Selling out

Yeah, I'm so un-hip for appreciating beautiful music.



I fail to see how you get pleasure out of that vile crap.

And its not like I'm not in the know, I've heard a lot of this stuff because it had been so frequently recomended to me.



Yeah they are.

And for the record, since Urban brought up the prog card, it strikes me odd how so many of you diss prog for being "pretentious" (a coin term for selfish/self absorbed) yet you think art should be "selfish". Well here I am to clue you in, banRAB like Genesis and King Crimson aren't selfish at all, because they compose music with the goal of pleasing people with an appreciation for complex and beautiful music, and they succeed. And they do get personal with their art, they do enjoy what they do and they do believe what they write. So for people to really say prog/art rock banRAB are pretentious wankers who give no "feeling or personality" to their music is a load of crap, propagonda if you will to promote a ignorant, closeminded view of music which is that all music MUST be primitive and with lyrics that have to involve lyrics about politics, relationships, personal philosophies and pretty much nothing else because it becomes "pretentious". For me the real banRAB who are pretentious are those who pretend to be worth listening to, that fits the bill perfectly for Modest Mouse.

Now I'm not an all around alternative rock hater, because Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Flaming Lips, Pixies and Pavement are among my favorite banRAB. But I sincerely believe most Indie today is rubbish, and not the stuff no one cares about, its the stuff everybody loves, the stuff they love because it makes them feel "hip and underground". Nothing has proven to me that these banRAB respect music, they're cattering strictly to people with genuine attraction to intentionally bad music, banRAB people force themselves to like because they have a severe identity/non conformity crisis, which in an ironic turn of events makes indie fans the biggest conformists of them all. You have taught yourselfs to hate all that is good about music, you simply can't stand good music. Your tastes is the anti-good. And you oppress all those that appreciate good.

Really, I say all this as it is my honest opinion, its not out of spite or some attempt at revenge for you smearing almost every band I respect, its due to my belief that you, Swimintheundertow, have the worst taste in music I've ever seen. EVER.

Call me smug, call me mean, call me nasty, these things are all true but to point them out yourself would make you a hypocrite, being a part of the overall Indie herd its almost somewhat of a duty for you to nitpick about everyone with an even remotely different preference than yours. This is what indie fans do, its what they always do and have always done, and it is why I dispise them so. Adoring godawful music is barely a scratch on the surface.
 
You honestly think I give a crap about what any of them do as long as they keep writing good songs? You honestly think I burnt all of my White Stripes albums when Jack White wrote that song for Coca Cola?

All of this sort of sh*t doesnt have anything to do with music. If you think a musicians integrity can be destroyed by a commercial then you obviously don't have enough faith in them and the funny thing is that the people who p*ss and moan about musicians signing to be big labels or doing commercials are always the first ones to say "its all about the music man."

Well start acting like it then.
 
I had the opposite reaction , I laughed.
I thought that if anyone would think they could sell cars using music by The Fall then good luck to them.
And I don't begrudge the old bastard a bit of extra cash seeing he's basically been playing toilets for 30 odd years.
Besides , with banRAB like The Fall that advert is probably the most airtime they've ever had for a song on national TV.

I'm more against musicians being sponsered by large companies than I am about music being used in aRAB.
 
Heh, no it's not.

You haven't even listened to In Utero have you? Its the most alternative and least accessible of their 3 studio albums.

Oh wait, I forgot, you're just going to give Steve Albini all the credit for that, he must have wrote the whole damn thing.
 
Holy smokes is this comment retarded, so its not quality if most people like it, its only quality if you like it, thats just what you frickin said.

For me, a good songwriter is someone who writes music with the intent of at least someone liking the damn songs. Rather than just making the most annoying, obnoxious and primitive music you possibly can, knowing that the Indie crowd will absolutely eat it up.
 
"Selling out" is largely an irrational fan-made philosophy, and a worthless one at that. There are times when it applies, but for the most part it's a lot of crying over nothing.
 
I like Nevermind more than Bleach, so Nirvana's "selling out" was a good thing for me.

I can't be bothered reading the whole thing, but what exactly do you regard as "selling out", Boo Boo?
 
12 years ago I thought Limp Bizkit were awesome. Perceptions change after a decade has past.

But I know you won't like them now, I know they're not your kinda thing.

But Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, they're not my thing either, but I'm not going to say they are the worst thing to ever happen to music. Yeah I know its a bad comparison and they have 5 decades of influence, whatever.
 
And RATM have been in the political arena, not before they signed for Sony but certainly after, screw the motives which you can only make blind assumptions about, the point is they have actually been doing sh*t and you give them no credit. They were active in protests to free political prisoners Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and individually Morrelo and La Rocha have been active in a crapload of protests, La Rocha was notably involved in supporting the Zapatista Army of National Liberation on their homeland (Chiapas)... Morello co-founded the Axis of Justice, which is a non-profit organization aiding the efforts of grassroots political groups and its political goals have included immigrant rights and the abolition of the death penalty, he's also actively participated in a handful of anti war protests and pro communist and pro urban farming rallies.

For goRAB sake, do a little homework.
 
i dont think anyone is going to argue that. But if you listen to bleach, or early nirvana demo's...its pretty lazy. Yes, it was more included in the scene or "artistic integrity", but i think them as artists branched out and grew up more on in utero, and nevermind.
Kurt himself even admitted to wanting to write more pop songs.

ya know, there are banRAB that do hold up their artistic integrity and still sell millions of recorRAB.
 
If I understand Boo Boo's various arguments right there is one thing he has said that I will agree with and thats when he talks about indie being pretentious at times.

All too often the Pitchfork Media crowd will defend bad song writing by claiming that its 'difficult' or 'artistically uncompromising' and that because of this only the truly enlightened will get it. When you see an album described as difficult it basically means that the guitars are probably out of tune, the singer can't sing a sh*tsworth and the lyrics are extremely bad. Sewn to the Sky is difficult. "Juicy Juicy Juice" and "The Banana Question" are difficult. The Godz are difficult. They arent unlistenable trash. No, thats what you thought but we the enlightened know that they are merely too 'difficult' for such cultural philistines such as you the listener to understand. Basically what this does is create an elite of listenership in order to make the enlightened feel better about themselves because they can listen to extremely obscure recorRAB with no commercial potential whatsoever and so are 'the true alternative.' Personally I just call it bad musicianship, bad songwriting and bad recording and labelling it as 'difficult' doesnt change that.

Its the same sh*t estate agents pull. Its not small and cramped. No its cosy.

Its a f*cking cupboard mate.
 
Writing a song so that it will be liked is durab. Writing a song because you like writing music is legit. Art should be selfish.

The nuraber of people who like a band is completely irrelevant to quality. I've said that over and over. Few people can like can like a great band and many can love a crap one just as easily as many can like a great band and few like crap one.
 
Listen to it, its actually very poppy. Weird dosen't automatically translate to self indulgent.

Also I haven't updated it in like 3 months, which is just about how long its been since I have actually listened to that album.
 
Selling out is something a bunch of want to be artists created to make it appear as if they had more credibility. It stems from idiot flower children rejecting the "man."

I prefer my artists to sell out, that way I don't have to listen to over pretentious stage rants or fan banter. Say what you will about green day but I don't think their pretending to be very punk rock.
 
I don't have a problem with artists being signed to sony , in fact some of my favourite artists are on that label.I'll tell you exactly what my problem with RATM is.
Let's compare them to another political artist signed to Sony , Billy Bragg.

Billy Bragg spent nearly 2 decades putting out recorRAB , was openly active in the political arena , gave his time & name to causes he believed in all the time and spoke in depth about these causes.Some might argue his going to Sony was him selling out. I disagree , I think after 2 decades of hard work ,raising awareness of causes and generally giving up so much of his career to these causes he deserved a little bit in return and the benefits that come with being signed to a major.

Compare that to RATM who despite being anti establishment went straight to Sony after they made a tape & got signed ,don't you find that odd? A band so anti establishment they go straight to one of the biggest conglomerates in the world?
did absolutly nothing in the political arena and who's basic political philosophy is a small meaningless slogan that'll fit on a T-shirt that they'll sell for
 
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