November 8, 2007
View Comments | Post CommentNecessities of Hipster Culture
I get the 9:30 Club's weekly email about their upcoming concerts. It occasionally notifies me about some decent band playing there, although it increasingly is about whatever top 40's group that can't fill a stadium. Today it had a posting for an upcoming Debbie Harry show (the lead singer of Blondie), and I found it to be such an accidentally hilarious and apropos signifier of the hipster mindset.
Note the headline with which the concert is advertised. "Necessary Attendance." It's not that people would actually enjoy the show, but hey, if you want to have any sort of scene-cred, you damn well better attend this show. I mean, come on, she's a legend, right? Right?
I'm guilty of it, too. It's like the other day, I was playing Sonic Youth's SEMINAL! AMAZING! ESSENTIAL! INFLUENTIAL! album Daydream Nation in the car, and I was like, "Jeanette, isn't this an awesome album?" She was like, "No, I don't really like it. It's just repetitious noise and crappy singing." And I was like, "B-b-b-b-but Jeanette, it's such an influential and amazing and seminal album. You have to like it." But why should she have to like it just because I do? Or just because Pitchfork does? Or worse, just because we used to? Sometimes things can sound great in a particular moment in time, but then they just don't really work very well later on. And then, depending on the direction music takes, maybe they sound fresh again ten years later. Either way, if you have to justify listening to something by saying that it's "necessary," it's probably lost most of its impact. But hey, sometimes the hipster-lockstep does introduce some cool stuff.
Posted at November 8, 2007 2:20 PM | Comments (2)
Comments
Post a new comment
I noticed there that its a play on her new album's title. But I know what you're saying. Slate had an interesting piece up recently on Your Narrow, Boring Taste In Music. Reading about Classical and Jazz reminded me of how I long to enjoy music from a compositional point of view. Chord Theory, the study of Timbre, Tempo, structure...I really miss being a real music student (back when I played Cello). Something that I am really happy about with my degree here is that actually get to take some straight up music classes as part of my curriculum in between classes like information theory, and adaptive filters. And they can be whatever I want. Keyboard lessons? Sure. Cello? Yeah. Electronic music composition? Definitely.
Posted by: Chris Santoro at November 8, 2007 5:56 PM
I still contend that Joshua Tree sucks
Posted by: Daniel at November 18, 2007 6:43 PM
