OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

"house band for a generation" is a very bad notion in general which will tend to lead to false and badly written statements.

fine but why you gotta wear pants to do it

My future's so bright I gotta wear pants

omg Kate I stole your joke and didn’t even realise, maximum apologies

― assert (matttkkkk)

just don't use it in your standup set and we're cool

(haha nah you didn't "steal" it you came up with it independently, different thing)

I'd say it isn't inaccurate to state that Gen X sometimes adopts bands from younger generations, especially ones that play real music with real instruments. Wet Leg are the newest Gen X house band, for example

― imago

there is no "generation x", the entire thing about my supposed "generation" is that we don't matter and nobody cares. even the name ultimately derives from a 1964 book about... fucking boomers. to me, my generation are boomers lite. nowadays everybody younger than gen x just calls us boomers and to be _offended_ by that would be the most boomer thing ever. i'm a boomer? ok. fine. whatever.

yeah most of the new music i listen to is from "younger generations", i haven't _adopted_ it, it's just music i find good and relatable. most of the best bands of "my generation" are broken up, dead, or boring. i'm not going to be sitting in a retirement home listening to whatever the fuck the latest tortoise album is, you know?

*John McEntire weeps silently somewhere in Chicago*

judging by his girlfriend mcentire is very in touch with millennials

I'd say it isn't inaccurate to state that Gen X sometimes adopts bands from younger generations, especially ones that play real music with real instruments. Wet Leg are the newest Gen X house band, for example
― imago


not to be all the internet is real life, the amount of real world gen x people who even know who the fuck wet leg is is like 0.0000001 percent

maybe in the US!

In the US it’s Greta Van Fleet

In the US it’s Greta Van Fleet

I’ll say it again

People keep changing the parameters of what Gen X is even … I have never been called or considered a boomer … “we” were basically the population trough kids that were born to be an insignificant demographic minority

Yeah GenXers were born in a baby bust, not a boom. Schools were closing and consolidating when I was a kid because of low enrollment. We’re the kids OF the boomers.

They (we) were even called “Baby Busters” before the Coupland book provided the name that stuck.

soon all generations will agree that Blue Oyster Cult was the only good rock band and peace will reign for a thousand years

History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men...

Schools were closing and consolidating when I was a kid because of low enrollment.

yep. also budgets were being cut for public education and other social programs that benefited children (aka fuck you Reagan) ... and instead we had D.A.R.E. and Just Say No to Drugs and the Satanic Panic

to be fair, also fuck Nixon

and this is why musical touchstones of this "generation" were Danzig-era Misfits and Iron Maiden lol

king wizard gizzard just sold out the hollywood bowl buncha wine drinking gen x-ers filled the place

there's definitely an annoying jam band adjacent fan base developing with them

Also there's a weird old millennial hipster F1 racing thing that I don't like the vibe of

king gizz are core zoomer rock band too is the thing. i'm not into them but who knows, this could change

i used to feel like "gen x" meant anyone in the states who grew up with mass market shit like scooby doo and star wars but now "gen x" just makes me thing "white pavement fan". or even "white people who remember public enemy fondly". maybe it was always like that. the slacker thing. and marketers obviously go where the money is and try to appeal to white millennial/x/boomers in ways that appeal to them. ancient goth rock revival tours. limited edition scooby doo swatches. all that. but maybe i should ask people of color of a certain age if they feel like the term "gen x" or "millennial" speaks to them at all. or if it ever did. I realize its just a fake name that stuck... i feel like even "boomer" meant something different at first. howdy doody. hydrox cookies. still a white thing kinda but broader. and tied in with social justice and Vietnam and blah blah. now i just think of some annoying blowhard talking about seeing Grand Funk once in Springfield, Mass. But that's just an occupational hazard for me. all of this makes me wish i would remember to go to one of those awesome freestyle oldies shows at foxwoods. its right up the road! less than two hours and i could be serenaded by the cover girls and shannon! (i have no interest in most reunion/oldies/anniversary shows. i don't know why. they make me a little sad. i didn't even go see souls of mischief last week TWO DOORS from my store. i have a hard gen x heart. but i will be freestyle until i die.)

i used to feel like "gen x" meant anyone in the states who grew up with mass market shit like scooby doo and star wars but now "gen x" just makes me thing "white pavement fan". or even "white people who remember public enemy fondly".

I totally get this, but as a guy who had his head blown open by Einstürzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth, Big Black, Pussy Galore, Ice-T, Boogie Down Productions, Just-Ice and Eric B. & Rakim all at the same time in high school (and saw Public Enemy, Stetsasonic, EPMD and Big Daddy Kane in 1988) it hurts my heart. Like, my interest in the output of Matador Records ends with the first Unsane record, you know?

xp began as a reflection, grew into a credo

i totally fit the hipster gen x stereotypes. it doesn't bother me. i just say whatevernevermind. i never read infinite jest though. or even the generation x book. i read less than zero though.

I’m going to Freestyle Festival 2023 in a few weeks.

Have a rockin' time!

We are the sandwich generation. The shit sandwich generation.

Culturally, I find it more useful to split the generations... I recently learned the term Generation Jones, which is the tail end of Boomers... i.e., the cohort of folks like Morrissey and Micheal Stipe, who seem to have more in common with the oldest X'ers than they do, say, my dad. And long before the term "Xennial" existed, I felt like I was part of a "post-X" cohort, on the younger side of X'ers. I def feel like I have more in common with folks 10 years younger than me than ppl 10 years older.

Obv it's all BS to a certain degree; but if you're talking about very rough groupings of shared cultural experiences, these "micro-generations" seem to capture it better than the big categories spanning 15 or even 20 years.

Obv it's all BS

sorry to misspell "Michael," btw ("they airbrushed my face"

I’m sure he heard Micheál Stipe plenty of times since REM seemed to love Dublin so much.

What is this shit: https://www.thedriftmag.com/dream-of-antonoffication/

some bizarre claims in that, like what is this:

It is no wonder that Jack has made a cottage industry out of replicating “Venice Bitch.” The song hovers over records like Solar Power and Being Funny in a Foreign Language, the Antonoff collaboration with last-pop-rock-band-standing The 1975, like either a benevolent spirit guide or a demanding ideal ego, something to be emulated but never matched.

i think antonoff is relatively anonymous as a producer despite being so prolific. to the extent that he has a sound it's that sometimes his production/co-writing work ends up sounding very close to his solo work ("out of the woods" etc.) but that was only really prominent early in his production career

If Antonoff had been around in the 70s he would have been just another competent craftsman like Ted Templeman or Bill Szymczyk. People have decided it's necessary to portray him as an auteur for some reason, but he's not.

that feels like what the article is saying tbh. morrisp feeling attacked out here

In the 2000s, a fierce debate raged among music critics between proponents of “rockism,” those committed to enclave principles of taste and a rigorously policed standard of authenticity, and of “poptimism,” those who resisted the idea that some musical genres were worthy of serious critical attention and others were not. Today such terms, along with the divide between high and low culture on which they were premised, feel almost foreign. Increasingly, where once there were musical subcultures with their own standards of taste, under the regime of streaming there is now a free-floating tastefulness, a pop version of what Lee Konstantinou calls “mass high culture.”

ilm bang to rights. mitch therieau should post here lol

"where once there were musical subcultures with their own standards of taste, under the regime of streaming there is now a free-floating tastefulness"

I think there is something in this. But then again I also still feel that music is more balkanized than ever.

i shd add, a competent craftsman who has lucked out on focusing on a couple of replicatable styles which fuse indie and pop aesthetics into machines of sonic suggestion. nothing wrong with that claim - it's an incomplete picture that doesn't address other current movements in pop (contemporary rap or reggaeton, for example, but also a myriad other less-popular trends which ilm loves to ignore) but i feel like 'antonoff pop' is definitely a thing, even though it shouldn't be. he ISN'T an auteur, but his particular limitations have crowned him by default as he lies so close to what is currently tasteful (according to a certain critical hegemony).

lol there was no fierce debate in the 2000s, gtfo, and insofar as a "debate" existed it wasn't Jets-vs-Sharks.

the local indie rock website in Portugal reached out to me at that time to write about pop/hip-hop, which they'd previously ignored as a matter of course, and this was def trickling down from discussions they'd been following amongst UK and US critics

lol there was no fierce debate in the 2000s, gtfo, and insofar as a "debate" existed it wasn't Jets-vs-Sharks.

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 11 July 2023 09:44 (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

how quickly we forget alex in nyc

I think this article is... pretty good? I agreed with the stuff about tasteful pop, Harry Styles etc.

if we really want to re-ignite the beefs of the 00s then plz to respond to what perpetua* says:

If yr gonna publish a Jack Antonoff hit piece in July 2023 and never mention "A&W," the best and most artistically ambitious thing he's ever worked on, then you simply don't have credibility as a critic - yr conveniently leaving something huge out to make a point from 3 years ago

— Matthew Perpetua (@perpetua) July 10, 2023

*i have no particular issue w/perpetua and am totally stirring r/n but for some here he was routinely a PUNCHING BAG

Cuz he was a knob?

I was lurking at the time and thus have no partic issue either but I do remember his "joycore" thing being v embarassing.

You can come and embrace my free-floating tastefulness and feel its ubiquity

I think the best Jack Antonoff indictment was that clip that was going around on twitter where someone listened to a new Taylor Swift album and was able to identify whether he produced the song within the first ten seconds of audio

It's because of his tag: "If Antonoff don't trust you I'm gon' sue you"