Meh I guess I don't know what constitutes a person as being a fan or just a listener, I guess that attitude comes from being a sports fan where I can't consider those who sparingly or never watch games to be real fans. I feel like passion is what makes a person a fan and I don't see that attitude in the people who only follow something moderately. It's an elitist attitude but it's just how I feel and I guess I can see now it can't apply the same to music.

I dunno, I just think there's nothing to be elitist about. All I'm seeing right now is someone who consumes a lot of popular music looking down on someone who consumes a different kind of popular music.

I would say a music fan is someone who listens to music. There is no line to draw between fan and listener. If there is a line to draw in the music world, I suppose you could draw one between the fans and musicians, but even that is kind of a useless distinction to make because the existence of both is necessary.

nice post batman. that's awesome about the little girl.


i regret to say i have. a guy i kinda knew back in dubai said he 'hated' music. at first i thought "oh maybe he listens to classical or something" but it turns out that he actually hated the idea of recorded sounds. he doesn't listen to any music, ever.

all of it was probably derived from the fact that he was a fundamentalist muslim (but not like an aggressive one or anything, just really introverted and religious). but, he hated music. still makes no sense to me.

Rashed and Will, I could not agree with you guys any more.

That little girl has probably never listened to neutral milk hotel or pavement ap I can't respect her opinion as a music fan

I know when I was in middle school and listened to Blink-182, Smash Mouth, and Barenaked Ladies, I was just as passionate about those artists as I am about my favorite artists now. I fucking knew everything about Blink-182. I wasn't as determined to explore new types of music as I am today, but I was also, like, 12 and file-sharing was only in its infancy. I don't care for those artists anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't still appreciate the pleasure and joy they gave me at the time.

And regarding disliking music, I've never met anyone in person, but the author Vladimir Nabokov didn't care for music. He was synaesthetic, so maybe that had something to do with it (his brain simply wasn't wired to appreciate music?), but he was also just a strange and sometimes belligerent contrarian.

Also, Taylor Swift is awesome.

While you're probably right that a nine-year-old hasn't hear those artists, I don't agree with your larger point. For one, almost everyone I know who's my age has heard Neutral Milk Hotel. Like, it's popular with bros at my school. Guys who listen to Jack Johnson and Matchbox 20. And secondly, those artists are significant in the development of indie music in the last fifteen years - a terribly small section and time-period of music in the grand scheme of things. Just on this board alone, a guy like George has probably wider and more eclectic tastes than just about anyone else and if he's heard those two bands, I've never seen him talk about them at all.

And point to the nine-year-old for never having heard Pavement. They suck.

i am pretty certain that chicken sandwich post was typed with tongue firmly lodged in cheek

of Hard Knocks

Yeah, I realized that after I posted.

Well, it's not really popular, and mostly just the track In the Aeroplane Over the Sea as far as I can tell. Anyway, it's a small liberal arts college in Buttfuck Nowhere, Missouri, USA.

I miss college now

sorry i have to take a breather and talk about this album


Big K.R.I.T.- Return of 4 Eva

There is a revelation that happens when you listen to this album all the way through when it closes with the remix to Country Shit. Like Drum's Not Dead's "Other Side" or the Flaming Lips' "Watching the Planets", the closer culminates what you just listened to, making sense of it all, becoming this jarring spark of accessibility. The kind of epiphany that you never expect and live for as a music fan. I nearly teared up and I had no idea why, for after all, it's all just a bunch of country shit right? ReturnOf4Eva, or rather Big K.R.I.T. himself, is a tough sell because the album is such a meaty thing to tackle, nearly devoid of anything like a hit song that pops out really. Beats aren't big, it's not laden with gluing skits, hell I wouldn't even say the lyrical talent here is something to admire that much. But once you commit and just say fuck it, and proceed to listen and re-listen to it, you will yield to its unrelenting sap-drip mood and rhythms and each song becomes a frame of mind that you never want to let go of. What seems chill at first becomes absolutely alive, an explosive, emotional yearning expressed in such a serene way that is only felt if you submit your trust, which Big K.R.I.T. humbly asks for with eyes lowered.

Yes.

So goddamn tr00, wanta, so goddamn tr00.