Stupid (good) Music

There needs to be some kind of name for people like me because Music Snob just doesn’t cut it. We’re really more like vegetarians or people who only buy organic food. We prefer independent music, the harder to find the better. So imagine my surprise when My Chemical Romance released a really kick ass Glam Rock album. Now this is a band that I would never listen to and have expressly tried to avoid, but last year The Black Parade came out and for whatever reason my Dad (obviously having heard good things) picked it up for himself and had me listen to it on our way home from the airport last Thanksgiving. I’ve listened to it several times since then and every time it infuriates me simply because it’s really good, but from a band that has done about as much to sully the good name of Punk music as anyone has. I suppose I can take some solace in the fact that it’s a Glam Rock album and about as left field as you could expect a Pop Punk band to go. If they were going to make a decent album, at least they defied convention to do it and that I can support. Still though, it infuriates me!

RIP Punk Planet

So I decided to log onto punkplanet.com to find out if the new issue was out yet only to discover that it is indeed out…and it’s the last issue ever. There’s so many bands out there in the world of indie music and while I didn’t always agree with Punk Planet’s reviews, it was nice to have a place that at the very least sorted the truly indie from the mainstream and poser indie scene. That’s gone now, and come two months from now (when the next issue of Punk Planet would have been available) I’ll find myself in the usual situation: awash in a sea of lame bands all vying for my attention. I rarely listen to anything unless I hear about it via word of mouth, via Punk Planet, or if a track comes on Pandora and I dig it. With Punk Planet gone and Pandora (and all internet radio) in jeopardy, I’m back to word of mouth only. I guess it’s not any different than before I started picking up Punk Planet, but making a list of bands to be on the look out for every 2 months gave me something to do for a while. It gave me a reason to get out of the house and hunt for CD’s. Now I’m back to eMusic as my main source of new music and while I love the service, the number and ease of the DRM-free downloads, I like hunting for new music in stores.

People sometimes wonder why I go out of my way to listen to non-mainstream music. I do it because there’s plenty of good stuff out there that no one ever notices. Granted there are mainstream bands who really work hard and make good music, I’m not complaining about them, but the cast majority of the mainstream is about money. If most mainstream bands had to defend their bland, overproduced, formulaic music they wouldn’t be able to to. The real bands, the hard-working indie bands, the people who are making music because they love it and who struggle everyday to continue doing what they love, those are the real musicians. Most people don’t care, but intent is important to me when it comes to art, I think it’s why I don’t like Andy Warhol. All Warhol ever did was spend money to make art that he knew people would fawn over. He played the mainstream game for money and fame and laughs. He didn’t care about his work, he cared about his image. Real art comes from the soul, it’s what you’d be doing even if the whole world was standing in your way. That’s an ideology I can get behind because it’s something I’ve done and I think that people who are like that, musicians, artists, etc. should get the support they deserve instead of the posers who strive for mediocrity because they know it will sell.

Punk Planet is just another drop in the bucket of the indie world, another symptom of a society that glorifies the most advertised things as opposed to the true works of genius.