What makes you hate music?

Listening to the DJs/radio sales staff in my building, Watching the gif baskets continuously arrive on that floor, bands demanding several thousands of dollars to play a gig when others work harder, argueably play better and are willing to play for anyone who will listen, the money is aside. After learning what the Weakerthans wanted for a 2 hour drive out of their freaking way has me almost unable to listen to them ever again. Also dealing with hate mail from my old school, 1-5 years after the fact and its still coming in for shit I wrote for my college paper. Well now its just in the form of websites for artists I had formerly panned and various BBS.

And the movie Hard Core Logo. The ending depresses me to no end.

Over-crowded industry liggers with attitude shows where people are too busy trying to be noticed to even notice the band onstage.

Hype in its many and insidious forms.

People with sarcastic holier than thou attitudes on BBS's and mailing lists (yes, I KNOW I am one).

Reading the NME. Reading the music press in general.

Hearing my housemate listening to Coldplay through the walls.

Oh, the list is endless.

or Really heavy dub or free jazz when I'm tired and blocked and need to breathe in peace.

My sister generally likes the same music I do, but when I get into her car and she has a Phish tape going, I find myself wondering "HAVE I LOST YOU??"

now this I don't get. How can you spend yr life listening to music and not consign one (not even one!) CD to the bin. hate and luv go hand in hand.

No, I hate plenty of stuff, but the question asks: "What makes you never want to buy/listen to another CD as long as you live?" The existance of Creed does nothing to make me dislike the Boredoms. Nor do fans, magazines, etc. I find it so easy to love music, at least some of it, despite this stuff. Or are we just talking about things we hate? I hate myself for loving ILM.

despite protest music, college radio, free jazz, academic music etc.. the industry simply sleazily re-assimilates these into it's dumbing-down masterplan, setting up niche markets

the industry will sell more watered down and tweaked copies purporting to represent those real seperate genres now than ever before -- where are the ambiguous lyrics in 2002 ? where are the elements that make you re-think your position on some issue/song that used to be prevelant within so much music ? aren't you being marketed to 10x as much these days ?

the industry has had two generations of outside, alternative and experimental music to absorb, with which they have demographed right in on the crucial consumer, the consumer naive and new to a form, idea, anything that art might wish to throw at that consumer

isn't the industry an oligarchy known as "the big five" ? is the industry dutch, english or american ?

and, linked to daver's complaint, harder yet is knowing when to keep yr mouth shut when you someone you don't know very well is badmouthing entire genres

sometimes i hate music when i'm trying to use it as emotional styrofoam (cushioning the rough edges or filling in the empty space) cos it starts sounding flat and useless, like a painting of a window you wanna look out of.

(Also, Dom, my current favourite album is by Daphne & Celeste. I'm not even sure they were as old as 15 when they made it, and it's certainly not aimed at that advanced a level of maturity. I want to say that I distrust any music that couldn't be loved by 15 year olds, but that would be untrue, though only just.)

(there, i said it.)

I never want to stop buying CD's. I'm often look through every record in my house, and I'm bored with EVERY SINGLE ONE, but this just makes me want to go out and buy some new ones. So I never really hate Music, I just sometimes hate the music which is at my disposal, or the music I am being forced to listen to.

That's meant to say "I often look..." Forgive my stupidity.

The Big Five are multinational conglomerates. In the end they care most about the shareholders, not quality entertainment.

As for me, I tend to go through burnout periods just after I've spent a lot of time around people who still believe that an underground youth culture, nurtured on indie rock, can change the world for the better. (I live in DC, so I encounter these types more frequently than one might in other scenes. These people appear to have forgotton the notion that music is fundamentally about entertainment.)

'important' bands/movements/genres

I have this feeling as well. I just look at all the racks here and I can't find myself interested in listening to anything! Strange but true.

ironic haircuts

Depends on the amount of mousse used.

Big Feeder fan then, Jess?

Simple answer: BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2, especially during the daytime.

YAY STICK IT TO THE MAN

BBC Radio 1 and 2 aren't music, they're radio stations. Do you mean you hate the kind of music they play? That's a pretty large swathe!

Yeah they make me hate radio but not music

My bad, I should have been more precise. Anything Jo Whiley plays. It's just so limp.

I could never hate music as such, as I don't know what it would exactly entail (I don't think I have ever met anyone who actively hates Music, as a broadly defined category of art, although I have been in proximity with people who actively hate reading books in a general sense).

I am also a firm believer that even the most banal of genres has something worth listening to lurking within it somewhere, although admittedly it is very difficult to test this theory to the full.

Kind of following on from that I do get disappointed with music sometimes, or at least the extraneous issues that surround it. Like for example people who are actively involved in making music or have a great deal of interest in music, but are very adamant that certain broadly-defined genres (such as hip-hop or metal) aren't for them, normally for reasons that are unrelated to the actual music produced; but you know that if they took the blinkers off for a little while there would be loads of stuff they would love.

Similarly I have been disappointed on occasion when I have got chatting to someone at a gig or party or whatever, who I was under the impression was conversant in music as an interest, but actually they are only conversant (and normally only interested in) a micro-scene that they happen to be a part of (and that they often over-value). The music is practically secondary to a raft of other considerations in these cases.

Other people's taste.

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Thursday, September 19, 2002 8:39 AM (6 years ago)

Yeah, that is a more succinct and honest way of putting it :-)

Yeah jim's taste

;-)

:P

err, it's got too many notes?

Teenagers

Later I swung into a completely different mindset, where I hated things, soft rock and country music in particular. It was important to hate the right things. The stronger your hate the more principled you were.

― Tracer Hand

This mentality was very prevalent in my young-adultage, the post-punk mid-late 80s American indie ruck era. And it's still built into the way I think about things (ruckist). I've worked my way around it, but I can't quite shake it entirely: the idea that one is defined and validated by what one opposes, perhaps moreso than by what one embraces. Political listening.

These days, musically, it's hard to justify being categorically opposed to things. It seems so pinched and small-minded, aesthetically constipated. Why bother? Better just to tune out that which doesn't prick your ears. Sort of sad that political passion has been leeched out of the artisitic experience, though. I mean, we allow popular art to be political, but refrain from engaging with it politically. As a result, music culture seems more level-headed, but less alive.

Nothing makes me hate music, though, or even music culture. I get eye-rolley about "watered-down NPR indie bullshit (sob)", but everybody's gotta have an axe to grind.

That's true actually, I pretty much hate indie. Modest Mouse, Wilco, stuff like that. And I think that it's Important that I hate it, somehow.

when i see a jam band i usually say "i hate music"

I also recently used the phrase "post-bop bullshit".

poor indie

not that i really feel like wilco needs or warrants defending, but arent we over the Importance of hating MOR indie rock? i mean is it really still exerting such unbearable cultural hegemony that we need to reinforce our hatred of it vociferously?

Wilco is several degrees less "MOR" than most of the stuff posting as indie-rock these days (especially in Britain)

I mean this is the sort of argument that will wind up with someone hearing "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart", "Ashes Of American Flags" or "Less Than You Think" and saying "This is just an MOR indie band PRETENDING to be arty and original!". No, it's an arty indie band trying their best to make an original and striking statement.

most of that stuff is so off my radar now i'm just indifferent. i do still hate twee/whimsy folky guitar pop sung badly by men (e.g. Noah & The Whale) tho, and there's a lot of it about in the UK.

btw awaiting "lj's writing makes me hate music" zing any second now from some hilarious wag

I still don't understand the power dynamic in which hating Wilco is a noteworthy move.

but arent we over the Importance of hating MOR indie rock? i mean is it really still exerting such unbearable cultural hegemony that we need to reinforce our hatred of it vociferously?

― s1ocki

Yeah, that was me point, s1ocks. Not that it ever exerted much cultural hegemony, which is something to do with shrubs, right? But, see, the stingeing irony is that knowing I oughtta be past hating it doesn't make me hate it any less.

FWIW no individual's writing should make you hate music. I can be driven to hatred by stultifying consensus. But I've promised not to go there in '09 so I won't.

I don't get Wilco hate either, I think it's to do with their supposed pretentions as cutting-edge rock innovators, something they weren't exactly going for. Like I say, they were trying to make an original and striking statement, not to revolutionise music as we knew it.

Euler, me neither!

I think it has something to do with "roots Americana". I take Wilco to be a kind of False Metal, which is a little ridiculous.

I still don't understand the power dynamic in which hating Wilco is a noteworthy move.

― Euler

What does this even mean? Our hate is only noteworthy when directed towards the powerful? I fucking hate mosquitos, too. I'm not saying it's noteworthy, mind, though, yeah, I've noted it.

bar bands covering a certain short list of songs makes me hate music. any SRV, brown eyed girl, wonderful tonight, and so on.

i am guessing that this is a shared soundperson reaction (at least in america)

Sometimes, rehearsals.

Also yeah, the bar band shit John listed unless of course I am amazingly wasted.

To hate a band, it must be that they, or their fans, or their influence, or their work, threaten you somehow. Because if it's just that you think they suck, then hate is way too strong a description of that stance. If I just think a band sucks, then it's a matter of indifference to me, unless there's some threat involved (like they'll make all music suck or something). And I don't see what Wilco could possibly threaten.

the only music i really hate is music i don't like that i am forced to listen to at work or whatever

otherwise music i dont like is easy enough to avoid

What makes you never want to buy/listen to another CD as long as you live? What makes you never want to see another band live as long as you live? What makes you want to just give up on the entire artform of music entirely?

― kate, Monday, September 16, 2002 11:15 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://highbridnation.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/xxl_cover_wale_bob_asher_hamilton.jpg

i don't usually have a visceral hate reaction to recorded music, because it's avoidable and i can turn it down or change it or go somewhere else. usually when i feel hate is when i go to a show or play a show and one of bands is shitty and not only are they shitty but it's really really loud and i can't leave because the band i want to see is still coming up and maybe i can go somewhere else in the club but i can still hear them plus that means i have to push your way back in for the band i want to see PLUS i can also SEE the shitty band so they push their shittiness in through another one of my senses plus my feet and back are aching and everyone around me smells terrible and keeps pushing in to me and shouting things and standing in front of me with their huge cameras and that's when i hate music

lol n/a i was just thinking about the exact same scenario

yes. hell is six million opening bands all of them opening for your favorite band

I do have a hate reaction to Rascal Flats, but that's mostly because they are douchebags.

To hate a band, it must be that they, or their fans, or their influence, or their work, threaten you somehow. Because if it's just that you think they suck, then hate is way too strong a description of that stance.

― Euler

Troo. I hate MORindie because it isn't my indie. My indie was better, because people understood the real shit back then, and the air was cleaner, and you could still get a Orange Julious without worrying what kinda Chinese rat poo they probably put in it. Now they have the indie, and it's all about some hand cream situation I can't understand, and nobody wants to get their shoes dirty, and the kids today, I mean the kids today.

Shit, it's not like I'm trying to justify the indie-hate. It just exists, y'know?

I only HATED music for a brief time in the 1990s, when I was seriously depressed, and even then I didn't really hate music. They just didn't have internet radio back then and I was sick of everything I owned.

recently i have started liking all music, its pretty fun, you guys should try it

sting is not all music

i only really hate music when i'm in the dumps about other shit

About the shitty bar band with the obvious covers: not long ago my band was playing after one of those. I was sitting and inwardly fuming about the cliché classic-rock set list, and here were their friends/fans absolutely going apeshit with delirious pleasure. I mean, there was like 150 people in this tiny club and they were absolutely loving every corny selection, high-fiving each other over recognizing the opening riff of (say) "Ramblin' Man" or (yes) "Wonderful Tonight."

So I went through a series of whiplash changes of mind about the whole thing. 1) Lord is this crap, 2) But then it was so very obviously giving pleasure to its intended audience, and 3) isn't that (at least partly) the point of what all musicians are trying to do, myself included, but 4) Aren't these corny fuckers occupying the stage way past their time slot, and 5) But hey, who am I to rain on the parade of this deliriously happy crowd of which yes I am somewhat jealous, but 6) Dear sweet merciful Jeebus Lord, this is crap.

I think I may have hated music somewhere in that swirl of thoughts.

But yeah, it would probably have been a more enlightened mind-path to just say "not my cup of tea" and have it be a matter of indifference.

also: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=41

Nothing can make me HATE music. Even if I don't like it, it's more of a "not for me" attitude.

I hate music when guitar hero is involved, and also when awards shows are involved.

The only thing that comes close to making me "hate" music, is fatigue.

1. I go to a place such as a doctor's office, lunch café, department store, luxury hotel, where ever - somewhere I'm not going to for the purpose of listening to music - and they have piped-in loud music playing the whole time. Even if it's music I like, I get super annoyed by this.

2. When I watch a movie or a few TV shows where I am bludgeoned by short clips of music for every new scene. A serious pet peeve. An hour of MTV can make me hate music for days.

3. After a concert I don't hate music, but I usually don't listen to anything for a while.