Broken Social Scene...C/D?

Broken Social Scene? The worst? Really? Like, worser than Ashlee Simpson?

Care to go into any backing up (i.e., why's and/or what-for's behind) that statement? Or is it just fun to be contrarian (which, I might add is sooo ILM circa 1991)?

Better them then the Drake Juice Ho-bags biking around with Vice tucked into their American Apparel waistbands.

in other words, if they were better i would like their music.

they are the "hippest" flavour-of-the-month cats in the city (eg they were in grunge bands when it was grunge band time, house DJ's when it was house dj time, brazilian groove bands when it was brazilian groove time, etc.).

This description equally applies to Platinum Blonde.

exactly!

Maybe it's just BSS are easier to swallow then BDR since they don't sing that terrible hugger of trees song.

right...

you sounds like you pay more attention to "the scene" than you do to the music.

hehe. Good times.

I know nothing about their scene or what they did before this, and frankly that's ok with me. I don't care what clothes they wear. I don't care if they have beards or not. I don't care if they're hobos eating cold spam out of a can. if they play a mean fiddle and it moves me... then I'm happy.

if music doesn't have the ability to transcend scensterism or hipsterism or whatever its called, then you might as well be listening to justin timberlake or american idol or whatever corporate music's pimping

i wholeheartedly agree, and would much rather be listening to justin timberlake.

some people listen to music because they like to "be cool"

and some people listen to music because they like music

maybe someday there will be an "I love to be cool" message board and you can make fun of all the uncool people out there.

that depends on who you listen to. but if you're implying that no one is pimping justin timberlake, then you're delusional

sure lots of great bands are pimped, promoted and/or talked up by elitist hipsters and bloggers, etc... I'm just saying there is not much difference between tv/celebrity worship fandom and elitist hipster fandom. they are both using "cool" as a way of selling something that, in an ideal world, ought to be sold on the merit of its musical quality. whatever quality that appeals to you or your taste, etc. an artist's image is not a musical quality. would david bowie's music be any less enjoyable if his face was covered in green warts?

forget I mentioned justin timberlake. any number of sad celebrity types could be used here. what about gene simmons? courtney love? michael jackson, etc. do you like the music or do you like the image, the hyper-public personae, the mask of exploitation? there's a difference there and that's the point.

I only implied that your motives are suspect with regards to hating a band because of the image you percieve them to have.

Why is that the point? I love both the hyper-public personae AND the music, both together, webbed through each other, constructing and destructing one another; the music you hear revealing or obscuring the singer you thought you knew in different ways; shake the kaleidoscope and it changes. Every band - just like every web post, every politician's speech, every book or every painting - is addressing a PUBLIC, and if that band doesn't give a toss about how they make that address they're abdicating participation in an entire complex part of their art. I don't know if Broken Social Scene do that, and I don't really care, since I've never liked what little music of theirs I've heard, but to claim they do is not exactly a shining recommendation in my book. In any case, every band has a scene, every group has its way of hailing and being received by a public, and that can be - and usually is - a crucial element into whether a particular person gets excited by them or is bored or offput. No one needs to justify that to anyone.

i don't know, marbles, i think the visual aspect of rock and pop music should be fun and/or mean something and to deny that it does kinda sucks a lot of life out of it. i don't mean everyone has to be beautiful - the way the minutemen and the ramones looked meant a lot too. you bring up bowie which is interesting, because he's probably one of the most image-conscious artists ever. the face covered in green warts phase was probably considered and abandoned at glitterbest. and i do think michael jackson and courtney love and gene simmons have all done really really interesting things visually in their careers... but talking about or being interested in those things doesn't mean that the music is meaningless either. anyway, i guess i know what you're saying, but i don't buy that bss are absent from "the marketing of cool".

I'm not claiming BSS does one or the other. but even "not giving a toss" is a stylized approach to the whole public address, so in that respect there is no way for a public personae to avoid it. (there is, I would argue, an element of class with regards to how one goes about it.) and yes, it is usually a "crucial element" that sadly influences a lot of people. however, if that image or lack there of, makes or breaks the music... well, can we even call it music anymore?

regardless even without the "artist", the song itself is a public address. are you saying that you can't enjoy a song without there being something else attached to it? can't a song come out of no where, completely below the pop culture radar, divorced of any posturing and yet still speak to you? if I had required of music to come with all that baggage I would never have ever fallen in love with The Clean (or for that matter, any number of artists that were introduced to me as music, not as cultural phenomenon).

given your expressed interests of needing an image to make music interesting, its not surprising that BSS doesn't do much for you. well, if some music is less interesting to you becuase you have a bias towards image and the band refuses to play up to that, then what can I say... your loss.

I agree I don't think BSS are absent from "the market of cool." and you're right about images meaning things. but this is a double edged sword and I guess this is why I have a problem it. the image *can* be powerful, but more often then not its just a ruse. its just more pop-culture clutter, a crumpled magazine cover rolling down the city street.