step one: do not attend this concert

August 9, 2004 1:31 PM

According to Scientific Proof magazine your favorite band stinks. If you like Justin and Christina, Staind, Linkin Park or a host of others then it is a scientific fact that you have bad taste in music. Fortunately, there is a cure.
posted by mokujin (35 comments total)

These threads always go well.
posted by solistrato at 1:42 PM on August 9, 2004

What a great way to win converts: mock their taste in music to their face at a concert.
posted by mathowie at 1:42 PM on August 9, 2004

What a great way to win converts: mock their taste in music to their face at a concert.

Sometimes, you have to wait until a person bottoms out before you can help them.

;)
posted by stifford at 1:46 PM on August 9, 2004

These guys should get together with the phonebookers. They'll be twice as not-funny.
posted by smackfu at 1:52 PM on August 9, 2004

Well, you do have bad taste in music. Just sayin'.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 1:53 PM on August 9, 2004

5.9% had no taste at all! Only 6 out of 100 teenagers do not suffer from bad taste in music. This is genius and rather ballsy. Those xtina girls are scrappy!
posted by shoepal at 1:54 PM on August 9, 2004

I thought the videos were funny, that should be self-evident. I had no idea that all of this was part of some holy war to win 'converts'. I like some songs by JT and even some by Christina Aguilera. I am also a fan of pranks and guerilla theater.

So, I hope that none of this is about converts. Please notice that nowhere does the prankster suggest that instead of listening to Train or Staind these people should buy a John Cage record or Metal Machine Music. I think this is obviously about suggesting that people think for themselves rather than be receptacles for the various transmissions of the culture industry. The point isn't conversion but inversion and subversion.

So maybe some people get their feelings hurt. At least he respects people enough to confront them when he thinks that they are hurting themselves by paying to be stultified with bad music.
posted by mokujin at 2:01 PM on August 9, 2004

Thank you for this link. Rich and incredibly funny.
posted by the fire you left me at 2:06 PM on August 9, 2004

Converts to what? You could do the same thing outside of an Interpol or Modest Mouse concert and it would be just as hilarious. Maybe even more so! It's all in good fun. Hell, instead of rattling off bogus facts, that guy could just "moo" and "bahh" as the crowds filter in.

"I don't want to blend in and be indistinguishable, I want to be part of the different crowd, and assert my individuality along with others who are different like me" - John S. Hall
posted by shoepal at 2:23 PM on August 9, 2004

Who gets more airplay on MTV at the moment: Timberlake and Christina, or Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand?
posted by smackfu at 2:27 PM on August 9, 2004

I liked the documentary style. Also that the speaker has a cassock, metal helmet and well-constructed soapbox. Certainly better than those Truth miscreants.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:31 PM on August 9, 2004

i thought it was pretty funny. especially in the Evanescence video when he lets the crowd speak back.

"C'mon! Evanescence kicks ass! You need to fuck yourself in the ass!"

i must say i also agree with all of his choices. pretty good selection of inexplicably popular crap music.
posted by mrgrimm at 3:18 PM on August 9, 2004

Ya know, I'm not a fan of any of the targeted bands here, but still.... what kind of loser goes to such great lengths to showcase his own supposed superiority over other people? Give it a rest, helmet man. The 16,000 people that bought Justin Timberlake tickets that day aren't the losers in this equation -- they're just regular kids out lookin' to have a good time. In my book, the only loser in those videos is the desperate dork with nothing better to do than put on a costume, stand on a box and make an ass of himself.
posted by spilon at 3:47 PM on August 9, 2004

ANYTHING on MTV is crap....all the bands you mentioned in this post are CRAP...Music today is 99% Crap with 1/2% being local bands out there kicking ass and MEANING it and the other 1/2% are bands that for some odd reason "make it" to a major label...only months after their major label debut they turn to shit in most peoples mind. Taste? Taste is and should be what the fuck you like...what moves you.....while i find it hard to believe that some of the crap out there today really "moves" the listener other than a cool looking video or whatever...I guess for some people what most of us view as crap another person may view is the best thing they have ever heard or seen. Thats my view at this moment sans vodka and sprite....and go ahead punk...
posted by BMF at 3:48 PM on August 9, 2004

Your Band Sucks.
posted by punishinglemur at 3:55 PM on August 9, 2004

You have bad taste if you're listening to a sixty year old music genre thinking it's new and hip. Let rock DIE already!

It's as if the sixties kids were listening to the charleston and ragtime.
posted by HTuttle at 4:24 PM on August 9, 2004

HTuttle, obvious calculation error: rock music started in the mid 50's, so its a FIFTY year old music genre. It just looks older - the drugs do that to you.
posted by wendell at 4:51 PM on August 9, 2004

rock music started in the mid 50's

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
posted by quonsar at 4:58 PM on August 9, 2004

Normally I'd think someone going out of their way to incite others is a prat... but he does it with such style.
posted by holloway at 5:00 PM on August 9, 2004

My comments have already been posted by others:

Ya know, I'm not a fan of any of the targeted b[r]ands here, but still....


and, what mokujin said... The point isn't conversion but inversion and subversion.

This is genius and rather ballsy shoepal
Anyone who quotes John S. Hall does not have bad taste in music, by default. ;)

Thank you.
posted by jaronson at 5:02 PM on August 9, 2004

You have bad taste if you're listening to a sixty year old music genre thinking it's new and hip.

Some of us don't care if it's new or hip. We just like it.

Plus if you've never heard something, then it's new to you, right?
posted by jonmc at 6:33 PM on August 9, 2004

Replace Christina with Dave Matthews or Conor Oberst and I might endorse the list. I'd much rather hear her (or Justin) than the latter two or any other band on that list. I'm pretty sure that bad or good "taste"--conventionally defined--doesn't--and shouldn't--have anything to do with pop music. Charm, delight, wit, drama, sexiness, humor, and enthusiastic performance all make better (i.e. more fun) rock/pop music than "taste."
posted by octobersurprise at 8:12 PM on August 9, 2004

That was pretty damn funny, in particular the Justin and Christina vid was hilarious. Agreed on the guy's cojones!
posted by Onanist at 8:44 PM on August 9, 2004

Your Band Sucks.
posted by punishinglemur at 3:55 PM PST on August 9

Ah yes, Dr. David Thorpe at SomethingAwful:

Why should you listen to me? Because I’m a goddamned scientist. You don’t just barge into NASA and start pushing buttons and turning dials all higgledy-piggledy, forming your own little opinions about how physics works, do you? No, you let the well-educated science guys do it, because you know jack shit about it; your only hope is to LISTEN and LEARN. I’m not condescending to you. I’m smarter than you. There’s a difference.

Good times, good times.
posted by jokeefe at 9:11 PM on August 9, 2004

I'm shocked that no one's mentioned Creed yet.
posted by clevershark at 10:44 PM on August 9, 2004

Great, thanks clevershark, I had almost completely wiped my memory of Creed. Now those almost dead synapses have sprung to life with

"CAN YOOOUUU TAKE ME HIIIGH-AA"
posted by Quartermass at 11:51 PM on August 9, 2004

That is hilarious. I wouldn't say he's mocking these people so much as giving them a hard time for their obviously questionable taste in music.

Is it possible that perhaps the whole thing is a metaphor for the truth campaign - bad music and cigarettes are both things that only hurt the user (not really, but in some people's minds, anyway).
posted by tcobretti at 3:22 AM on August 10, 2004

It's as if the sixties kids were listening to the charleston and ragtime.

Or like anyone at all today were listening to, say, Charlie Parker, or maybe Mozart.

Sometimes, as a snarkier (and foofier) man than I once said, it's better to remain silent and let others suspect you are a fool, rather than open your mouth and remove all doubt.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:41 AM on August 10, 2004

> It's as if the sixties kids were listening to the charleston and ragtime.

Not liking something simply because it's old is just as ignorant as not liking something simply because it's new.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:19 AM on August 10, 2004

It's as if the sixties kids were listening to the charleston and ragtime.

Yeah, those kids today, playing their Bill Haley records so loud. If I see one more teenager in a zoot suit I'm gonna scream.
posted by rory at 6:29 AM on August 10, 2004

It's reprehensible and amusing in equal parts. Dissonant. I've had "Linkin Park is a roller coaster" stuck in my head for days.
posted by sudama at 8:33 AM on August 10, 2004

Let rock DIE already!
It dies a little every year I age; turning down the sound & loss of hearing.
posted by thomcatspike at 9:20 AM on August 10, 2004

I wouldn't say he's mocking these people so much as giving them a hard time for their obviously questionable taste in music.

Giving them a hard time for their obviously questionable taste in music is the means by which he mocks them.
posted by kindall at 9:21 AM on August 10, 2004

Charm, delight, wit, drama, sexiness, humor, and enthusiastic performance all make better (i.e. more fun) rock/pop music than "taste."

Dave Matthews Band isn't unusually band by that standard. You clearly dislike him for musical taste reasons.
posted by abcde at 10:03 AM on August 10, 2004

Does anyone know who this guy is? He reminds me of Sean Gunn from the Gilmore Girls.
posted by holloway at 1:08 AM on August 13, 2004