Runaway Child Running Wild

The way that your musical taste evolves can be pretty weird and it is something that I like to think about a lot because it is constantly changing. Almost nobody listens to the exact same set of artists their entire lives because seriously, how boring would that be? There's very few things in my life that give me more of a thrill than falling in love with something I haven't heard before and I'm sure that it is the same for many people. It seems completely magical when you are listening to something for the first time (or re-visiting something for the first time in a long time) and it is just exactly what you want to hear. Generally for me I don't really want to listen to anything else when this happens, so that album (or discography or group of artists or whatever) becomes a defacto soundtrack to my life.

This whole process of finding and getting into new music, but specifically an artist or genre that you never thought you would like before, is something that has happened to me more and more as I get older and each time it does happen I always have to chuckle to myself and think about how (relatively) close-minded I was about these types of things in my youth. 14 year-old Timmy who was always balls-deep in skate punk and just starting to realize how great ska is surely would sighed and rolled his eyes at 24 year-old Timmy listening to emo, let alone pop-rock like Cheap Trick (And guess what chief, I do the dishes and dance around to the Katy Perry discography on a pretty fuckin' regular basis. Keep that kid away from sharp objects.), but the constant flux that you experience in life is one of the things that makes it so exciting, so you really need to have a sense of humour about it and try to keep an open mind.

All this stuff is always on my mind because punk was the first type of music I got into, I guess. When I was in 7th and 8th grade, "punk" bands (please keep in mind that I am using this term very loosely here) were just what appealed to me most and it was the first time that I would hear music and think "Yes! This is what I like! This is what I want to hear!" so it was essentially all I listened to. The shitty thing about this is that when you get into punk you are also introduced some stupid ideas that go along with it; them mainly being that other types of music are really bad (with minimal explanation as to why, of course) ("Pop music is bad! They don't even write their own songs!)*. It's really easy to succumb to this and as a result you become really reluctant to enjoy popular forms of music. I'm not even talking just about pop songs, for the longest time it was built into my head that rap and hip-hop were "bad" only because they were on the opposite end of my musical taste. The same could be true of me not wanting to touch emo with gloves and a gas mask on while I was in the deepest part of my ska phase (as if that phase ever ended, hahaha).

Fortunately for me, as I got older I realized how silly this was and started to (slowly) get more into different kinds of music and stop caring what other people would think if I listened to things (sure seems dumb typing out that sentence now, but seriously, it was true). An early example I can think of is Set Your Goals. I saw them open for Less Than Jake and kind of liked what I heard, but was hesitant to listen only because "hardcore" (this was them touring on Reset I believe, which was more of a poppy Youth Crew release than a hardcore-tinged pop-punk sound like their later material) was so taboo in the ska scene. Never mind that I actively listened to and enjoyed Suicide Machines records that were full of hardcore songs. Ugh. I can be a moron sometimes.

I started listening to a much wider variety of music through university and a large part of that was becoming BFFFFFLZ with Brian. We shared a few artists in common, but had had fairly different musical tastes and as a result got each other into a ton of bands. On one hand, I wouldn't listen to Brand New, Alkaline Trio, The Get-Up Kids and wouldn't have gone through my gigantic Bayside phase without him and he wouldn't have gotten into Less Than Jake, Bomb the Music Industry! or We Are The Union without me. It didn't take long before I realized that listening to as much different music as I could was a huge joy that I would never go without again. It was also around this time that I started to get really into thrash metal, soul and power-pop.

The reason I wrote all this out was because it's been on my mind a lot lately. Duff recently got really into New Order and has been talking about how he is also getting really into house music as well. This has gotten him more than his fair share of eye-rolls from our punk friends, as house music is generally something associated with shitty bar kids, but whatever good on him for finding something new that he likes.

I think that the main reason people in the punk community can sometimes look down on people for listening to these type of things is that they're paranoid about their punk friends getting out of punk and leaving them. This is something that happens and it does kind of suck (during high-school Chris, Party Pat and I were the only ones who kept going to shows the whole time), but you can't blame people for having different interests and getting out of things. Life is constantly changing because that's just how it is, so people's tastes change as well. And there's nothing wrong with being friends with people who aren't punk, so why don't you stay friends with them? There is no doubt that Party Pat, Paul, Damien and I all getting into alternative and punk music at the same time was a huge bonding experience for us, but two of them losing their interest in it didn't deter me from staying friends with them and we are still the best of friends. Pretty much everything in life is a two-way street, so it's important to be self-critical and always consider multiple angles when you think about things.

WOW THAT RANT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE.

I don't know, I guess what I'm trying to say boils down to: Like whatever you want to like because you want to. Don't give a shit what other people say about your interests and pursue life for yourself, because somebody has to.

*Welcome to the first ever endnote (Footnote? I've always been on team footnote in my writing but this is just one big long page, so I guess it's a little of both! Whoa! Let's not get too crazy here!) of imusicalgenius.blogspot.com. It has been 5 years in the making and this is truly a momentous occasion. Rather than continuing my usual technique of going off on ridiculous tangents and having random paragraphs breaking up the flow of my "prose", I think that including endnotes in the future might be a good idea. ANYWHO, back to the matter at hand; artists having songs written for them and how fans of rock music mistakenly label this as a sign of that artist's lack of talent. Song-writers are not a new thing. Not even close to a new thing. People think that they can say "Hahaha, The Backstreet Boys? They don't even write their own songs!" and that that qualifies as a rock-solid argument against both their talent and credibility, but that is so far from the truth. Because Marvin Gaye and The Temptations had all of their hits written for them by Holland-Dozier-Holland, so does that make Gaye and The Temps objectively untalented and bad? Because both are certainly objectively very talented and great. Making this argument against artists also completely ignores the tremendous talent of the song-writers; I mean, look at the discography of the aforementioned H-D-H or Max Martin. It's fucking stupid. Some people are good singers or performers, but not good song-writers and that's just the way it goes. Rather than have their talents go to waste performing shitty songs that they write themselves, they get people to write better songs for them. Fucking deal with it. (Also, Katy Perry co-wrote all the hits with Max Martin, so put that in your pipe and smoke it idjits.)