Genre busting

“There are only two kinds of music, good and bad.” – Duke Ellington

Actually, lots of people seem to have said that one, but apparently Ellington said it when asked to define jazz. At the same time, when I was updating my review for “Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life” on Goodreads, I read some other reviews, and one person was complaining about the title because one of the featured bands was hip hop, which meant the title should be “Commercial Pop will Save My Life”.

The change in possessive is because he felt the book was too much about Steve Almond (fair), but I think some of the genre thing was also a slam at Dave Grohl, whom the reviewer referred to as a commercial pop hack (unfair) and who ended up being kind of the hero of the book as the one who was both successful and happy. I think the problem with the title is that it sounds cool, but is simply not demonstrated by the book at all. The inclusion of hip hop was a fairly minor part, and having that as a complaint seems churlish.

In addition, the more I listen to different music, the more I feel like I am moving away from finding genres helpful. They can be in a broad sense. Something that is likely to be called punk is unlikely to be called country (unless it’s punkabilly, I guess). If you gravitate towards the Ramones, it is likely that you will prefer the Clash to Tim McGraw, but you can’t be sure. I love both the Clash and the Ramones, but I have no use for the Sex Pistols (at least not yet), and yes, they are a legacy from college, but I have two Martina McBride CDs in my collection.

Going further than that, even within a band’s discography there may be a lot of variation. It would be wrong to stubbornly confine a band to their previous image. Ozzy Osbourne’s “So Tired” came around before it was fashionable for metal bands to have power ballads, and it’s not really a power ballad anyway. It’s not metal, but it is Ozzy, and he is metal, so what does that make it? Just a good song. Being able to grow and experiment can make artists happier and more fulfilled, and it can broaden your appreciation, so if your band keeps reinventing itself, give it a chance.

There was a story from Springfest that I had not recounted earlier, but I was thinking about. The winner of the Battle of the Bands was Shumba, which was a sort of a pseudo-African tribal music group with a lot of marimba and gourds and things. This is not to knock them—they were a real crowd pleaser— and where they really scored big points was in diversity. (Yes, diversity was one of the categories on the scoring ballot, and if you know anything about University of Oregon, that should not surprise you at all.)

Anyway, talking with John later (Something She Said came in third), he pointed out that they were scoring all the diversity points because they were different from the other bands, but there was not really musical diversity because all of their numbers sounded the same. He was right. He mentioned the Pogues as a good example of a group that experiments a lot, and I don’t know a lot of their stuff, but it seems fair. Some of the love songs I considered for the Valentine’s Day countdown ended up being dismissed because they sound too much like the band’s other songs, and that loses something too. (Fine, that was mainly anything by Air Supply and Journey, even though I like them.)

Anyway, genres came up again as part of this project, and this is kind of a funny, multi-part story, so I’m just going to throw it in.

One of the bands I listened to for my “pop” listening was One Direction. The reason I knew there was such a thing is that when I was listening to Justin Bieber I was not sure if I was listening to old stuff or new stuff, so I sent Lisa an instant message asking if his voice had changed yet. Yes, she is the one who gave me the Mean Jeans CD and provided the alternative love songs list, but also she’d had a little bit of the Bieber fever, thinking he was really adorable. What I had not known is that his “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” was an abomination that turned her against him. (She was not wrong.)

Anyway, asking her about his voice changing (maybe a little), and explaining what I was doing, she said she was watching SNL and that I should check out One Direction, because they were a boy band based on the idea of Bieber. I naturally assumed they were something like 2Gether or the Meaty Cheesy Boys, but she said something else about them, and I had to pause, and write “You mean they were the musical guest? Not a skit?” She confirmed that they were real, and all I could type was “Hulk sad.”

(Which amused her more than I was expecting, but I believe her boyfriend is into graphic novels.)

After listening to One Direction and watching one of their videos, I was saying how much it reminded me of the Blink 182 video for “All the Small Things”, and suddenly Lisa was going off on how they were not punk because once you were making millions of dollars you were no longer punk. I see her point, though I am not sure I agree, but the other Lisa actually stormed out, unable to deal. I kind of think something else was bothering her, because she’s more in Christian music and rap, but it was really weird.

If I have a point here (which is a little questionable), it’s that I’m leaning towards Ellington being right. It is completely possible to disagree on what is good, and have it go back to your chemistry with the song, but there’s no point in being a slave to genres, and deciding that you hate country and like ska and love reggae but electronica is stupid (even though I kind of do want to say some of those things).

Saying that, I should probably just say that it is all subjective, and whatever you like is great; it’s all good. I can’t quite do that, though, and that’s going to be our transition into exploring the dark side of “pop”.