Spring has officially sprung like Wayne’s wiener for Tia Carrera. Don’t worry, that won’t be the only penis reference in this email. However, there is more important news to report. As you may have heard already, Vampire Weekend has come to an agreement with 20th Century Fox to score and co-star in an upcoming box-office smash. It will be the Columbia grads’ first feature flick, but thus far the entertainment community has fully embraced the foursome’s foray into film. Riding a similar wave of hype that preceded their debut album, Ezra, Rostam and the Chrises are primed for Hollywood success that may exceed their meteoric rise to indie-rock stardom. The trailers are due out within the month and aim to recapture an audience left behind in 1989.
The remake of the late 80’s classic will feature the unparalleled acting of a senior Tom Selleck, and hopes to capture the adoration of mustachioed dead men nationwide. Meanwhile the indie supergroup’s slightly above-ground fame is expected to entice “the rest of America.” There is much speculation as to whether the sexually explicit scene between Ezra and Tom will make the final cut, but there seems to be zero doubt that mustache envy permeates the film. Given a hot tip like that, who gives a fuck about an oxford comma?!
There you have it, my weak attempt at an April Fools’ Day joke. However, given the fact that last year I caused roughly 40 hours of lost time at work for my and a coworker’s pranks, I’m comfortable with my effort.
Without further ado, the “real” email…
Recently a friend of mine, who I will refer to as Lost, posed a question regarding music genres. Indeed, this is a most confusing topic and there seems to be no shortage of subcategories allowed by iTunes to “assist” in organizing your vast music library. Aside from music websites and self-appointed “experts” there is no official governing body on the subject, so what’s to keep individuals from rampant abuse of esoteric adjectives and hyphens, continually mish-mashing them to create infinite über-genres?
Rather than attempt to answer the question of why so many genres exist, or whether they are beneficial to the culture of music, I’ve chosen to address the origins of such categories. With sincere apologies to History and Truth, I present the story of music genres, as outlined in a response to my friend, Lost (Dear Abby style).
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Dear Lost –
Genres are something that I have battled with ever since learning how to pronounce the word. Like most things French, they are nonsensical and smelly…that is, they stink. Let me take you step-by-step through a brief, and very made-up, history of musical genres and how they’ve played a role in the culture of music.
Shortly after the Big Bang the first musical category formed: Rock. It was not until millions of years later that the dawning of mankind, and the subsequent invention of the wheel, allowed further elaboration on this basic classification: Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Logic would have you believing that Grunge was right around the corner, but believe it or not, we would wait over 5,000 years before retroactively embracing the fashionable look of Australopithecus. Rather, we would be blessed by a holy derivation of the original genre (O.G.): Christian Rock. This is a controversial point in music’s history, as some theorists believe Christian Rock to be the first genre, a Master Genre, if you will, created by God himself. Others believe in the evolution described previously, commonly depicted as a Phish crawling to land and over the course of time developing legs, long hair, crappy lyrics, and leather pants, eventually calling itself Creed.
The bubonic plague and the Industrial Revolution played equal parts in forging the next category: Metal. Still miffed by the Black Death’s foray through Europe, mankind (at least what was left of it) displayed its joyous resilience by conceiving a musical style as offensive as the pandemic that had set the continent’s population back 150 years. Bands such as Slayer, Iron Maiden and Megadeth paid homage to masses upon masses of plague victims who would have angrily headbanged along to “Symphony of Destruction” if only their heads were still connected to their bodies. Varying sub-categories have formed following the outbreaks of cholera (Death Metal), smallpox (Black Metal), SARS (Thrash Metal) and Swine Flu (Progressive Metal).
With death still looming, Blues was born. Bo Diddley, born Bo Diddley Squat, embodied the spirit of having nothing and still not giving a fuck. Until Eminem picked up the torch, he was responsible for vocalizing the plight of the common (black) man who could not afford the right to vote, nor the right to own a non-rectangular guitar. Faced with such adversity, it is a wonder music was able to continue progressing to the point of keytars.
In the early 1900’s, Jazz introduced itself as one of the most technically demanding forms of music. Pushed to the forefront of music culture by greats such as, Karl Malone and John Stockton, jazz captivated sophisticated audiences. Much like the Jazz of Utah, it even transcended race, sparking a trend that still exists today: white people going to jazz clubs to drink wine, pretending to know what the hell is going on, and acting extra cool. Unsurprisingly, this practice led to a great deal of fornication, because let’s face it, the only thing cooler than pretending to like jazz is being invited by a gentleman in a fedora back to his loft to see his “jazz collection.”
15 years from that night, the offspring of those proud, jazz-loving parents realizes that he is neither talented enough to excel in the jazz band, nor popular enough to relate to the jocks, so he grabs the equally unpopular tromboner (2nd penis joke) and propositions a punk band. Ta-dah: Ska! No Doubt his most brilliant plan ever, he toots his own horn producing a series of Mighty Mighty Boss Tones.
The list goes on and on and includes Post-Punk-Nut-Sack-Funk, which coincidentally can be cured in a similar fashion to athlete’s foot, and is the direct result of a musically-gifted, and horny, young homosexual grinding his Robert Smith doll up on his George Clinton doll to dramatic effect. Letting that image sink deeeeeep into your brain, I’ll remind you that anatomically correct dolls are not for children.
Now that you’re thinking of Robert Smith’s plastic wee-wee (3rd penis joke), I’ll conclude with the following statement. Genres are precisely what you want them to be. If you want to fit into nicely partitioned classes, go ahead. If you want to defy all preconceived cataloging notions, do it. The fact of the matter is nobody knows better than you how to categorize music according to your own tastes. Do it by emotion. Do it by flavor. Do it by smell.
Whether it’s time to laugh, cry, fuck, yell, or sleep, nobody knows you better than you. Now if you’ll pardon me, I’d like some ambient-noisewave-chillmatic-dreampop tunes to relax to. Any suggestions?
Once again, we’ve come to the end of a music mix email and I can only hope that you enjoy the variety of Sean-res offered. Sweet Jesus, that is a bad pun. And in the spirit of the holiday and of a former president, remember this valuable advice, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.“
Think about it.
Hard.
Harder.
