**Disclaimer: This particular blog is not full of my customary universal truths, but rather my opinions.  If you are not a fan of opinions, you might not be a fan of this individual piece of writing.  If you feel you’re being personally attacked in this entry, well you probably are; your guilt is very telling.  Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean I’m not after you.**

                                                                   **

Music today is horrible.  I think a lot of us can agree on that.  There are very few bands working today that create solidly listenable music.  I assure you: I try.  Regularly I try.  I can be very accommodating.  I have never walked out of a movie in the theater.  Partly because I appreciate the value of a dollar and an afternoon spent, but mostly because I’m relatively easy to please.  I’ve seen some godawful stinkers in my time, but I believe everyone has the right to their full say.  Even Michael Bay.

 Now, from what lofty pedestal do I hurl my accusations at today’s musical efforts?  Well, obviously, my taste in music is awesome; if nothing else, it is better than yours.  This is not opinion, this is relative fact.  My taste in music is better than yours because it’s mine.  If ever at any point you feel that you can admit that someone else has better taste in music than you, well then you’ve lost.  At life, in general.  It’s over for you.  The one and only irrefutable truth in my life is that my taste in music rocks, as should yours.

 By making this claim do I attest that your taste in music sucks?  Maybe, but not necessarily so.  It’s just not as good as mine; that’s all.  There’s a lot of wiggle room between “rocks” and “sucks”.  Your taste could merely “blow” or at best “kick-ass”, but don’t hope to attain my level of rockin’.  You’ll just get hurt that way.

Back to music today.  Music today is bad, and worse yet, it’s on purpose.  There are bands out there with ironic hair and poorly planned mustaches modeling their sound after crap because “bad” is the new “good”.  Good music is cliché, passé, mainstream, pop culture; the only way to stand amidst the weeds is to suck.  Artistically suck, but suck nonetheless.  They minimalize their approach, emulate off-key singing (or worse yet, gypsy music), eliminate bassists altogether (who the fuck do you think you are, Jack White?), and mold their image into a sycophantic mishmash of fuckall and slacker anti-fashion.  You look like an asshole in those jeans, douchebag, and your beard isn’t fooling anyone, you’re 23.  Get a job.

 I personally make bad music, but it’s because I have no money, shitty equipment, and no talent.  If I could put the music in my head into your ears the way I hear it, it would sound good.  Certainly better than a good amount of the crap on the radio, or worse yet, on VH1 or MTV.  And, yes, if you squint real hard, drink copious amounts of absinthe, and slaughter a goat the day previous, you can catch actual music on MTV between 4:00 and 4:01am on the second Tuesday of every month with an “M” in its name. 

 Why do I say this?  Because, as we’ve already established, my taste in music is awesome, music today is awful, and I have an opinion.  An opinion, by the way, is something you form yourself based on your experiences and passions; not something you buy at Buffalo Exchange for three times its original value because some clove-smoker sweat into it before you. 

 All that said, I am still an unabashed fan of music and anytime I see someone trying to express themselves through the lyrical muse I get a little tingly and need to sit down for a spell.  I don’t care if your music is bad; keep making it.  If your taste in music is bad, keep listening to it.  Because in your stupid, wrong eyes, it rocks.  And because you believe that, it makes it true.  That’s what relative facts are.  Something that is true to someone who believes it. 

 So, with that in mind, all this rhetorical hoopla is for naught.  My opinion is only as valid as the spit and sinew required to spew it, and you can take it as that or leave it as utter bullshit.  Such is your right.  And, to clarify, there are songs and artists that I enjoy that sometimes themselves rub me the wrong way.  As Lewis Black says, music is something that affects you differently at different points in your life, and will rarely strike your ears the same way or evoke the same imagery in your mind twice.  (He goes on to say that if you see a music video and it matches exactly what you see in your mind’s eye when you hear that song, kill yourself.)  I’m not always in the mood for Frank Sinatra, but when I am, no one else will do.  And when I need to laugh, no working band or musician does the trick quite like Oceano.  Man, they crack my shit up!

 So listen to your shit music, wear whatever you want, and if you truly believe your bad is the new good, then more power to you.  It does little to change my steadfast opinion that music today sucks.