In one of the articles in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman writes about a Guns ‘n’ Roses cover band that he took a trip with. He makes the following observation:

In fact, the guys in Paradise City {said cover band -ed} seem to care about all music with more enthusiasm than any group of musicians I’ve ever encountered. There is no elitism. As we roll toward Wester Virginia, the truck’s stereo never plays an artist they dislike. They have positive things to say about Aerosmith, Nickelback, Celine Dion (!), Black Sabbath, White Lion, Pink Floyd, and Alabama. When Jewel’s “You Were Meant for Me” comes on the radio, Dischner {a member of the band -ed} mentions that the song always makes him wish it were raining; ten minutes later, he tells me that Rush is “just about the greatest three-piece band ever,” and then gives similar compliments to the Rush tribute band 2112.

This is, in my mind, how it should be. As much as I take with people that say that they like every kind of music except country music to task for trying to be simultaneously open-minded and discriminating, I somewhat prefer this general attitude in comparison to people that tend to believe that popularity is a symptom of artistic failure and those that play a sort of I-am-more-discriminating-than-you game. And I am particularly driven crazy when it’s done by people that ostensibly like music, have careers related to music, or fancy themselves musicians.

It reminds me a little bit of the old movie reviews in Colosse’s alt-weekly. Whomever it was that wrote the reviews for movies for Colosse Weekly apparently did not like movies. Out of the thirty movies listed at any given time, somewhere between three and five would have a “see-this” star beside it. And it wasn’t the case that these were the movies you especially needed to see, but rather that these were the only movies worth seeing. Movies without stars beside them were typically run-down in the capsule.

In music and movies, nobody wants to be the guy (or girl) that likes something that their peers do not. If you praise a movie or music and other people tell you it sucks, it’s a far worse thing than running a movie down and then having others tell you that they like it. In the latter case, you simply position yourself as the discriminating sort who demands better. In the former case, you run the risk of being a gomer. The only exception is something that seems to go out of its way not to be easy to enjoy. Think an especially complex movie or maybe music that is not particularly harmonious. That sort of thing. But anything less than that and it’s safer not to like it. The crass snobbery of having discriminating tests is one of the two reasons I believe that critics tend to favor originality over quality-of-execution.

To me, this all should be the other way around. Music people should enjoy music. Different kinds of music. Including, horror of all horrors, popular music. That’s not to say that they should be listening to Top 40 radio all the time or even ever listening to it intentionally. But they shouldn’t pretend that a singer (or singers) singing in harmony surrounded by a band of professional musicians playing in sync (or put in sync by a producer, more-like) is objectively like nails across a chalk board. Even if that person is a corporately-built phony like Shania Twain. Even if that person is Celine Dion. That’s not to say that you should necessarily like it (I can’t say I care much for Twain or Dion), but assertions that these people have “no talent” or that people that do enjoy it are just sheeple or something say the most about the person doing the talking.

One does not have to be a posing snob not to care much for Genesis, but one does have to be a posing snob to suggest that Genesis lacks talent or that people only like Genesis because the record labels told them to. Record labels only wish that they had that kind of power.

One of the inspirations behind this post is my oldest friend Clint, a music composition major and someone that genuinely lives, breathes, and sleeps music. He is an extraordinarily talented person. But unlike a lot of other “music people”, he actually enjoys music and doesn’t really pretend to do otherwise. He goes on binges where he swallows up artists’ catalogs. Often it’s stuff I’ve never heard of, but sometimes it’ll be Brian Wilson or, for a couple years, Genesis. He’s not much of a country person, but he didn’t let that stop him from enjoying musicians with country roots if the sound struck him. And it didn’t stop him from writing some country-beat stuff himself.

If there’s a takeaway from this post, it’s this: far too many people determine the quality of their tastes by what they exclude from their threshold of worthiness. That’s just stupid.

Part of where I am coming from on this, I think, is that I often feel a sense of loss when I don’t like something that others get enjoyment from. For instance, I am not a big fan of the R&B infusion into pop music. I really wish I were. It would make listening to the radio a less grating experience. It would make it easier for me to find music that I enjoy. It would give me another thing to enjoy. Try as I might, though, I can’t really gather too much appreciation for it. That’s my loss.