It's been a very musical week for me, I have to say. I started last Saturday at Independent Record Store Day, and came home with both freebies and stellar purchases (see yesterday's review for a sample). Tuesday night was Bruce, and that was, well, what it always is--a party. I'm ending the week at Travis with my high school friends, and I'm looking forward to seeing the new House of Blues complex in Boston. Granted, it's going to be a bit of a nightmare getting in there, as it's a Sox/Yankees weekend, but it will still be fun in the city. And in between all of that, there have been many, many conversations about music--what I've been listening to, what we were going to see live, what we as a group liked and didn't like, which gave birth to today's topic. Musical douchery.

It started Tuesday night, riding the adrenaline high after a fantastic concert, sitting in a bar, on round two, talking about top five musical bands. One member of our group was being particularly ass-hat-ish, calling everyone's taste shit but offering no definitive selections of his own, refusing to commit to a band with lasting influence and instead rattling off smaller, current acts that four people know about. Musical douchery. Now, I fully admit to engaging in this myself, when I said all R.E.M. albums post -Automatic For The People, with the exception of Accelerate, were crap. I even offended my friend with that statement, as noted by his chagrined face when I made that statement, but he's wrong. ;) Moving back to musical douchery, when engaging in acts of musical douchery, the offender tends to cite the following as "influences" or "the only good artists in modern music/worth listening to" or some variation of the argument that essentiall, summed up, is, "your opinion is wrong": Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, Tori Amos, Beck, Bjork/Sugarcubes, or Laurie Anderson.

STFU.kthxbai.

So, looking at this list of musical douchebags, the challenge this morning is to determine WHICH of these bands evokes the most "douchery", the most overrated, undeserved fandom. And I know who my choice is; I've always known my choice, but I'm going to highlight little bits of each before I throw it down.

Ok, Velvet Underground. All these little Brooklyn hipsters in skinny jeans and holey sweaters and hair that hasn't been washed in a decade LOVE to cite VU as their "favorite" band. Stop. You love to cite The Velvet Underground and Nico as your favorite, because Lou (KING of the douches, but that's another story) sang about heroin and Nico wailed through All Tomorrow's Parties and Warhol did the cover. So what? Good album, but I'll cite some of their work without Lou as better. See the High Fidelity soundtrack for great examples.

Talking Heads, everyone's art school darlings, but I give them a pass. Byrne has his douchey moments, but I'll cite Stop Making Sense as one of the greatest concert films and live albums to come out of the late 20th century. Right up there with The Last Waltz, and I'm being completely sincere here.

Tori Amos. Only douchey when MEN cite her as their favorite. Just wrong. Although, she's a little full of herself.

Beck is that kid in your high school English class that made stupid snarky remarks that even the nerdy kids didn't get and ridiculed. He's just an ass. Deal with it and move on; there's nothing redeeming about Beck.

Laurie Anderson, everyone has that same song "O Superman", and gushes about it. Name one other Laurie Anderson song. Without Google. I DARE you.

Leaving, for me, the Queen of Musical Douchery. Bjork, and the Sugarcubes for good measure. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, what was the big deal with this band? And with her? SERIOUSLY people. She sucks. They sucked. Even when looking through an "avant garde" lens, there is nothing redeeming about her Icelandic squealing and screeching and unstructured song writing. If you want to know a good band from Iceland (and saying that statement out loud, in any country other than Iceland, makes you a borderline douche), go listen to Sigur Ros. Leave Bjork and her bird dresses and airport freakouts and generally shitty music out of the equation. No one really likes Bjork; stating you like her makes you seem cool, in all the wrong circles. Bjork is the biggest musical douchebag, generally admired by people who are also douchebags.



I hate to even expose you to this song, but it's the perfect example. Makes me want to poke other people's eardrums out with a dull spoon. There. End rant. Enjoy the weekend.

Labels: bjork, musical douchebags, the SUCK