The Hater's Thread

[michael]

Well I limited myself to crunk cos I thought we were trying to avoid obvious candidates, but obviously no one else read that bit. Mind you no one's mentioned that Crazy Frog thing...

I'd have to throw in almost everything produced by Mutt Lange or Jim Steinman. Mutt Lange in particular - The Corrs, Shania, Def Leppard, Foreigner, AC/DC (sorry), and last but definitely not least... Bryan Adams circa that song from Robin Hood. The Cars I'm happy with in a pissed-at-a-wedding kind of way.

I should stress, this is not just music that I think is shit, this is music that in most circumstances really makes me angry, just because I'm hearing it. This one specific thing that drives me nuts with Mutt Lange - he always chucks in what sounds like very distant shouted "woah-oh-woah" backing vox, which I'm guessing is himself multi-tracked. Aargh!! Clenched fists!!


I notice lots of the stuff people seem to be riling against isn't about how the music sounds so much as the creators and/or fans being wankers. I hate the position given to indie hip-hop, but it doesn't mean I don't like some.

 

[michael]

Diamanda Galas and Kate Bush are both pretty nails-on-a-blackboard, too. The real hatred of Kate Bush only extends to 'Never Forever', where she started moving from cats-fighting-under-the-house shrieking to a more subdued style. Mind you, it did have some of the worst candidates, e.g. 'Violin' and 'Babushka'.. I'm not that interested in what she did subsequently, but it doesn't hurt me.

I think Galas is cool, but I still can't stomach listening to anything she's done.

Atrributive Hypens R Us!

 

[michael]

- modern brand cubbase/pro tools "avant garde" electronica. with their electronica preset buttons. do you know how difficult it was for stockhausen to make his music? naming names: autechre.

I tried to resist following this up, but .. fuck.. that's so unfair to Autechre. I'm not a big fan of what they've become, but I still read up on them obsessively and I would've thought they were one of the few in the sorta mainstream of post-dance listening music (?? trying to avoid saying "electronica") who actually know their history, who love a wide range of shit, and who never resort to mucking about with "presets" except with intent. I don't know how cluey you are about producing electronic music but their tools and techniques are very diverse and don't seem at all dictated by what plugins they got their hands on.

Oh, and do you rile against jungle producers for doing things more easily than Stockhausen?? I know that's a bit silly, but if you are thinking of acts like Autechre they come from pop/folk strands such as dance music much more than contemporary classical... I reckon it's all a bit apples and oranges, eh.

 

[Eric]

and i'm highly skeptical of young djs doing the trend-spotting reggaeton/grime/ragga/bhangra thing -- but skepticism isn't the same as hate

is this NECESSARILY trendspotting? could be just people finding a common thread ...

most music i hate has already been edited out of my mind. nothing comes up now. even though I hate most everything.

 

[baboon2004]

I second the Thievery Corporation and Death in Vegas... I would gas these people and their fans in an oven without blinking.

That made me laugh out loud. I guess it wouldn't even have to be a particularly big oven.

 

[baboon2004]

Oh, and on the mark about c**ting Ninja Tune. What kind of f**ked up world do we live in that this was once considered a 'hip' record label? Someone needs to play these people some quality pop music, with tunes and passion replacing the soulless shithead noodling they've spent their miserable lives perfecting.

 

[dominic]

is this NECESSARILY trendspotting? could be just people finding a common thread ...

unless you were one of the first djs to play this kind of selection, it's technically trend-spotting

so then the next question is whether you can make the music work -- which is what warrants skepticism

(plus i was admittedly trying to wind people up a bit)

 

[dominic]

Aerosmith

completely agree!

anything that synthesizes the blues since the early Stones

when do the early Stones become mid-period Stones? b/c i love everything up through Brown Sugar (and then the late 70s disco-y, funky stuff, but i guess that's not synthesized blues)

and if i'm not as keen on Led Zeppelin or early Black Sabbath as others here, I certainly don't hate them -- and both those bands are definitely synthesized blues

 

[dominic]

I thought we were trying to avoid obvious candidates

yeah, but people here are always trying to rehabilitate stuff -- so nothing is too obvious to dismiss

 

[Elan]

Wow, so negative, y'all.

Now I know what Sloan meant when they sang "It's not the band I hate, it's their fans." Or rather, their haters.

I like Kate Bush. I like Kid Koala (who's on the apparently unbearable Ninja Tune label). I don't even mind Aerosmith, once in a while.

I don't waste my energy hating music. I avoid it, or mock it instead. Life is too damn short, you know?

(The only song I do hate, "Having My Baby" by Paul Anka, is thankfully not on the radio that much.)

 

[soundslike1981]

Wow, so negative, y'all.

You just went meta-hate! You can't escape the black hole!

I'm actually impressed by how reasonable* this thread has seemed. Feels like there's a common thread, almost. But maybe that's because no one has skewered any of my sacred cows. . .


(*In other words, very little that seems to seem like an ostentatious pose intended to come off as controversial--"I hate jazz," "I hate all music made by white people," "I hate all non-electronic music". Dismissing "metal" as a whole may be close, but I'm pretty sure the non-Metalics are genuine. Not that my brief sense of this place says that anyone here is that self-marginalised. But one never knows.)

 

[Tim F]

I think a lot of this would be more interesting if teased out into specific threads e.g. "is all [x] as bad as I think of it and under what circumstances is it or might it be good?"

In this context a lot of the broad swipes at entire genres inevitably just come off as a bit glib.

I don't think I ever hate styles of music I'm not remotely into. It's only stuff that is close to stuff I like which I can hate.

I'm reminded of something Simon R wrote about Chicks on Speed, he said he liked them but didn't get them, when usually you either get and like something or get it but don't like it.

It's the "get it but don't like it" category of music which makes me angry - I wouldn't dislike the Travis/Coldplay etc. trend if I hadn't been massively into the earlier mid-late nineties wave of that stripe of band (Puressence, Geneva etc. - I'm not sure if I can actually persuasively argue that those bands were better, but they felt a lot more exciting to my fourteen year old self...). I wouldn't dislike the recent 50 Cent singles so much if they didn't seem like such a singularly uninspired take on a formula I usually enjoy.

 

[soundslike1981]

Well put, Tim.

And I think most of the statements in this thread probably use a heavily qualified "hate" because that was the term in the thread-starting question. Or perhaps I under-judged the question's threshold for "hate".

The proximity concept is absolutely correct. The truth re: metal is that I absolutely don't understand it, and my best guess as to "what it's all about" is a mass of things that I don't like in forms of music I do get (machismo, exclusivity, obsession with virtuosity and consistency). And yet, in some ways, I can begrudgingly admire its seeming longevity, it's apparent resistance to faddishness. It's a modernistic certainty that's become almost a tradition---but at the same time, this could be true of Le Corbusier at this point, and I still consider him and his ilk a major contributor to the diminution of value/function of the built environment. By comparison, I can respect Metal's relative insularity, its non-proselytising agenda.

Sigur Ros, Mogwai, GSYBE! et al. come close to genuinely angering me largely because of the way that the bands (or at least their fans and critical defenders) usurp values/language of music I love, and (in my opinion) devalue said values/language (in the way that they're marketed/discussed as being "progressive," "innovative," "experimental," etc.---when they strike me as being these things about as much as a Windham Hill 'Sounds of Nature' new age record). Borecore takes everything I hate about the fundamental premise of indie rock---which, whether I like it or not, fills the same cultural/musical positions in many ways as "rock" music of the post-punk era---and affects to be something other than indie rock, something "more important," to crossthread. My proximity (age-wise) to the impressionable youth who make up these bands fan base is also a major factor---I know it's not very important, but I have to admit that it offended me when a young friend of mine heard Can for the first time and, not knowing that they were 15 years older than he himself, said "these guys sound like Sigur Ros". It's not very relativistic of me, I'm sure, and probably not intellectual laisses-faire enough---but I felt like his expectations for what constituted "groundbreaking" had been lowered to the point that he could only get excited by things that had an indie rock safety to them, no danger or doing anything but being "cool" and pressing expected buttons.


I think that, weirdly, the "proximity" issue raises questions of "authenticity". I mean, is saying that something is close to things we understand and like but getting it "wrong"--wrong enough to inspire mistrust and dislike, even hate--not, at some level, another way of saying that the music is misguided or pretending to be the thing we love (and failing)? Perhaps that's just my inner rockism asserting itself. Or can we be more egalitarian, and say that it's "equal but different," and merely rubs us the wrong way aesthetically?

 

[10:02am]

and if i'm not as keen on Led Zeppelin or early Black Sabbath as others here, I certainly don't hate them -- and both those bands are definitely synthesized blues

While I'm not particularly keen on Sabbath (definitely don't hate) I should have used early Zeppelin instead of early Stones... an oversight on my part. I recently saw the Led Zeppelin DVD, on which there's an early performance that blew my mind completely, and it's when they're still very very blues based. Or should I say 'blooze'? Anyway, off the topic

 

[Tim F]

"I think that, weirdly, the "proximity" issue raises questions of "authenticity". I mean, is saying that something is close to things we understand and like but getting it "wrong"--wrong enough to inspire mistrust and dislike, even hate--not, at some level, another way of saying that the music is misguided or pretending to be the thing we love (and failing)?"

That's certainly one way you could interpret it - although "pretense" can be used broadly or narrowly here. Does overall similarity coupled with inferiority automatically pretense? I don't think that e.g. Travis pretend to be Geneva, in fact Travis are exactly what they present themselves as being and that's almost part of what annoys me! Then there's the narrow sort of "pretense" a la your dislike of GYBE! - the textual and contextual allusions to deepness that are unsubstantiated by the music. I reckon are two distinct but often overlapping issues.

I suspect one of the big things at work in the proximity situation is a certain fear or nervousness on the part of the listener (and I include myself here) about being identified with the music you dislike - on account of it being actually similar to some music you like. The fact that <i>on the face of it</i> this music might be the sort of thing your friends or my friends would associate with us makes the need to disassociate ourselves from it so much more urgent. You could say this is an appearances/essences split (ie. authenticity) but i wonder if the split doesn't just run down the line of general/particular.

 

[soundslike1981]

I suspect one of the big things at work in the proximity situation is a certain fear or nervousness on the part of the listener (and I include myself here) about being identified with the music you dislike - on account of it being actually similar to some music you like. The fact that <i>on the face of it</i> this music might be the sort of thing your friends or my friends would associate with us makes the need to disassociate ourselves from it so much more urgent. You could say this is an appearances/essences split (ie. authenticity) but i wonder if the split doesn't just run down the line of general/particular.

You're probably on to something. Although I socialise so little these days that I'm not really bothered with what anyone thinks of me/my music taste. It's almost like I'm defensive/offended on behalf of music itself hehe--that in the minds of impressionable, passionate listeners 'GSYBE' should represent the depth of music seems to insult both the listener and music itself. So in a sense, yes, I want to disassociate GSYBE!'s sort of "importance" (musical, and in their case, ostensibly political) from what I consider the real to GSYBE!'s fake. Perhaps it's a resentment of the years I spent between about 15 and 19 still wanting to "believe in the importance" of the now---I wanted to feel like something that deserved my passion was happening then and there, the impetuous impatience of youth, etc. And so I gave my passions to things that, deep down, I didn't feel deserved them. Fortunately, Mogwai and GSYBE! and emo came along to be the final straws on my Indie camel's back. So I regret the time I wasted, and I guess it drives me to try to blow things up for younger people via mixes, radio shows, etc.--because no one should have to settle. Of course, it's an inescapable argument of "false consciousness," and a bizzarre sort of elitism--not the posessive sort, but the persuasive kind. But my motivation is deeply positivistic and sincere.

 

[zhao]

I don't think I ever hate styles of music I'm not remotely into. It's only stuff that is close to stuff I like which I can hate.

that was exactly my thought when starting this thread. Meat Beat Manifesto is a perfect example.

ofcourse dismissing entire genres is silly... but what if said genre was mainstream new country? or rap/metal? hmmm... guess just the same as there are always exceptions within a bad genre that are good, there are always exceptions within the entire range of genres that contain nothing redeeming whatsoever.

corrections: I said MOST Ninja Tune is bullshit. Kid Koala is the cat's meow, the bee's knees, the amazingly talented exception within the shit label.

and ofcourse there are exceptions with the hating "all things jazzy" thing. for instance there are a few things on Pole's Scape label that are amazing (not the Jelinek vs Triosk thing which was a snooze-fest). also some of Tied and Ticked Trio stuff is OK, and a few Hakan Lidbo tracks with saxaphone are superb.

exception withing boring macho repetitive drum'n'bass: early Panacea's "terror-step" or whatever the fuck they called it evil jungle shit was quality.

just thought of this: most new dub is indeed pathetic, with the exception of Twilight Circus. well, and Pole's brand of click-dub (but that's pretty much something else altogether I guess)

 

[Pearsall]

I like threads like this. It's a kind of catharsis.

 

[mpc]

makosi from big brother & irn bru.

 

[appleblim]

James Blunt - James Blunt - James Blunt - JAMES BLUNT!!!

coldplay, travis, maroon 5, jeff effing buckley, franz ferdinand

anyone who played at/went to Live 8

james blunt

red hot chilli peppers

marvin gaye 'whats going on' - yeh its alright, but every tom dick and harry saying its the greatest LP ever made makes me HATE IT

scissor sisters

all 'IDM'

smallfish effing records types who suddenly got into 'real' music when they realised that everything they listened to was a watered down version of early autechre...