I never pretend to be someone that knows a great deal about music theory, music history, pop culture, anything really. But I enjoy and appreciate music and I’m willing to explore and find beauty in uncommon territories. I like to think that there are a lot of us here online. We enjoy the exploration of music and can respect the joy that someone else has when they find something they love, even if we can’t get the same buzz out of the particular substance as they did.



This is hard to convey to people in real life. I regularly find that people believe that, since I listen to music they define as “obscure”, then I must be some kind of music snob. I am occasionally talked about as someone that hates music, which I find insulting. It’s true that I hate some forms of mainstream public tunes, but that is only because I feel it hides so much other great music from the public. And I refrain from even voicing this opinion in mixed company because my frustrations with this musical pulp fiction are far smaller than my happiness that someone enjoys it. I honestly would much rather have a conversation with someone exploring why they enjoy Miley Cyrus than to explain to someone why I hate Miley Cyrus.



But there are particular people in my life that I just can’t stand to discuss anything music related with them. They are just musical imbeciles. And arrogant in their total retardation. They are aggressive towards me, mainly due to their own insecurity. But it leads them to say some of the dumbest things, and I have to bite my tongue and not respond, but really I feel sad for their ignorance.

I have two examples I would like to share:

My brother in law is the worst offender. He is a good friend in most situations, but he has such butt heavy opinions about music you can’t even say anything about music without him capsizing into a frothy paste. He listens to acapella and rap, bad dubstep and he still claims his favorite song of all time is “Mr. Bassman”. I made the mistake several years ago of sharing Sufjan Stevens Illinois with him while we were stuck in a car together for several hours. He went totally nuts. He literally couldn’t listen to a song longer than 15 seconds without declaring it as crap and turning it off (in favor of his Linkin Park remix album). This is a nerd IT tech we are talking about here. He has constantly since then described my music as “stuff that sounds like it’s about to completely fall apart at any second.” Which I have concluded is just his way of describing what a banjo sounds like.



The other day he forced me to play a song for a mutual friend of ours to illustrate to them the awful music I listen to. Seriously, consider this jerk for a second. It’s one thing to not like someone’s music choices, but to call them out at a party and make them play it for someone just so you can shoot it down? Who does that? I couldn’t just pick anything. I had to play a Sufjan Stevens song off Illinois. He kept pushing until things were really awkward, so I finally gave up and played “Concerning the UFO Sighting…”. My brother in law instantly started laughing. He laughed like a total idiot. I mean, the man was rolling around on the floor. He then pulled out his phone and played a different song, a better song, a song that he claimed Sufjan was “TOTALLY RIPPING OFF!”. The song? Fricken Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”. What the hell, right? But everyone in the room laughed like this was actually the same song. My wife had to hold me back. Seriously, “Concerning the UFO Sighting…” and “Fast Car”. SAME.



I just walked away from that one. Whatever dude.



But not two weeks later I’m having a discussion with my brother, another source of musical frustration. We have come a long way in recent years, but as an older brother he is still insecure and has to put me in my place regularly. He comes to me for music recommendations, and every 5th song he has to make fun of, and then turn it around to be about how I have horrible music taste. But he hasn’t found his own music in years. He just takes my recommendations and then plugs what he likes into a Pandora station. Well, the other day, he was asking for recs and I had been listening to a lot of Mikal Cronin. So, I sent him a few things, including the song “Piano Mantra”. He responded over chat to say that it was a decent song, but it was a copy of something else he couldn’t place at the moment. A little while later he sent me a link to the song he was trying to remember.



The song? Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”. MOTHER FFUFUFUFUFFFUUUUUUU…

