On Liking The Things We Like (And Being Okay With It)

So I'll take my bad taste and you're welcome to yours, and maybe someday something will actually happen again and then we'll both be happy.
—Lester Bangs

"I have the musical taste of a woman whose hair is always a little too crispy looking." This is what I said the other day in a conversation on Facebook. I was defending my appreciation of Bon Iver. Or maybe I was defending my love of Marc Cohn. Or was it Kenny Loggins? "She's really into the music they play in beach volleyball scenes in movies." Kenny Loggins. It was definitely Kenny Loggins.

I'm aware that it's trendy right now to stand up in defense of saxophone solos. I am already fighting my way out of this haystack of an argument wielding the pitchfork of the presumed victors, so to speak. I've already sided myself firmly in the corner of something that is the NOW thing, which happens to be the very thing I mocked not that many years ago when I was trying to be moody mod or angry punk, whichever phase hated saxophone solos the most. And here I am now defending the winning team, and yet still trying to contend that we're the underdogs. Look! Isn't it WACKY how into Hall & Oates' Abandoned Luncheonette I am? I'm going to play "Waiting For A Star To Fall" on repeat and be all embarrassed when it turns up on Spotify! I'm so OUT THERE when I put on my Bad Company cassette that I bought for a quarter at the Goodwill.

I am guilty of all of the above. The false self-marginalization of liking music that has been outmoded to the point of being hip again.

But I've had the same conversations from the other side of the court as well, talking smack about the now thing, simply because I'm not into it. I've been critical of Lady Gaga, of Lana Del Rey, even of the deification of Thom Yorke. "I don't get it." "Why do people him/her on such a pedestal?" "Ugh! It's AWFUL. She has nothing to say." (I won't divulge which is which.) Ask my opinion on Skrillex: I will have an opinion on Skrillex.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Do I really need to have an opinion on Skrillex? I suppose the analytical argument is something we practice and savor: who doesn't love a good debate. People all over the internet love getting into the nitty-gritty, the essence of a pop culture phenomenon, taking sides and staking claims. (Not to mention those who do it purely for the page views.) I am going to dissect for you why I think this is awful, and you are going to respond with the reasons why it is not. Or why it is not SO bad. The defensiveness of the things we love is understandable, easy. We like sparring with people over things we deem precious. When a particular song connects with us at some core level —that lyric, this chord—, we will defend it to the death! But trying to defend something we didn't really have an opinion about to begin with? What's the point? In the same vein, what motivates those of us who see or hear something new and immediately bristle, then rush off to our computers to type screeds explaining and dissecting the awfulness of it all, just because it doesn't knock our socks off?

If you are truly offended by something, the argument is justifiable. If there's something in it that hurts you, that makes you upset that it was brought into the world to stand in antithesis to your beliefs: yes, this you can talk about disliking. But do we have to have an opinion on everything ephemeral, every little blip of a phenomenon? Let me argue the argument the Lester Bangs way: I'll take my bad taste, and you're welcome to yours. I won't get angry about Gaga because you, god bless you, really respect her. Why should that offend me?

What it really seems to come down to is saturation. The too-muchness of anything that permeates our daily lives can turn anyone into the attacker. If "Video Games" is hammered over our heads in the drugstore, the dentist chair, analyzed in newspaper columns, gif'd and video posted repeatedly on music Tumblrs, feminist Tumblrs, sexy lady Tumblrs, and sexy feminist music Tumblrs, at some point someone who doesn't want to hear the song any more is going to stand up and shout: "this is why I don't need to hear this song any more: this is why it is wrong of her to be in my life." And then they will probably mention her lips.

But instead of talking about the things we don't like, the things we wish weren't on the radio, let's just change the station. Put on the record that YOU love. And talk about why you love it. I love hearing people talk about why they love something, even if I don't love the thing they love. It makes you happy? Awesome. Love what you love and don't apologize for it. Don't fake embarrassment listening to the saxophone solo (especially don't fake that). Don't stop listening just because Neo-Soul belongs to a different person than who you're trying to be. At the same time, we can all agree not contribute to the too-muchness by hammering our favorite music over someone else's head. (This the part I'm still learning: not making other people listen to what you love so personally and deeply. It's hard not to shout from the rooftops about something you love, to hold it forward and say "see? look how beautiful!" But if you don't let them come to it on their own, it will never be theirs entirely, it will never be the same thing it is for you [cf: all of Todd songs I've foisted upon the internet over the past two years].)

That Bon Iver song? I love it. (Sorry, Nick.) I love the cheesy keyboards. I love the saxophone bit. Sure it's safe and trendy to say you like Bon Iver, and sure it's been done before, and there are kids up there on that stage playing guitars who were in diapers back in the day when Don Henley and his feathered hair did it first. But they are up there on stage playing something that makes them so happy. I hear that song and I'm so happy. Happy with an exclamation mark happy! Just like when I hear "Walking In Memphis" I'm happy. Or "Night Owl," where the muzak is loud, or "Waiting For A Star To Fall," where you carry your heart into my arms. And for this —until "someday something will actually happen again and then we'll both be happy"— I refuse to apologize.

I refuse to apologize for my bad taste. And you're welcome to yours. Or? You're even welcome to listen to mine.

(See also Meghan's brilliant post on The New Girl, which I read just after I finished writing the first draft of this, and which probably influenced my second draft. She is saying much the same thing about a television show I don't really have a strong opinion on, but love hearing about why other people like it, and also about the needlessness of apologizing for whatever voice our womanhood manifests as. Also, in case my mantra didn't give it away enough, Lester Bangs said all of this first in his much better essay "Bad Taste Is Timeless." I just changed Bangs' Devo ["a bunch of wormy little wimps who think if they get rid of their personalities their neuroses will go too"] to my Lady Gaga and Bangs' Beck, Bogert & Appice to my Boy Meets Girl. And I'm so into not apologizing that I wouldn't even apologize to Lester for that last one.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Sing Your Heart Out: 2011

Let's get away from death for a moment. Like, for a LONG moment.

I am never more alive than when I'm listening to music. The other night in the car, "The One I Love" came on a very random station and I very un-randomly started belting "FIE-YAAAAAAARRR" at the top of my sometimes random lungs. To those of you who live in New York: you forget how much fun it is to belt a song at the top of your lungs in the car. (When that song you love comes on randomly on your iPod on the 1 train? Try singing along with Michael Stipe and see what happens. Probably something like this.) I drove the entire way to Akron on my own last month practicing this very special type of yogic ululating. It was the most cathartic drive I've experienced in a long, long time. And the truckers thought I was CRAZY.

It was an uneven listening year, with most of it tipping towards the 70s vinyl side of the mix, but thanks to events like Cincinnati's Midpoint Music Festival and social integration of Spotify and Facebook (I'm serious; I heard most of my new artists through friends), I also heard some amazing new music. I threw it all into a pile on Spotify and came up with a best of 2011 track list for your aural/ululating pleasure (some new, some not so new).

The list is still growing, so keep checking. Just to single out a few in particular that I think deserve as much attention as the Bon Ivers and Beyonces...

Mazes
We saw Mazes open for Sebadoh at the (soon-to-be-closed) Southgate House and were wooed by their charming jangle rock. I wear their t-shirt every other day. I'm not even kidding. 

Apollo Run
YES this is my brother's band, but even I can be fairly critical of his music, and I'm speaking from the heart when I tell you that Here Be Dragons, Vol II is their best yet. "Chasing Rabbits" is -- all nepotism aside -- one of my favorite songs of the year.

Kurt Vile
Even my grandpa is listening to Kurt Vile. Get on it. 

R. Stevie Moore
I'm a big fan of artists having enormous back catalogues that can take weeks to dig through. R. Stevie Moore is so prolific that I'm still digging months after first hearing of him.

Dan Fogelberg
Dan Fogelberg? Dan Fogelberg?! DAN FOGELBERG.

No Todd Rundgren
Just kidding. You don't really know me at all, do you? He's not on the list (ultimately he wasn't "new" enough to me to justify inclusion), but I'm posting a video here anyway. His 70s band Utopia reformed for an absolutely inspiring show in January in support of their ailing bandmate Moogy Klingman. Their cold January rendition of "Dust In The Wind" was the most emotional live performance I would see all year. The aforementioned drive to Akron was to see Utopia again, this time without Moogy, and to reconnect with my beloved fellow Toddicts. Moogy, unfortunately, passed away a few days after the Akron show. It was that kind of year. But enough about death. Here are Todd, Moogy & Co performing "Seven Rays" in 1975.

I don't know what I would have done this year without this music. To ease the stress of deadlines, to speed our moving van deeper into the heart of the country, to slowdance to, to help me lose myself in the pile of a shag carpet, to sing along to in the car, my own private duet. Maria Wyeth going 65 miles an hour on the highway, singing her goddamn heart out.

It doesn't get more alive than that.

(As you can see by the copious links in this post, I am writing WAY MORE over on Tumblr than I am here. The thoughts are messier, the jumping off points are less predictable, but if you're tired of my silence on this blog, head on over.)

I'll Take My Bad Taste

"[L]istening to music recorded 20, 30 years ago is not living in the past, is not nostalgia. According to my dictionary, nostalgia is "homesickness... a longing for something far away or long ago or for former happy circumstances." The truth is that the Sixties, not to mention the Fifties, sucked in the first place and you wouldn't like it if you were back there [...] No one in his right mind would want to return to either of those eras, which is why the lie in rosy confections like Grease and Beatlemania is despicable. But preferring Hank Williams or Charlie Parker or the Sun Sessions or the Velvet Underground to Squeeze and Rickie Lee Jones and the Go-Gos and the Psychedelic Furs is not nostalgia, it's good taste. Just like listening to Beck, Bogert & Appice or Clock DVA and the Fall are bad taste. So I'll take my bad taste and you're welcome to yours, and maybe someday something will actually happen again and then we'll both be happy."

– Lester Bangs, "Bad Taste Is Timeless," from Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader

Catching The Sun

RIP Five For Friday; I'm going to start making the internet some mixes.

Five For Friday

(That last beautiful song from 90-something-year-old Charles Barnett -- which for some reason isn't showing up in RSS, so click here if you aren't seeing it -- comes via this John Jeremiah Sullivan piece for the Paris Review. And, if the theme weren't already obvious: it starts with an earthquake.)