Lost And Trapped

Posted by Schrecker » 1 Comment »

Self-loathing or just loathing in general? I can’t make up my mind. Yeah, my ambivalence. It’s like that sometimes.

Today makes the second time I’m reading an insipid review on my record by someone who is clearly not a music critic but just a moron with attention deficit syndrome. Now, first let me establish something…

If you’re a critic and hate the music – I have no problem with this… go ahead. Seriously, if most people loved it (and I think I’ve been pretty clear how I feel about most people) I’d shoot myself for sure. Like one of my favorite pretend writers says, “I hate you all.”
However, this isn’t the problem that is so evident with these “critiques”. The problem is, THE FUCKERS CLEARLY DIDN’T LISTEN TO THE GODDAMN RECORD. They didn’t even read the lyrics!

Come on, a real music critic wouldn’t just read the PR firm’s tear sheet and then do a review based on that and song titles, would they? Maybe I’m being too optimistic about alleged music lovers. But really, to have to say the number one rule of a music critic: Put the fucking record on! Jesus Christos! It’s their job! They’re supposed to listen to it from beginning to end and make an informed judgment on it. The key word there is “informed”. Know what you’re listening to. If you don’t, find out. Don’t like doing that? THEN DON’T BE A GODDAMN MUSIC CRITIC.

But that’s the problem isn’t it? Most of us are all jerks, lazy and just plain narrow-minded. We don’t want to be good at something – we just want to get it over with.

The critic’s job is to listen to music and more importantly to know HOW to listen to music. “Dude, I only like hip-hop, everything else sucks.” This person cannot be a critic of music. Not even of hip-hop critic because hip-hop is not an insular form. It’s just as dependent on other forms and genres of music as any other style of music is – sometimes more, right PuffSeanDad? To be a music critic – you must listen to all kinds of music. Discover why they are there, see the cultural attraction and changes that are attached to them.

Also, critics should write believing that we don’t care at all what THEY think. We only want a well-informed objective opinion… If you are writing about music it’s because you love it, not because you’re heading up an individualistic revolution. If you want to do that, write a goddamn blog, or a record. HA! Great.

And please, the less comparisons the better. If you don’t know what to call the style of music you’re listening to, buy a thesaurus or make something up. Just like D.J. Alan Freed did in 1951 (he said “rock ‘n roll” to describe the music for the first time).

Oooh, but that sounds difficult. Art isn’t supposed to be difficult. (Damn I hate us all! I hate us all so much.)

Listen, when has anyone ever gone out to buy a record because of what some Student at a university paper said. Hold on Student, take yourself down a peg or two because you clearly are one of those lazy critics who doesn’t know how to listen to music – let me explain how I know that little nugget about you…

First: you were in a car talking with your parents while you were listening to it (oh my God does this sound as lame to you as it does to me?). AND you listened to PornoZing!!! first because it mentions on the tear sheet that “it’s about fucking”. Oh, are you lonely Student? Not getting any? Maybe your parents don’t let you fuck under their roof? Or are you just that stupid to listen to a song about rutting before you listen to the TITLE track Broken, which is about how people are destroying our planet because of their clear and undeniable ignorance of how to live in harmony with others. See… you don’t know HOW to listen to music. But there’s more…

Second: you condemn a song because of its title – I’m talking about The Gods Of Now’s most political and (in my opinion) incredibly spiritual composition on the record: Electrodes On My Nutmeat.

This song is what I’ve lived through the shit of my fanatical Christian past to get to. And you didn’t even listen to it, or even read the lyrics. You got hung up on the title because you don’t know how to deal with art and, by extension, life. Both are complicated, never as they seem and always multi-leveled.

Is it strange to think that in life there are ups and downs? That sometimes you’re depressed, sometimes you’re euphoric. Sometimes you get to fuck like a crack whore on speed. Sometimes (the same time possibly) things aren’t going the way you planned. Sometimes things are silly, sometimes just messed up.

I don’t think this as strange at all – this is often my daily routine. So, if life in fact is infinite variations on a theme, then why should it be assumed that a record that was conceptualized to reflect life consist of songs that all sound the same about content that never changes. Damn, if you recognize your life in that kind of dull boredom – Fuck – you have no right to tell me anything and if you do, I should have the right to hunt you down and kick your sorry ass.

I hear a voice of some disembodied critic yelling over the space of time: “How was I to know that The Gods Of Now record was conceptualized as art and not as product?” You listen to it you goddamn human.

You listen to it.

You’d find that Electrodes On My Nutmeat is about the Standing Buddhas of Bamyan, which, on March 21, 2001 were reduced to rubble by the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is about how that the world (me and you included) all watched and did nothing as these 1,000-year old pieces of art which represented, on the surface, The Buddha, not enlightened and sitting down but upright and searching, were destroyed by a group of fanatics who also outlawed music (imagine not being allowed to sing!) and subjugated their women even unto death.

The song is about, on the deeper levels, censorship, following party lines, control and doing what you’re told and more importantly NOT doing what you’re told. How that you can stand up for 1,000 years against a tide that is so strong, how that you can stand there and be nothing but beautiful, serene and perfect – and they’ll kill you anyway because you represent that which is great and wonderful about humanity.

It’s about the poetry of the story arc of these spirits of stone – that they are no longer with us, but have somehow attained enlightenment and imparted to us something sad and precious. They are at rest from standing against the tide for so long. Now we have to stand up.

So it is about how this atrocity will happen again and again and humanity and art and love will sink out of sight in a huge grave of dust and of blood and hate. Unless we act to stop this – but that’s like trying to find a bullet to rely on – and you can’t trust a bullet.
“Electrodes On My Nutmeat”…

Pretty funny name for a song like this, hey Student? You ever have electrodes put on your genitals and been electrocuted – hilarious fucking shit that is. This song was named to weed out morons who don’t think, who look away, because it doesn’t matter to them, for those who want to stay ignorant. Who don’t know how to look at, listen to or live life.
As a NYC underground artist once said while she was naked, covering herself in broken eggs and paint screaming poetry “Hey! It’s art buddy!”

And that sums it up nicely. So if you’re going to write about it – know HOW to listen to it, look at it or experience it.

I’m not asking anyone to like the shit I do. Art is the most human of expressions because it all comes down to taste. What I’m telling you is that you are showing your own ignorance and stupidity if you dismiss the content because you don’t know how to listen to it – unless you’re a Taliban sympathizer or a terrorist and then please by all means hate it cuz you’re not worthy of it anyway.

And here’s the content of The Gods Of Now in the NUTshell (Ha! Great!):
Change starts with awareness. Sure, but we’re all so fucking aware! We have become powerless in it. Real change doesn’t happen because of awareness, but because we act, one at a time, for something that is right, true and human.

What do you stand up for?