On Music

I was browsing my iTunes library today and trying to organize the genres into something I can use when I stumbled across the myriad of “alternative” prefixed categories. Alternative Jazz, Alternative Rock, AlternRock, Alternative Folk, Alternative Punk- and let me stop here to comment on the absurdity of that particular redundancy. If we can all agree that “alternative” means outside of the mainstream, possibly indie and possibly obscure even, and if we can also agree that “punk”is by its very nature all of these things plus rebellion… then what is the necessity of stating the “alternative” in the “punk?” To be fair to the early titans of Rock, the swingers of Jazz, and the singers of blues all clearly defined genres were once avant-garde and frowned upon by the traditional older generation. It is evidence of Hegel’s rhythm of time that so many formerly clearly defined sounds have been contrasted against their complement and together grown bright; together grown dull. The melding of identifying styles is not of necessity a bad thing, but it is still a little sad to look at the smear of brown paint on the palette and try to remember how green was the green, or how blue was the blue, or how vibrant the difference between blue and celurean. In the brown you can still make out flecks of vivid colour, but the streaks have blended and merged to change the whole in a small but irreplicable way.

I’m not preaching the end of the world, I’m just waiting for the next movement that makes the hairs on my arms stand up. Because if you want my opinion, and obviously you do or you wouldn’t be reading this, goosebumps are the only judge of what is truly good or bad, simply because the reaction is so visceral and instantaneous. But in the meantime I’ll satisfy myself with Belle & Sebastian’s “Piazza, New York Catcher,” The Distillers’ “Drain the Blood,” The Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’” and the like.