas, the mighty V/Vm

posted by jack_mo at 4:41 AM on August 7, 2006

A generation of kids are growing up with easily available sequencers, softsynths and samplers

As generations before have grown up with guitars and pianos and trumpets.

as music-making becomes available to anyone with a desire to make it?

Making good music will still require hard work and creativity. There are never enough creative, hard-working people.
posted by pracowity at 4:48 AM on August 7, 2006

post-post-post-aesthetics

i kid. noise has it's place. somewhere.
posted by trinarian at 4:49 AM on August 7, 2006

it's just getting started, too. A generation of kids are growing up with easily available sequencers, softsynths and samplers that can do on a mid-range laptop what would used take 100,000 dollars worth of expensive studio equipment.

I can't wait to hear what comes out in the next five years or so.

Why wait? A generation of kids has already grown up with this stuff. Some early grime, for example, was made on games consoles, and there are kids teasing wild stuff out of naff applications like FruityLoops, let alone the kind of sophisticated apps you're referring to.
posted by jack_mo at 5:08 AM on August 7, 2006

Does anybody who's not an idiot actually say "music is dead" with a straight face?

Which, I suppose, is the point. But I submit that once you find yourself something that no one (who's not an idiot) says with a straight face, you might want to stop saying it. Think of it as built-in freshness dating. Just saying.
posted by lodurr at 5:25 AM on August 7, 2006

jack_mo, your point is well taken, but those guys are bleeding-edgers. They're going to have a completely different aesthetic than people who come afterward and use ready-made tools.

Which is not to suggest that any wave / generation is better than another. In a crude metaphor: The first wave breaks the ground; the next wave tills it. And that's not the end of it. A few generations gone, the soil can be either broken or fertile. And even broken soil can often be repaired.
posted by lodurr at 5:29 AM on August 7, 2006

As generations before have grown up with guitars and pianos and trumpets.

Except that it's not regarded as being in good form to walk around playing your trumpet as you go. Or paying someone to walk around and play it for you as you go.

Economics and social convention have conspired in the 20th century west to turn music into a market commodity: Something that's designed, manufactured, packaged and sold as product. You could think of this as helping us to reclaim a little of the old spirit of music-making.

For what it's worth: Music will be dead when humans are gone. At least, human music will be.
posted by lodurr at 5:34 AM on August 7, 2006

I like a bunch of these bands and a bunch of them are pretty fucking tired if you ask me (gybe, for instance), but whatever. I suppose 10 year old bands'll be new to anyone with their head up the radio's ass.

I recently gave away some music that sounds nothing like your links. Feel free to hate 'em.
posted by dobbs at 6:14 AM on August 7, 2006

My God, what Sonic Youth hath wrought.

I'm glad I married a Latin girl, now those people know how to celebrate life and music.
posted by crowman at 6:17 AM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

Yay for postrock! Excellent post.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 6:26 AM on August 7, 2006

This "kind" of music has something, many somethings that make me feel so alive.
posted by horseblind at 6:27 AM on August 7, 2006

I think there's a reasonable chance that music as experienced by people in the latter half of the 20th century is dead. Not the music, but the experience. Is it possible for there to be another Beatles, Elvis, or U2? I'm not talking about the music/band per se, but the shared cultural experience where everybody knew the band and its music and formed an opinion (love, hate or ambiguous).
Of course people will continue to experience music, but the experience may no longer be tied to a band or performer as it was in the past.
posted by forforf at 6:28 AM on August 7, 2006

As generations before have grown up with guitars and pianos and trumpets.

Yes, but they haven't grown up with the ability to write for an orchestra (for example) and hear it immediately. Nor have they had mastering equipment to get professional sounding sound. And instruments are expensive. Now, all you need is a $500 laptop and a $300 sound card to do almost anything you can do with an electric guitar or piano plus anything else you could imagine.
posted by empath at 7:15 AM on August 7, 2006

I really enjoy this kinda stuff, but I don't have a lot of meatspace friends who are aware of it or enjoy it. So here's a fist-bump for the lot of you. I don't care if GYBE is now 10 years old (though it makes me feel old)--the right music in the right situation is a fine thing.
posted by everichon at 7:25 AM on August 7, 2006

The internet has changed music for the better. The extreme fragmentation is healthy and inspiring. But....there was something very cool about the summer of 1979 when every other car I drove past was blasting Cheap Trick.
posted by davebush at 7:26 AM on August 7, 2006

I'm glad I married a Latin girl, now those people know how to celebrate life and music.
posted by crowman at 6:17 AM PST on August 7 [+] [!]

Uh, wtf? Yeah, as evidenced by the Englebert Humperdink and norteño polka that my grandparents listen to... Please.
posted by ibeji at 7:26 AM on August 7, 2006

I'm glad I married a Latin girl, now those people know how to celebrate life and music.

Heh.
posted by everichon at 7:32 AM on August 7, 2006

I also married a Latin girl.
She's heavily into Metric, right now.
posted by signal at 7:33 AM on August 7, 2006

I'm going to have my friend Fernando write a HOWTO: Celebrate Life and Music.
posted by everichon at 7:35 AM on August 7, 2006

everichon: maybe we should start a Wiki?
posted by signal at 7:46 AM on August 7, 2006

Uh, wtf? Yeah, as evidenced by the Englebert Humperdink and norteño polka that my grandparents listen to... Please.

Sorry your grandparents listened to crappy music. But I'll take a band like Calexico over any of this "post rock" stuff any old day.

The lively, upbeat and complex rhythms of salsa and other Latin genres is so refreshing compared to the existential drone I thought was so cool ten years ago.

I don't want to paint all the bands linked with the same brush. Godspeed, for example, can get my heartrate moving. But if I have to suffer another trebly two note intro run for three minutes before I have any idea what they're trying to accomplish I swear I stick chopsticks into my ears.
posted by crowman at 7:46 AM on August 7, 2006

What's up with all the GY!BE hating? Just because they're not new doesn't mean they don't kick a ton of ass. New things can be good or bad; old things can be good or bad. It doesn't matter when it's from as long as you like it.

Personally, I listen to music from 2052. But that's just because my friend has a time machine.
posted by malthas at 7:48 AM on August 7, 2006

empath: Yes, but they haven't grown up with the ability to write for an orchestra (for example) and hear it immediately. Nor have they had mastering equipment to get professional sounding sound. And instruments are expensive. Now, all you need is a $500 laptop and a $300 sound card to do almost anything you can do with an electric guitar or piano plus anything else you could imagine.

They still don't. Synth imitations of analog insturments sound pathetic compared to even a competent amateur.

ibji: Yeah, as evidenced by the Englebert Humperdink and norteño polka that my grandparents listen to... Please.

Polkas are great stuff. And your favorite music does indeed suck.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:52 AM on August 7, 2006

jack_mo, your point is well taken, but those guys are bleeding-edgers. They're going to have a completely different aesthetic than people who come afterward and use ready-made tools.

Except that those kids making grime, to stick with that example, are, at least, a third generation of dance music producers using these tools, and if you argue that cheap samplers and drum machines are pretty much the same thing, what you're talking about has been going on since the 80s...

i kid. noise has it's place. somewhere.

I dunno if the bands I linked to are noise, in the genre sense - they don't have much in common with harsh noise or power electronics people. I'd put them more in the free/improvised camp, I think. (Not V/Vm, obviously, they're a two-man genre, possibly called 'happy butcher's nuttercore'). Certainly the overall aesthetic fits with that side of things, more self-consciously avant-garde than the harsh noisers with their faux-misogyny, Nazi-licking or obsession with gore. Eg., Massonna (or Kylie Minoize) and Jessica Rylan (or Skaters) hoot into microphones to make a lot of noise, but I'm guessing the latter have a different audience and different aims. I've even seen this more wanky type of noisy music described as 'folk'.

A couple more (I had no idea this stuff was on YouTube!): Jessica Rylan, 16 Bitch Pile Up, Sixes.
posted by jack_mo at 7:55 AM on August 7, 2006

The lively, upbeat and complex rhythms of salsa and other Latin genres is so refreshing compared to the existential drone I thought was so cool ten years ago.

I don't want to paint all the bands linked with the same brush. [...] But if I have to suffer another trebly two note intro run for three minutes before I have any idea what they're trying to accomplish I swear I stick chopsticks into my ears.
posted by crowman at 7:46 AM PST on August 7 [+] [!]

I actually agree with you 100% on this. Just trying to fight avoid any "brown people make better music" nonsense ;-) (Still, it is fascinating to me to see how African music influenced Carribean/Latin American/American music by way of the slave trade, and continues to influence it today.)

That being said, I very much enjoyed the links Mach3avelli. And this Latin girl has been listening to a lot of black metal, Will Oldham and baroque music lately. Cheers!
posted by ibeji at 8:05 AM on August 7, 2006

malthas, I think you misunderstood my poorly written post. I wasn't equating "not new" with bad. My own link linked to bands who've been making music for much longer than gybe.

I was just expecting (based on the wording of the FPP) to find links to new stuff is all.

And I don't dislike gybe. I own all their records and have seen them probably 10 times. But I do think they're pretty tired from a "hey, listen to this!" perspective.

My favorite "post-rock" is by hochenkeit, jackie o motherfucker (aka jomf), and the psychic paramount--though I guess they all don't fit that ridiculous tag as much as they do.
posted by dobbs at 8:07 AM on August 7, 2006

Heh.
posted by everichon at 7:32 AM PST on August 7 [+] [!]

Was that link supposed to go somewhere?
posted by crowman at 8:07 AM on August 7, 2006

Now, all you need is a $500 laptop and a $300 sound card to do almost anything you can do with an electric guitar or piano plus anything else you could imagine.

Unfortunately, cheap equipment doesn't make creative geniuses. Cheap equipment brings the price down for the uncreative, too, makes it easy for people who are into it more as a hobby than as an obsession. And programming and sampling are heaven for the lazy. Meanwhile, the internet cuts the cost of distribution to almost nothing and lets people release everything, not just their best stuff. As a result, while the amount of good music may be increasing, the amount of dreck we have to wade though to find it is increasing faster.

Better filters are needed, people who can recognize great music even if they can't write about it or otherwise explain why it is great -- they only need to know how to link -- and who are devoted to promoting the top fraction of a percent and letting all the rest vanish into the ether.

For example, a great music critic/blogger could be someone who makes a list of what he or she thinks are the best songs ever written, say, or the best instrumental performances ever recorded, and posts those lists on a sidebar for everyone to see every day, and who then listens to everything but refuses to blog anything that isn't as good as the stuff on those lists. Not a post every day or week or month, but a post only when there is something worth writing home about, only when he or she can say "I've found a song to add to the list, a song that is better than half the songs I had on my 'best songs of all time' list."

I would love to see blogs like that, because I could always check to see what the bloggers think is great (the contents of their lists) and judge for myself whether our tastes are similar, and I would be fairly certain that the bloggers are not going to completely waste my time talking about stuff that is just OK. I don't want to know what was bad, what might have been good but wasn't, what was OK but not great. I want a quick telegram when something great happens.
posted by pracowity at 8:12 AM on August 7, 2006

They still don't. Synth imitations of analog insturments sound pathetic compared to even a competent amateur.

you're using the wrong software. professional sound libraries can produce convincing orchestration. check the ads in any issue of Mix for examples.

And if you want music that's truly beyond rock's influence, get yourself some Half-Handed Cloud. [warning:myspace. only place I could get samples.]
posted by tylermoody at 8:15 AM on August 7, 2006

(I would like to see the same sort of blog for poetry. The internet is stuffed with millions of poems, but how many are worth a damn?)
posted by pracowity at 8:15 AM on August 7, 2006

Awesome post. Just bought some explosions in the sky and I'm digging it. Not the same but kinda in the same vein is Japancakes from Texas.
posted by photoslob at 8:40 AM on August 7, 2006

btw - color me shocked that the lead singer of Sigur Ros isn't a cute blonde icelandic girl.
posted by photoslob at 8:41 AM on August 7, 2006

Urk. My "heh" link went to an Orange County Weekly article about Morrissey's rise in popluarity among many USian Latinos.

Dunno why it's borked now. Here's an Everything entry.
posted by everichon at 8:43 AM on August 7, 2006

jack_mo, we're passing in the night on this, I fear. Yes, within a genre, there is a history of evolution from one medium to the next: Within any given genre, it could be fair to say that we're well past the ground-breaking stage.

But each "generation" and self-defined "movement" and indeed each technical advance has its own innovators and refiners. It nests and recurses.

And of course you can identify phases of development in externally-defined "movements", too -- like your "grime." (How many British punk bands called themselves "punk" in 1975? How many called themselves "new wave" in 1979?) What really matters is how people see themselves -- that's what defines what they take from their predecessors, and how they take it.
posted by lodurr at 8:59 AM on August 7, 2006

Ha, close. Three of the bands linked are from Japan.

My buddy Maynard went to Japan to become a rock star and he pulled it off: Monkey Majik
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 9:10 AM on August 7, 2006

tylermoody: you're using the wrong software. professional sound libraries can produce convincing orchestration. check the ads in any issue of Mix for examples.

I'm not convinced. Can you provide any examples? A quick search came up with samples by Synful Orchestra, which received an "editors choice" award this year. The Beethoven string quartet sounds very different from the ones I have in my library. On highlights, the violin sounds more like a woodwind insturment than a string insturment, and the almost percussive resonance of the cello is missing on the attack. The shape of the notes sound more woodwind than string as well. The Jupiter Symphony selection sounds almost like a Tomita or Carlos arrangement, without the creativity. On Tristan and Isolde, everything falls into that uncanny valley for me. Are those supposed to be brass insturments without a hint of brass?

And of course, these are safe compositions. Nowhere close to something like Paert, Hendrix, Holst, Monk, or Bartok arrangements that encourage performers to play the fuck out of their insturments.

I'll grant you from this example that it's possible to create an orchestration convincing to someone who has never heard a symphonic performance, much less sat in an orchestra or string quartet.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:59 AM on August 7, 2006

Internet distribution of recording may take the place of informal networks of musicianship which were seriously hurt by the development of 20th century car culture and television. Music was never really about having access to $100,000 of studio equipment. It was shared with your family and friends after dinner. It was about religious and political ceremony. Music created solidarity among laborers, slaves, soldiers, and protesters. Those that couldn't buy musical insturments, made them out of household materials.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:42 AM on August 7, 2006

I've never met a single person who thinks music is dead. is this a meme with currency just in post rock circles?
posted by dydecker at 11:51 AM on August 7, 2006

I liked Chris Dahlen's Pitchfork column on tech's lowering of the likelihood of imminent Lester Bangses.
posted by allaboutgeorge at 12:23 PM on August 7, 2006

dydecker, afaics it's generally said tongue in cheek, though more often than not I think people don't really think about it before they say it. As a "meme" (I'd really call it a trope, but nevermind), it goes back at least to Engels and maybe Marx: "History is dead." (Which, of course, neither of them actually said, but there you have it.) It's been recyclically repurposed so many times since then that I doubt most people are even aware of the irony.

I think "music is dead" (which I first heard in the early '80s) is a direct reference to "art is dead" -- I think that usually gets attributed to Warhol, or somebody in that larger circle. In both cases, the declaration (if said seriously, which as I've said I find hard to take seriously) only makes sense if you assume it refers to a particular branch of art/music. "Music" and "art" as human activities will continue as long as there are humans who are worth calling human -- Kirk's comments are relevant. It's really kind of insulting to generalize "rock" to "music", or "modernism" (or whatever the hell it was they were on about) to "art", for that matter.

Now, if someone wants to actually argue that art or music are literally dead, or even could literally die, I'd love to hear it. I think they'd be full of shit, and obviously so, but I'd love to hear the argument.
posted by lodurr at 12:37 PM on August 7, 2006

I liked Chris Dahlen's Pitchfork column on tech's lowering of the likelihood of imminent Lester Bangses.

I'd prefer a column from Pitchfork about why they don't already have a Lester Bangs working for their hype machine.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:09 PM on August 7, 2006

dydecker: It's tightly coupled with the idea "Hey you kids, get off my lawn!" Supposedly, Goethe considered Beethoven's 5th a threat to civilization.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:37 PM on August 7, 2006

crowman (and anyone else who loves Latin music)

Two words. (OK, three)...Calle 54.

Watch Tito Puente live the drums. It's amazing. Post rock what?
posted by rollbiz at 2:09 PM on August 7, 2006

If I thought I could get away with it, I'd to a post like this in MeFi Blue about once a month with all the new and old bands and artists I'd come across that tickled my funny bone or made me sigh or encouraged me to jump and shout or whatever.

I can't. I tried long ago to interest people in MeFi to stuff I thought was good, and was figuratively shown my head on a platter. I took my lumps and I chalked it up to experience. Long live the judicial impetus of MeFi's community. I bow to your greater groupmind wisdom.

So why's this guy getting away with it?
posted by ZachsMind at 2:31 PM on August 7, 2006

So why's this guy getting away with it?

I'm surprised about the lack of contempt, too. I think maybe it's because I nipped it in the bud with my first comment, disuading some venomous opinions from being shared. Also the music's pretty good and somewhat across a similar theme.
posted by Mach3avelli at 2:49 PM on August 7, 2006

Music sucks.
posted by Sparx at 3:17 PM on August 7, 2006

Music is dead?

That sux.

I gotta get out more.
posted by trii at 5:37 PM on August 7, 2006

"In other news, Slayer's new album is really good."

So it is. Thanks for pointing me at it.
posted by majick at 8:40 PM on August 7, 2006

Zachsmind: I tried long ago to interest people in MeFi to stuff I thought was good, and was figuratively shown my head on a platter. I took my lumps and I chalked it up to experience

Yeah, me too a few days ago, but then after the initial snark-fest, others started sharing their favorite stuff as well. Whatever, it's a comment page, so you've got to expect difference of taste.

Moral: Metafilter - only the stong survive. And by "strong" I mean stubborn.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:44 PM on August 7, 2006