Across the Music

pantspantsrevolution:

• 311 – The 90’s called, roofies aren’t cool anymore.
• Tom Petty – This is the music guys who wear Hollister shirts and leather sandals use to make out with a girl in the lawn section of your local music venue after getting her drunk in the parking lot because she’s still under 21 and it’s hard to sneak booze into those places.
• Dave Matthews Band – If Raffi was serious and had an eight minute violin solo.
• Death Cab for Cutie – Your significant other of two months dumped you and your hand is sore from writing poetry in your Moleskine notebook so you decided to take a break and listen to this on your headphones you bought from Urban Outfitters.
• Bon Jovi – Fuck you.
• The Decemberists – Someone decided Death Cab for Cutie wasn’t generic enough.
• The Gaslight Anthem – We can tell you’re from New Jersey because you decided to take Bruce Springsteen’s music and take all the complicated parts out of them.  Some people call this punk influence but I know better—you just don’t have the talent.  Bruce Springsteen got away with those lyrical clichés because he fucking meant it you spoiled fucking brats.
• Animal Collective/Ponytail/any other indie freakout band – Frank Zappa meets King Crimson minus talent or ability but featuring all the pretentiousness.
• Bat For Lashes – Nobody cared about what Chan Marshall did after she regained her sanity so you decided to put a lame-ass electronica beat behind it.
• Bloc Party – Oh, that’s cute, you decided to drop the K so you could show everyone how witty you are.
• Bon Iver – Call me when that incessant falsetto ceases to be obnoxious.
• Coldplay – Someone decided to mix the obnoxiousness of U2 with Radiohead’s old ideas.
• Kings of Leon – See above, but substitute Radiohead with The Strokes.
• The Strokes – Oppers + Downers = Mediocrity.
• Dispatch / OAR / Guster – Want to like Dave Matthews Band but aren’t comfortable with the black members?  I’ve got two bands for you!
• Regina Specktor – Someone finally figured out how to cross Soviet ex-pat piano music with the sound of paint drying.  She has one good song and it’s about a whore.
• Vampire Weekend – If anyone tells you they’re into indie music you can cite this as an example to prove indie music is dead.
• Wilco – It takes an incredible amount of skill to take one of the best and most spontaneous guitarists on the planet and put him in a forum that renders him completely and totally fucking boring.
• Bright Eyes – Elliot Smith is dead and there’s nothing you can do about it.
• The Mars Volta – At The Drive In broke up and half of them decided to make a band that sounded exactly the same sans spontaneity or authenticity.
• Nirvana – Not good, not original.  I know you were into it and it’s very sentimental but you’re probably better off just putting on your old Jock Jams albums, it’s less depressing and less contrived.
• Anything Jack White has ever done – is there a single ounce of originality in any of it?
• Snow Patrol, The Postal Service – I don’t know the difference.  I don’t think there’s a difference.  This is something girls I used to hook up with listened to before I realized I could do better.
• Sublime –They’re a singles band and you hate to admit it.
• The Ramones – They’re MC5 without the talent or the edge.  They did not invent punk, they were a bunch of dudes who didn’t shower and couldn’t play their instruments.  Look at peers like the Talking Heads or Television to see what good music looks like.
• Girl Talk — There is a big difference between interesting ideas and good music.  Lip Gloss + Metallica and Whisper Song + Bittersweet Symphony were good.  That’s it.  It’s fun to listen to because you’re drunk.
• Santogold – Someone found a way to water down MIA.  Hey ladies: if you want to become a famous rapper just fuck Diplo.  It’s a proven recipe for success.
• Lil’ Wayne – Congratulations to Louisiana on finding a lower denominator than Master P’s Ghetto D.
• No Age – stop it, we’ve heard it before.
• The Arcade Fire – Canada found something worse to vomit on the United States than Bryan Adams and Prius batteries.
• Magnetic Fields – Magnetic Fields were able to release 69 Love Songs and have not one of them stir any sort of emotions.  We should hire these guys to be the dude who cuts the wires to diffuse a bomb.  I accidentally originally wrote Of Montreal instead of Magnetic Fields as they’re the same band and equally talentless though more wealthy as they’re now the voice of Outback Steakhouse.
• MIA – The defeat of the Tamil Tigers reinforces that karma is a bitch and bad things happen to bad people.
• Disco Biscuits – This is almost as nauseating as spaz indie.  You know how some people say “You don’t need to be on drugs to like Phish, maaaaaaan!”?  You need to be on drugs to enjoy tDB.
• Reggaeton – Some people claim all hip-hop or all country sounds alike.  There is only one genre of music to be so incredibly bad as to legitimize those sort of ignorant, sweeping statements pertaining to an entire subsection of music.
• Paul Oakenfold / Armin Von Buuren – I used to think I was fairly accepting of most electronic music types until I had a Middle Eastern roommate who listened to nothing but deep trance.  I can’t believe people dance to this—it actually helped me fall asleep.  Never have drugs seemed so boring.

Alright, I think this is a good start.  I’m going to try to keep this updated.  Feel free to reblog or comment with suggestions.

I haven’t heard of some of these bands, but most of the ones I have heard of seem to have more or less spot-on descriptions. These descriptions are coming from a hater, so you have to take the critiques with a grain of salt if you like some of these selections (like me). For instance, “Anything Jack White has ever done – is there a single ounce of originality in any of it?” Well tell me where the fuck he takes his music from then. It’s fine if musicians are influenced by other musicians because that is the point of a musical community, right? Some bands sound pretty similar, true, but people have the choice to weed out the weak bands and weak songs (joy to modern technology and the SINGLE).

Meh. What bands does this schmuck like, then? Radiohead and the Beatles and Jay Z and nothing emo and nothing terribly new? Original.