No, I really do sort of hate everything.

Just to prove that I'm one of the very sorts of people I loathe most (two phrases that make me instantly dislike someone are “Oh, I don't watch t.v.” or “Oh, I never listen to the radio” because I think toss that in someone's face is shorthand for “I think you're a plebian loser!”), my friend compiled the complete list of Rolling Stone's Top Hundred Songs of 2008, and the only ones I knew were pretentious-rock (the Of Montreal cut), pop I know because of ubiquity (The Fratellis), or something I like despite myself (Amy Winehouse). Basically, what I'm saying here is—I don't listen to the radio.

On one hand, that's an absolute fabrication since I listen to the CBC from the time I get up until the time I go to bed if I'm working or puttering around the house—and god help anyone who comes between me and the CBC when I'm cooking. But the deeper truth is that I don't listen to music on the radio anymore unless I have a wild hair or (oh christ!) someone else is in control of the radio in the car. How common my shunning of the radio is escapes me as most facts about one's behavior being standard or “normal” tends to do. I don't know what you do, but I listen to the news on the radio and I avoid being tortured by music on commercial radio. I'm kind of pro-active with my listening since I seek out new music and go to desperate ends to share that music with others. Generally speaking, I feel like bands who have made it to the radio already have people doing for them what I try to do in a guerrilla fashion for other acts. But my dislike of the radio isn't so much punk rawk and revolutionary as seated in my loathing of being trapped listening to something that makes my soul itch. There's a lot of soul-itchery going down at the moment on commercial radio.

Now on to the portion of this scree where I lambaste Rolling Stone--

Clearly someone reads this magazine. I assume it's Boomers who've had subscriptions since day one, people who read for the car wreck factor, and industry pros and wannabes? Personally, my trashy music mag of choice is Blender where the crass commodification of artistic endeavor isn't buried under a patina of self-congratulatory, smug geezer moral rectitude. Bring on the blatant pandering to the basest sort of teenaged wish-fulfillment! The time has long gone when one voice spake unto the wilderness to declare the coolness factor of X artist—if such ex cathedra pronouncements were ever taken seriously (I grew up in a world where individualism was back in, so any sort of herd mentality was always alien to me).


Rolling Stone Top 100 Songs of 2007

But, seriously, folks, Kylie Minogue?

On the other hand, Datarock “Computer Camp Love” is going straight on to my iPod.

The video.

Sometimes the Euros really bring it. Like usually when encountering some zany European band, I cannot tell how much of this is a joke. Generally, I give too much of a benefit of a doubt and come to discover later that someone was dead serious with their, er, hijinx.

But then after that gem, we have an example of the current trend towards Joy Divisionesque walls of noise with monotonous vocals in The National “Mistaken for Strangers” I've heard a lot of music like this lately and I will confess quite honestly that I'd rather listen to The Fratellis because even if it's That Same Song Again, it's fun and has lots of toe-tapping lyrics about banging groupies, a genre I, frankly, never get tired of.

Vampire Weekend "Cape Co Kwassa Kwassa certainly wins for Best Name of the Year, but the song reminds me of a cross between Maroon 5 and a margarine ad.

I think this is going to have to be a series of posts since some of my old adversaries (Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs and Patrick Wolf, for example) have made this