I know what a lot of you are thinking: "whaa? Andy I thought you love music and play several instruments." This is true, however I'm not talking about Music as you or I know it, no I'm talking about "Music."
This "Music" is known as Techno and is the most trite and useless sonic sewage some goon rollin' on E can conjure. Typically (and thankfully) techno occurs in limited instances.
I can handle techno in clubs. Of course hip-hop is far superior and much more musically valuable but the important key here is that I don't have to go to clubs that play techno. In fact, I typically don't go to clubs that play techno. Problem solved. Play shitty music, get shitty people.
Also lots of people who workout listen to techno. This MAY be techno's only useful outlet. I know if I were working out to techno I'd want to run twice as fast so I could get out of the gym and stop listening to techno as soon as possible.
I'm digressing a bit because as you can probably figure, this post isn't about the harmless uses of techno (did I say harmless? I meant less harmful yet equally musically demeaning). The other day I was driving my car (and I use the term driving loosely due to the sedative state of Miami traffic) and I was listening to my iPod (via handy Sony tape-adapter) at a comfortable volume on my car stereo. The traffic light is red.
In about 2 seconds a car rolls up beside me. Windows are down, stereo is blasting, and punishing my appalled ears, is techno. The ridiculous "four-on-the-floor" thumping bass, the idiotic repetitive themes, the electronic everything - and some stupid asshole is blaring it as loud as he can from his '93 Toyota Corrola's factory installed speakers (which seem to hate techno as much as I do according to their static squeals of pain, as if to say - I am not capable of transmitting this music at this volume beacuse this jerk didn't spend enough money on meeeee!). It sounds like complete shit. Wait, hold on, that's understatement. It sounds like a really pissed off cat, fighting another pissed off cat. But the cats aren't fighting, they're trying to kill each other by bursting their brains through their eardrums; running their claws down a blackboard by climbing up it, and then sliding down at a moderate pace. At this point I internally referenced a great bumper sticker I once saw - "If I wanted to listen to your shitty music, I'd be sitting in your passenger seat." Oh how true. But at this point, what could I do? You can roll up the windows and that helps a good deal but its still really annoying to have to aurally separate your good music from the aural vomit being hosed at windows at 44.1Hz. I can't tell this undiscerning chode-huffer to turn down the music because he wouldn't hear it anyway (in fact he's gotta be mostly deaf if he has to turn the music up that loud) and even if he could he would either ignore me or shoot me. Green light.
You have never seen me accelerate so fast.
But see, that's why in cars its not always so terrible. There IS something you can do. You can drive away, change lanes, whatever it is you need to do to get away...but the worst is when you can't get away. You're absolutely trapped. The WORST is when some boorish trog cranks up their home stereo.
Now I love listening to my music at loud volumes too. It's fun. Whether its rock, Hip-hop, Mahler or Mayer, it really is a good time. But, you see, the people that listen to techno have something inherently wrong with them. They're not normal. There are certain mechanisms in their brains that don't fire which causes them to stay up late, ingest chemical happiness, and be fascinated with glow sticks. Typically I'd find such a scenario hilarious, but the problem is that they have one thing in common with you and I, and that my friend is what makes their existence a terrible one: they live in the same building as you. Whether above or below, on the left or on the right, they are there. And, as surprising as it may seem, these people also have a great talent, and that talent is as follows: knowing exactly when you're trying to sleep, read, relax, whatch a movie with important dialouge, or talk on the phone and then choosing that particular moment to crank their sub-par stereo to the max, proclaiming their social ignorance and benightedess and their deficient IQ all at the same time.
It happened to me last night, well, I guess I should say this morning. 6am. You can read that again, in fact I think I'll type it again because I can hardly believe it myself. SIX AM. I woke up, not because I had to pee, not because my alarm went off, but because some stupid asshole was blaring techno. It was a Madonna remix with snippets of all of her songs spliced into one - a musical frankenstein. But this situation is far worse than the traffic instance. Why? Because its woken me up. And it woke me up only about 50 minutes before my alarm was set. Which means by the time the song ended, it had edged out about 10 minutes total of my sleeping time. Next, because there is literally nothing I could do. I couldn't find out where it was coming from, I couldn't shout, I couldn't pound on the ceiling, all I could do was sit there and get really pissed off at this, no doubt, self-hating e-tripping, half-witted, discourteous turd who couldn't tell good music from someone stabbing them in the ears. Thankfully the music did turn off, however I'd like to present this merely as the conclusion to this story, NOT as the archetypal situation. Typically the music stays on for at least an hour while the primate who is busy gouging his cerebral cortex against the cusp of remedial music, no doubt leaps about like a chimp, whipping crap at his companions like "This is the best part!!!" as the snare roll predictably and stupidly takes over the music and then builds up into....the exact same thing that was happening before.
If you enjoy listening to techno on a regular basis, I hope I thoroughly offended you. I can't say that I don't ever listen to it, I certainly do now and then, but I usually can't stand it for more than a song or two...I guess I (foolishly) keep trying to give it a chance to show me something worthwhile. It never does.|||111383676118538918|||Music Lovers
JB|||TECHNO SUCKS!
|||Andy eats Candy.