The Cage

So after many years of bitching about people and their musical tastes, I've finally decided to start a blog where I get to explain my musical tastes are better than yours. I'm sure this will go over well.

I've been thinking about how this first post should go and I talked it over with my bro StandardDeviant and I've decided that I'm going to explain myself a little bit and lay down some rules and what to expect for the future.

WHY ARE YOU WRITING THIS?

Music is pretty much a part of my life daily. My parents have a picture of myself as an infant listening to tunes on a Walkman, sometime circa 1983-4. Apparently I used to sing along to the radio at an early age. I made it my mission to learn all the words to my favorite songs, a behavior I continue today, even though its hard to figure out what they are growling over most modern metal records.

Fast forward 20 or so years and somehow I've become super jaded about music. Sometimes I wonder where it all went wrong but I figured it out. I learned how to play guitar and learned how to write songs. Sure, my heavy diet of punk, radio pop, modern rock and metal have probably made my songwriting boring and predictable, but they are mine. Even the shitty ones. Since I learned songcraft I can understand how and where someone might get an idea for a song. If it actually gets to a place where they complete it; record it and release it for public consumption, well then they deserve to be criticized for it. It just makes me sad how song craft has declined since the supposed heyday of rock and roll, which is the 1960s.

Case in point: I recently acquired this collection called Soul! The Very Best of Motown. It is a retrospective of Motown's career from its early days to its death knell in the 1980's. As you listen to it, you can hear how the songwriting gets very bad around the 1970's disco BS to the 1980's Easy Listening tripe. Listen to it and prove me wrong.

Sure, there have always been stupid, successful songs. Since people are basically pretty dumb there are going to be more successful artists such as Soulja Boy, The Macarena Dudes, Crazy Frog, and so on. It is my right as a jaded music snob to make fun of the people who wrote, performed, recorded and bought this awful, terrible, no good, very bad music. That's why.

WHAT?

So I've been struggling on how exactly to present all my praise and vinegar about music to all you faithful and patient readers out there. Basically, I'm going to do a few things:

• New Music Reviews
• Old Music Reviews
• Artist Showcase
• Rants

From time to time I'd like to also talk about TV shows and Movies. Maybe even books, because yes, I read those too.

I'm also gonna ask other people to write features sometimes as well. Just for a change of pace. I can see humor deriving from having my friends and random strangers letting me have it.

YEAH!

Anyways, I will be back later to post up some new music reviews. Enjoy.