Most Overrated Message Board Theme

[joz]

any thread that attempts to undermine the importance of healthy musical debate and discussion...after all, this is a forum for a live music venue.

[Liberte]

Originally posted by Sailor Ripley:
   

Originally posted by Liberte:
  Hands down, whinging about artists who "suck," either because you don't know how to listen to them ...

Two questions: what is "whinging" and what is the proper way to listen to artists who suck? I want to make sure I've been doing it right. [/b]

Whinge
 
 Har har.  It's amazing how often active listening reveals that maybe the artist doesn't exactly suck after all.  Might still not float your boat, but the music just might work on its own terms.  Whether you enjoy it, or want to hear more of it, or would recommend it to others are different questions from whether it's any good.
 
 *********
 
 Rhett, that's a awfully careless response for a statistician.  "Percentage of artists who suck" and "Number of artists you might like, except you've never listened to them" aren't only different things, they're not even measured on the same scale.
 
 In terms of discovering those new (to me) artists, which is one of the things this board is good for, it's a whole lot more useful to hear what bands people are listening to and liking.  Yes,  substantive  criticism of the ones you heard or saw and didn't like is useful, too.  Quite a few people here do post pretty interesting analyses of concerts and CDs that have made picking up good new music a little easier for me.  
 
 I don't even mind a certain amount of low humor directed at the bands boardies abhor (and the unfortunate boardies who like them).   Hell, I do my share of it.  But most of what I see here in the "that band sucks" department is directed at relatively high-profile artists, about whom most of us have already formed opinions.  I posted the original comment because there seems to have been rather a lot of it just lately.  By and large it comes off as trying to look cool by dissing what's too "popular."  That's a staple of adolescent identity-seeking, but most of the folks here are old enough to be getting over that stage by now....

[Sailor Ripley]

Originally posted by Liberte:
 
 Har har.  It's amazing how often active listening reveals that maybe the artist doesn't exactly suck after all.  Might still not float your boat, but the music just might work on its own terms.  Whether you enjoy it, or want to hear more of it, or would recommend it to others are different questions from whether it's any good.

So, I'm been listening to sucky music properly then.  And it still sucks.  I can distinguish between good music I don't like and music that sucks. Your first premise offers two possibilities: you are listing wrong or you are trying to establish indie cred. In that world, no music sucks.  We know that's not true.
 
 Believe it or not, I agree with Rhett when he says "95% of music flat out sucks, and there is more of it than one can even imagine."

[Liberte]

Originally posted by Sailor Ripley:
   Your first premise offers two possibilities: you are listing wrong or you are trying to establish indie cred. In that world, no music sucks.  We know that's not true.

No.  What I actually said was that among people  in this forum  who are constantly bitching about how this or that band sucks (almost always a commercially successful band, almost always without specifying what "sucks" means or how they came to that opinion), one of those two factors appeared to be operating.  Repeat, since the first two times seem to have blown right past you,  in this forum.  I will stand by that observation.
 
 

Believe it or not, I agree with Rhett when he says "95% of music flat out sucks, and there is more of it than one can even imagine."  

What a terrible affliction it must be to have such rarefied tastes that only 5% of the music you give a serious listen to gives you pleasure.  My deepest condolences to both of you.

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

It's called having discerning taste.
 
 I may have 400 cd's in my collection that don't suck, but in the course of my lifetime, I've probably heard bits and pieces of 3600 that do suck.
 
 Granted, that only comes out to a 10% non-suckage rate, but I imagine there are probably 4000 other cd's that I trusted the reviewer's opinion enough to not bother with seeking it out.
 
 Which makes for a 95% suckage rate.
 
 I don't care to be a music reviewer, so I don't write detailed reviews of what I think about concerts, cd's etc, on the 9:30 chatboard. It's much less wasteful of worktime to write "it sucks" rather than typing out why it sucks for half an hour.
 
 Also, I'm content to read minimal responses like "it sucks" on a chatboard. If I want real music journalism, the 9:30 board is certainly not somewhere I'm going to turn to.
 
 
 

Originally posted by Liberte:
 
   

Believe it or not, I agree with Rhett when he says "95% of music flat out sucks, and there is more of it than one can even imagine."  

What a terrible affliction it must be to have such rarefied tastes that only 5% of the music you give a serious listen to gives you pleasure.  My deepest condolences to both of you. [/QB]

[Liberte]

Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
  Also, I'm content to read minimal responses like "it sucks" on a chatboard. If I want real music journalism, the 9:30 board is certainly not somewhere I'm going to turn to.

Real music journalism sucks.       Or it would suck, if there were any such thing--that's one of those terms like "French military victory."
 
 In a community of people whose tastes you have some handle on, all it takes is a few words about  why  someone liked or disliked a CD, concert, song, or whatever.  I don't need an easay to figure out whether someone's reaction has predictive value for my own.  Just plain "sucks," though, is almost devoid of informational content.  Notwithstanding your protestations, I think your own commentary here often contains enough substance to be quite useful.

[hitman]

That's why I tend not to get into music dialogues on this board because that's what ends up happening?  People start saying something sucks, and that's it.  There are many types of music out there that bring many people joy and pleasure.  Leave it at that.  However, I think there have been a couple of times where I have been guilty of this just because I reached my boiling point.  But it hasn't been very often.

[Sailor Ripley]

Originally posted by Liberte:
  No.  What I actually said was that among people  in this forum  who are constantly bitching about how this or that band sucks (almost always a commercially successful band, almost always without specifying what "sucks" means or how they came to that opinion), one of those two factors appeared to be operating.  Repeat, since the first two times seem to have blown right past you,  in this forum.  I will stand by that observation.

Actually, nothing blew right by me, I assumed you were speaking about this forum and I never stated otherwise. Perhaps it's time to work on your reading comprehension.  You admitt my assessment of you position is correct. I say that is way off.
 
   

Originally posted by Liberte:
  What a terrible affliction it must be to have such rarefied tastes that only 5% of the music you give a serious listen to gives you pleasure.  My deepest condolences to both of you.

Actually, you are rewriting Rhett's quote ("95% of music flat out sucks") to include "serious listen".  Again, the reading comprehension thing.  I don't have to give Justin Timberlake (for example) a serious listen to know the music sucks.  A cursory listen can reveal that. Go through the radio dial one day, same thing.  Everytime I do I'm deeply disappointed but not surprised. Regardless, even at a 95% suckage rate for music that is being produced today, I still have more good music available to me than I can possibly buy.  So, no condolances necessary.