Alexis Petridis listens to every album released in October in The Guardian today, which seems like it would be a relatively horrible task , given that it means that you'd have to listen to all that stuff that you pass in the record shop with out ever even giving a thought to listening to. Some of it includes: " New Christian Music, which seems to be alt-country with added God-bothering. There is something that advertises itself as the 'hardest techno you've ever heard - maximum headcase extreme noise terror'"
He talks about the difficulty in discerning any specific trend in music, that everything appears to be making a comeback, and download cultures promotion of the song over the album. I don't know how I stand on this yet; even when I download, I usually download albums, but this might be out of habit. And I often have a fondness for the 'bad' songs by some of my favourite bands, they can make me laugh, and wonder at the audacitiy of putting them on a album in the first place. Plus, if you take the 'bad' songs off an early Sebadoh, GBV or any Fall album and you've suddenly got a much different listening experience. A better listening experience?
I'll take an audiaciously bad song over a just-kind-of-okay-and-innoffensive song any day. I remember that my high school art teacher Mrs. Ridley used to say that all art that takes risks goes through an in-between ugly stage, and you have to be able to go through that with out rejecting what you're working on. I have a nagging feeling that feeling avoiding the 'bad' stuff might mean there's less good stuff in the long run.
But, on the other side, I guess the point could be made that you can still make the bad stuff, just don't release it. Or just don't download it, which is what peope are doing now anyway.
Elsewhere, Alexis mentions a song on a Buggles (of Video Killed the Radio Star fame) rerelease about Astroboy that got me excited for a second, until he added that it was "awful beyond measure"
On that note, I should put together a disk of all comic-book inspired songs, some McCartney(that Magneto song on Venus and Mars), some Joe Satriani... some...
Actually, no, I should NOT put together a disk of all comic-book inspired songs.
