So the penny drops...
After going to a small up and coming indie night "Heads down thumbs up - Old soul music and twee indie songs", I began exploring some of the artists played and it suddenly dawned on me that Twee/ C86 and Indie Pop are all pretty much the same thing.
The penny had suddenly dropped. I now wonder how I never reached this conclusion prior to this moment of revelation that has spurred this post; it's one of those bizarre music truths taken as gospel and so happily accepted by everyone except me. I seem to have a brilliant ability to completly miss the brass tacks of musical classification despite writing about, thinking about and researching music everyday for the last 250-odd days since I started writing about music. Maybe it's because I don't actually read the interviews, spending more time flicking through the picture's in the magazines, not actually learning anything.
My musical naivity is a great example that popularised generic labels are good things for the casual music listener - they allow you to discover bands that would have past you by had common characteristic not been picked up, developed and used consistantly by music writers. It's obviously fruitless to try to describe a piece of music in writing but we can try our best. It's never going to be a flawless process but reading about music has allowed me to find out about and explore so many more bands than I'd have been able to if I was just downloading scores of mp3's so I try to do the same in my blog.
Writing about music may be like dancing about architecture but if you really loved a building and wanted to tell the world about it with the only form of communication at your disposal being a twist, loop and a swift Demi-plié that whats wrong with that?
posted by mike @ 8:50 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I sometimes feel that reading about music doesn't always do the music, you're reading about, any justice.
E.g. The towers of london. Read several reviews and I'V's, totally put me off the band. Made me dismiss them as some sort of gimmicky shite band.
Saw them live at leeds fest, while waiting for the rakes, and was blown away by their performance.
Those many articles that were trying to promote the band, did them no justice.. and in the end, it was thier music that got me on board.. not the articles
For me, writing for music is extremely difficult. You confront many of the same issues when talking about music on radio but thankfully you have editing software to prevent you from sounding a little less like an idiotic, dribbling fool.
As much as you want to maintain independence as a writer and listener of music, I always think it's a great to read what other people think. There are music bloggers that we read and refer to because we respect their opinion, we like their taste in music. But in the end, what you like should really only be determined by you and your tastes. Really, it's just the sound that makes your chest ache like you're a teenager in love.
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