[guest]

Originally Posted by Severian

Hey now, let's dial it back.

First, I've read every single word you've written in this exchange. K? K.

Yes, my comments on age were knowingly snooty, but the comment that actually provoked your initial response was not snooty at all. I mentioned that this NIN reissue was out, and that I was buying it. You made a very clearly and obviously antagonist comment. And then and then and then...

Listen, it's not that I don't get why you feel the way you do about NIN. I think there's a bit of self-importance that comes with the territory of being into music, and I have it as well, so I do think some of your comments sounded a bit sbobby, but I also understand why you feel the way you feel. I'm pretty sure I said early on that I thought NIN had released plenty of shitty music, and that the main appeal for me was nostalgia. To be sure, if someone were to ask me about my taste in music for biographical purposes, I would not mention NIN.
I'm imagining a profile in a magazine or something, reading:



... And, well, fuck that. Fuck it to hell. I'm OK with being a "shitty reporter," but I would never want to actually be associated with NIN, or for people to think I was a "NIN guy" (better than "Tool guys," and worlds above "Metallica guys," but still, I would not stand for it.

So believe me, I get your gripe. NIN is a "band" whose music I enjoyed as a kid. Reznor led me to countless other, better bands. Possibly even began my longstanding interest in electronic music. But I don't identify with them.

I identify with Sonic Youth first and foremost, and my tastes are derived from the same themes and elements that unite most of the folks here: Independence, experimentation, sonic diversity, basement shit, noise, and so on. But I still have many exceptions, because I'm more of an inhaler of music than I am a consumer. I just love so many sounds and styles, and in some cases I don't give a fuck where they came from.

I guess I feel that this would go without saying here. On a board devoted to Sonic Youth. We like Sonic Youth partly because we like really weird shit that spans all corners of the spectrum. Some people here love Drake. I hate Drake, but I don't think I'd give someone shit for liking him unless I was provoked. I probably hate Drake more than you hate NIN. But I expect to see a wide variety of music represented here. I guess I assume we all do, and that there's corny or objectionable stuff in everyone's library.

My whole point here is
1.) Hey, get the fuck off my back! So what if I buy a NIN album? Give me shit for that and I'll give you shit for being young.
And
2.) Whether this is or isn't the case, it sort of seems like you take yourself and your music a bit too seriously. Well, if that is the case, stop that. We all take music seriously, but your perspective on it is not "inarguable," or any more true than anyone else's. Yeah, music and how it resonates with you is about many factors. Maybe it's about less for me? Either way, don't take yourself so seriously.

I take it as a given that people here are beyond needing to assert their perceived musical triusms here. Or if not, at least able to discuss what they belief is the "inarguable" quality/lack thereof of something without being offensive about it. You and I probably have more in common than we think, so why default to antagonism when we disagree?


Also, I stil don't get the Mariah Carey comment. I've said "Mariah Carey and the Arthur Doyle Hand Crean" before, but... hmm. Anyway. Whatever.

I did cover what the "inarguable" element was but you didn't seem to want to go into that.....my "inarguable" argument is that nine inch nails are crap because they've avowed to have emerged from a tradition to which they're ideologically contradictory: their music sounds like it's playing inside the goth section of hmv where you buy your marilyn manson gildan, which is not a problem, but to try and convince your acolytes that you're something more than that is not only an assault to their intelligence but so too the origins they claim to have come from. it's a bizarre idea that to coat your music in a thin layer of distortion invokes some sense of substance, and to try to reinforce this through visual signifiers because your music isn't capable of so doing is in my mind pretty pathetic.

it's not a matter of me taking things overly seriously, it's more that I see it as an affront to myself and my friends and the cultures I'm invested in when someone attempts to codify that in music which is entirely divorced from it out of some strange sense of insecurity. if something means something to me of course I'm going to defend it against people who're pretty concertedly obliterating it, whether conscious or not. and I'm not entirely sure there is any question as to whether nine inch nails have over the course of 30 years been doing exactly that.


// I was saying I have spoken about mariah carey...