I, the Music Snob

I love art. Not so much paintings and sculptors, though I can appreciate the skill and craft that go into them, but more so literature, movies, music, even video games which I believe are in their golden age of creativeness. I’ve been known at times to be overly judgmental of certain movies and books I’ve seen/read, and at times to flippantly discount certain films which I think try to trick people into thinking their smart. Oh, look at me, I’m a movie saying that racism is bad, oooooo, look at me I’m so smart and relevant. Movies that try to replace style, creativity, and craft with second rate social or political commentary. Not saying there’s nothing wrong with any of that, some of my favorite movies have a ton of things to say about these things, but a movie needs to be a movie first, and a commentary second, not the other way around.




Despite my somewhat aggressive stance of movies, a books to a lesser extent, I’ve never considered myself a movie or a book snob. I can appreciate a mindless movie as much as the next guy, B movies can be very good if someone with skill makes it. In my movie reviewing days, I rarely gave a movie one star.



So sue me when I say I hate listening to bad music. I don’t just hate it, I get angry about it. I rave like a lunatic every time I’m in a car with my dad, or my brothers, and all they want to listen to is radio pop (GAH!) or fucking Lady Gaga, or some God Damned hip hop trash. I can’t help it, I mean, maybe I can, but for some odd reason I like being a music snob. I like my #1 rule, namely that my music is the best music, and if you listen to Nicklehack and like them your either deaf or retarded, in most cases both, and possibly a pedophile. Whichever floats your boat, I don’t judge.



Is it really that hard to see that all these entertainers running around playing mindless, talentless trash are the musical equivalent of Michael Bay and Megan Fox? If these ‘artists’ were a religion, they’d be scientology. If they were a school, they’d be Glen Beck University. The best music is rock music, and the best rock music is OLD rock music. Don’t come in here with your Three Days Grace, your Seether, Coldplay, your freaking new age emo gothic crap, I don’t wana hear it. No, really, I don’t wana hear it, and you don’t want to make me hear it either because I will talk your damn head off, and snob all over you until the sound of my voice annoys you so much you HAVE to put my music on just to calm me down, after which, upon observing how successful this technique is, you will be forced to play more and more rock n roll until I pass out from happiness.



For you see, I don’t just want to listen to the greatest music of all time. Listening is fine, but then how will I spread the word of my music’s greatness to the humble and deceived masses about the amazingness of MY music? Of my musical superiority to them and their naive little minds? No, listening is not enough, I must FORCE my music onto other people, people who may not want to hear what I have to play, or may not like Rock music all that much, for they will someday have their stupid little minds opened and thank me. Trust me, someday all those people who’ve heard me blast Guns N’Roses from my car stereo as I slowly roll through the Wal-Mart parking lot will have their ears opened at last, and in their moment of enlightenment, do the same at the next Wal-Mart, then the next and the next, until the gospel of The Who and Metallica is spread throughout the world, and I never have to listen to another lame ass Lady Gaga song ever again! HAHA!



So, what makes good music you may ask? What separates a song from earning their writers and, uhh, singers a special place in hell, and a song that God listens to when he drives to work? Well, the answer is simple, yet complex at the same time. What it really boils down to is whatever I say is good music at any particular point in time, is also God’s music, and whatever I don’t, well…. Devils music.



One, not all good songs are rock songs, there are some good country songs, the occasional hip hop song that I will begrudgingly give its due (Oh M&M, that song about you tying your girlfriend to the bed and setting the house on fire, you slay me), and let’s not forget jazz which I pretend to give its due but really annoys the heck out of me (but hey, Megadeth’s band members used to be jazz players, so hey, who am I to judge? Of course if you were to tell me that Axle Rose used to be a hip hoppster(?) I’ll blow you off, and remind you that not even hip hop fans liked My World. I mean, Jesus Christ man, have you even heard that song? So, a song doesn’t HAVE to be rock, or metal, but it goes a long way to making it good.



Second, the ‘artists’, the person or people that actually go onstage, perform these songs, and get the attention for them, need to write their own fucking songs! No more of this hiring writers to do the job for you, no, write your own damn songs, write your own damn music, cause you’re not just performers, you can’t do music like American Idle (shiver, shiver), take someone else’s song and try to say it’s yours. No sir, man up! Would Gun’s N’Roses ever do a song that they hadn’t written? Or Metallica? Hmm? You think these classic rock bands would EVER have the audacity to take songs they didn’t create and perform them like they were their own? Haha, I don’t THINK so…. So, moving on.



Third, it’s all about the sound man. Its good and all if you want to make your song poetic, meaningful, classy, but let’s not forget that this isn’t poetry, people don’t gather in the thousands to see poets talk about their feelings. So, it’s not enough to write good lyrics (if you indeed did write them, shame on you Taylor Swift!), your actual music (you know, with instruments, like a GUITAR) needs to be more than a bass drum, a synthesizer, and a backup singer using distortion, I’m talking to you, HIP HOP! GET YOUR SHIT STRAIGHT! A band needs at least one guitar, a FULL drum set with a DRUMMER sitting behind it, and a bass guitar. Extra brownie points for keyboards, violins, cowbells, and synthesizers if your bands called The Who. Otherwise, leave the synthesizer at home, please.



Fourth, even if you do have the minimal requirements for a band, write your own music, and play rock, you need talent, I’m talking to you now COUNTRY MUSIC! Even though you don’t really play ‘rock’ its similar, kinda, sorta, not really, no not at all in an about kinda way. I’m talking to you too, NICKLEHACK! COLDPLAY! Fucking Creeeeeed! No, you can’t just play one cord the entire song, play a single note really fast over and over for a solo, then throw in a fast ending and call it a song. You need to PLAY your instruments, you need to SOLO! AHHH! Having a gazillian people on stage with you does NOT make you better (country!), neither does playing two seconds worth of guitar solo before going back into the same two to three cords you were playing the rest of the song (Nickleback!). Your guitarist needs to be at least as talented as Slash, your singer as good as Jimmy Page, drummer as good as Keith Moon, and bassist as good as Cliff Burton. If you do not meet these requirements, can it sucka.



Not only do you need technical skills, you need ENERGY! It’s how moderately talented brain dead sexists like AC/DC have become one of my favorite bands while the more talented and less sexist Pearl Jam inspires nothing bug rage from me. How could this be? Well, to put it quite frankly, despite their awful bassist and drummer, despite their simple riffs, and brain dead lyrics, there is no denying that AC/DC is one rocking mother fucking band. I can rock out to Back in Black, Thunder Struck, and Highway to Hell ALLLLL damn day. It’s how Apatite for Destruction became one of my three all time favorite albums while I skip through the second half of Nevermind. If I can’t jump up and down like a sixteen year old girl watching American Idle, playing a mean air guitar, you have some serious work to do. I mean, have any of you done that with a Pearl Jam album? No? Didn’t think so.



It’s also important to be a REAL musician, not something that I will perceive as being a money driven media whore (Nickleback! Gah I hate you!) . So, out with Poison, let’s throw away Queen, keep one or two songs from Twisted Sister but that’s the exception not the rule, never liked Kiss anyway so lets throw them under the buss, you know, all those ridiculous hair bands with really big poofy hair and makeup. Everyone except Gun N’Roses, they were good. These days it’s not about the poofy hair, it’s about making radio friendly rock light (NICKLEBACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), you know, songs between two, and two and a half minutes, real soft, either a short solo or no solo at all, mostly ballads, you know, radio pop. Like Nickleback. And Creed. And anything that isn’t fifteen years old, or a band named Alter Bridge, Skillet, Switchfoot, and a few Foo Fither songs (although the later three bands have all incurred the wrath of my snobynish, esp recently).



So, to recap, here’s how it is.

Rock, good. Country, hip hop, and pop, bad.

Metal good, Ozzy Osborn (except as a member of Black Sabbith) bad. Don’t ask me about this one, he’s jus has an annoying voice.

Guns N’Roses good, Poison, Rat, and Queen, baaaaaad.

The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones (though I only own one album of theirs, I like to say I’m a huge fan cause it gets me cred with the other rock snobs) Megadeth, Metallica, Judis Priest, Iron Maiden, Rush, AC/DC, Black Sabbath (also, one album, but the metal snobs will shun me for not saying I like them) good, Nickleback, Coldplay, Three Days Grace, Seether, and a host of other modern bands who I know very little about but trash on a regular basis, bad.



So as long as we’re all clear on this, remember, follow these simple rules of advice, and two can learn to see the difference between the holey music of Jesus, and fecal covered bags of piss that make up most of today’s best selling music. So rise with me, oh snobs of music, and know that no matter what, you have THE best music. Mohammad himself would be jealous of the rich assortment of music you’ve selected to ring in your delicate ears.

I Plumb

For my creative writing class, where most of my stories got their start, we had a prodject to write a flash fic, a short story under a thousand words that fits on one page. This short little story is real, it happened to my friends and I while we were staying at a friends house. Hope you enjoy. '

We are so pathetic. Three of us, me, Daniel and Chris, standing in front of my neighbors house, trying to figure out which one of us is going to tell him that we broke his house.


“Come on Daniel” I said “ring the bell.”

“What? Me? Why the hell should I do it.”

“Because you’re the one that broke the pipe dumb ass.”

“Yeah but Chris threw me into it.” Daniel said. He sounded tense, like he did when he and I had to take a test that he didn’t study for and he wanted me to help him cheat. Every once in a while I would bail him out but not this time, no way in hell I was going to take the fall for this.

Chris looked down at Daniel and smiled at him as if to say yeah right, like I’m going to ring that bell. Ha. It was funny, because it really was Chris’s fault. Last night, after getting home from work, Daniel and Chris (not me, I just watched and laughed at them) decided that they wanted to do a little wrestling on the neighbors front lawn. Only what they didn’t think about until latter was the fact that the lawn was on a hill, and at the bottom of that hill was the pipe for the neighbor’s water main. As you would expect Daniel and Chris went at each other with reckless abandon, laughing like little boys on a playground, and rolling down the hill right for the pipe. Chris rolled on his back and hit the ground with his head. I was so busy laughing at Chris that I didn’t notice what had happened to Daniel, until I heard something that sounded like a fire hydrant gushing out water and Daniel in a dazed voice saying aw man, I’m wet. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, Chris rubbing a giant bump on his head, and Daniel lying on the ground with water from a busted pipe splashing all over him. Funny that is, until I realized that we had just broken the neighbor’s house.

“Come on Daniel, hurry up and get this over with,” I said, getting impatient with him. Daniel lifted his finger to the bell, but just as he was about to ring it the door opened, and there before us stood a huge fat man, with a WB frog holding a beer tattooed on his arm, wearing nothing but boxers.

“Um, sir” Chris said, “We kind of broke your water main.”

He just stood there, scratching his hairy belly.

“Hmmm, that’s a lot of damage.” He said, looking right at us. The color went out of Daniels face, and I could tell he wasn’t looking forward to what the man was going got say next.

“Naw, I’m just kidding; its cool, I plumb.”

Then he turned around and went inside, leaving the three of us standing on his porch, laughing at what we had just seen.