2013 - The Year Of Music! UPDATE!

Hello Reader,

Thanks for following my adventures during 2013 - The Year Of Music! I like to think that listening to music can be an adventure and for four months, I've been on a lot of them. At the end of April, I'll have listened to 360 albums! That's more albums than the average person will listen to in the next five years... probably. I have no idea what the average person does, but I'm sure it sucks.

As April winds down, you may have noticed my posts have kind of fallen by the wayside. Yeah, me too. So, I'm going to alter the path here just a wee bit, take a breather and reflect on what I've done so far. (More on that in a minute.)

The impetuous for this whole thing was to get back into the habit of listening to "good" music on a daily basis. 2013 - The Year Of Music is a mission of discovery and rediscovery. Discover not only new music, but to go back and actually listen to all those records I've been meaning to hear for years. I also wanted to rediscover stuff that got lost along the way. I have forgotten about more music than the average person will hear in their entire lifetime... I'm assuming. The average person is pretty much a douche. 

Soon after I started listening to all this music, I got a hair up my ass to write about it. If I'm going to do something as grand as listening to three albums a day for a year I might as well document the undertaking. I used to fancy myself a writer and I wanted to start exercising that muscle again. 

There was also one other reason for doing this. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm kind of opinionated. Yeah, it's true. When I love something it's all sunshine and lollipops, but when I don't like something I get off on eating a shitload of asparagus and pissing all over it. It's just my nature. I like to think that when I do bag on shit it's done in a carefully crafted hysterical way. When I write something dastardly, I'm more interested in cracking myself up than anything else. 

Does it matter that The Beach Boys creep me out? No, but I just wanted to explain why. Will Django Django be able to pick up the pieces after I dismissed their album in two sentences? I'm pretty sure they will. Are Hot Chip, Best Coast, The Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, and Sleigh Bells gonna keep cranking out the turds, getting all the good press and selling out for TV commercials even though I think they're shit? Fuckin' A!

I'm going to go off on a tangent here:

The only thing worse than a know-it-all, is a know-nothing-know-it-all, so I like to listen to everything, or as much of everything as I can, in order to formulate my opinion about it. Knowledge is power! Gotta walk the walk, if you're going to talk the talk. All that bullshit. So, if I don't like something I'm not going to be polite about it. Why bother? If reading the NY Post has taught me anything, and it hasn't taught me much, everybody loves snark!

The internet is filled with too much bullshit and too many music bloggers like to follow the philosophy that they only write about or "endorse" things they like. I've worked for entities like that and there's always an agenda there. I have no agenda other than looking for music that I can actually listen to and enjoy. The internet is also filled with negative creeps, trolls if you will, that just like to hate for hate's sake. I like to think I fall somewhere in the middle of all of that. 

For example, I just listened to the new album from The Flaming Lips The Terror. I hate it and I'm pretty sure I'll never hear another song off of it for as long as I live. I'm not gonna walk into a TGI Fridays for lunch and hear it playing. I'm not going to be drinking in a bar and hear it. If I find myself at a festival The Lips are playing I'll be so far away from the stage they're on I won't hear it. If I take a road trip and decide to tune in college radio stations, then and only then, there is a very slim chance I might hear it. I can live with those odds.

The Terror is a cheeseball concept record heavily disguised as a hard hitting look at isolation and depression... or some shit. It's the soundtrack to a shitty nonexistent sci-fi horror movie that takes itself way too seriously. As an album of music, it doesn't have any triggers. It's like walking down a dark hallway to see what's at the end and there's nothing there, but you were just supposed to be enjoying the dark hallway. It doesn't give you any gifts. "Always There, In Our Hearts," almost builds to something but it just fades away. "Look... The Sun Is Rising" is kind of interesting, but the whole album is just futuristic sounds and repetitive droning. 

I get it. The Terror is above writing "a song." I understand the concept of being that far left. If this album was in politics it would be supporting free abortions for illegal immigrants on Christmas day at the Ritz Carlton with taxpayer money. I just don't need to hear it. But, because of past accomplishments The Flaming Lips have so much hype and reverence it's almost impossible to find anybody saying anything truthful about The Terror. It's like the people writing great stuff about it are admiring The Emperor's New Clothes and I'm standing here looking at a fool in his underwear. Which, can be entertaining in a way. 

Bear with me, here. 

I was recently making fun of a music blogger for gushing over Tegan & Sara's new single "I Was A Fool." The lyric in the song is "I was a fool for love," and to me it's unbearably silly and trite. When I asked Mr. Blog if he liked Taylor Swift's "Trouble" too, I was questioning Tegan & Sara's inherent coolness. What makes one bubblegum pop song hipper than another bubblegum pop song? 

Mr. Blog tried to take the high road by saying he doesn't argue about musical taste, because that's what his parents do. I retorted with "well your parents sound like a couple of assholes," and he ended the discussion by blocking me from his Twitter account and deleting his end of the conversation. 

If Mr. Blog was right or even being honest, then why have I spent thirty years of my life engaging in debates, heated discussions, and arguments about musical tastes? Because that's what WE ALL DO, you fucking hypocrite! Piece of advice Mr. Blog, don't compare people you are disagreeing with, with something you hold dear. It opens the door to too many bad elements and I'm the kind of guy that's gonna march right through that door.

At the time, I honestly felt like he didn't really love the song and that he was just perpetrating an agenda. Mr. Blog is Canadian. Tegan & Sara are Canadian. He's a well known blogger and Tegan & Sara are becoming very popular. Was there something to be gained by Mr. Blog Tweeting to his 100K followers the he just loves their new single? I would think so. He might love the song, but who knows? Do I look like somebody that believes shit I read on the internet?

My point is that there are people that really do like what I find to be total and utter bullshit, and God bless them! We like what we like. But, there are also people that pretend to like utter bullshit because they are "paid*" to do so and because they think it's cool... and that's not cool. 

If I am anything, I am not cool and fuck you if you're trying to pretend that you are!

Tangent over!

Back to 2013 - The Year Of Music! I have become a little overwhelmed with the task I have laid out for myself. Listening to and writing about three albums a day is almost a full time job and I'm getting burnt out. So, in order to recharge the batteries I'm taking the entire month of May off! 

I'm going to use the time to catch up on the write ups that I never wrote and take another listen to the stuff I loved this year! 

Plus, in mid-February my MP3 player melted down and got wiped out. I've only repopulated it with the stuff that I've been listening to for this project and I miss all my go-to songs! I currently have a 160 gig MP3 player and somewhere in the vicinity of 300 gigs of music spread out over four external hard drives. Surprisingly, most of it is legally mine, but none of it is in any kind of order. 

So, don't nobody go nowhere. May is going to feature plenty of my dry wit as I finish the write ups I haven't completed. And be on the look out for June's playlist. All while I fill my MP3 player with the music that defines me. 

Thank you for your views! 

Brad F. Maybe 

PS I'm haunted by this song right now. It's chilling! I can't imagine being this paranoid. I haven't heard anything else by this band but I hear they are real tools, much like everyone in The Flaming Lips.

* Paid doesn't always mean money.