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ed79.
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Whiny music fans make art grow stagnant
In my opinion
Ryan Nyburg
Pulse Editor
June 23, 2005
Well, looks like I’m still here. Despite my graduation, I’ve come back to do the only thing I’ve ever been any good at doing. Kind of pathetic, isn’t it? Like those high school football champs who end up hanging around the field, going bald and developing beer bellies as they talk about the passes they threw/caught back in ‘85. But let’s move on to a slightly less depressing topic.
Here’s something that has recently gotten my dander up. Two bands have recently released albums remarkably different from anything they have done before. The first is the White Stripes’ “Get Behind Me Satan,” which is more eclectic and fractured than anything else they have ever released. The second is Sleater-Kinney’s “The Woods,” a sprawling, distorted, psychedelic mess of an album that completely breaks away from their riot grrl past.
My problem is not with the albums, however, but rather with the fans. Check out just about any message board online and you will read die-hard fans wailing about these albums and how abysmally terrible they are. Adjectives such as “pretentious,” “difficult,” “shallow,” even “sell out” have been bandied all over the net.
WTF? There is nothing seriously wrong with either of these albums. “GBMS” lacks the focus of the Stripes’ earlier work, but makes up for it with a sense of expansiveness that was lacking in the blues/garage rock lockstep. It’s a transitional album, and a good one at that.
As for Sleater, they’ve gone and released a bona fide Northwest psychedelic classic in the traditional 1960s sense. The album is weird, spooky, distorted and a hell of a lot of fun to play really loud. Yet listening to some of these fans and you would think the band sat around farting into microphone and released the results as an album.
Let me address these people directly: You all are the worst sort of pop culture fascists. You are the reason art grows stagnant. Your endless demand for consistency suffocates everything you praise. Frightened by what is new and different, you howl and wail, act as if you have been betrayed and demand that all artists continually create variations on the same themes you have grown comfortable with. You people are sick and your opinions are like a pile of steaming dog shit in my salad.
But sometimes it’s good for a band to lose its popular fan base, or even popular critical support, if it means the band will grow artistically. Rolling Stone slammed Weezer’s “Pinkerton” as one of the worst albums of the year when it came out, for no reason other than it didn’t sound like their first album. They did the same to the Liars sophomore effort, once again unjustly. Both bands were better off. Pearl Jam stopped making hits when it stopped playing along with the rock press and stopped being so anthemic, thus losing favor with both fans and critics. Since then Pearl Jam has released some of the best music of its career, not that anyone has noticed.
So leave these bands alone. You can’t expect Sleater to release another version of “Dig Me Out.” One was enough. And who would want to listen to a dozen new copies of “Fell in Love With a Girl”? There’s been enough of that already. These albums might not be the best of either band’s career, but they’re not the worst either. Not by a long shot
http://www.dailyemerald.com/vnews/display....3/42ba9366904c3.