Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Best Marginal Genre of Music?

Lowbrow Answer: Popera
"Popera" is a strange musical No Man's Land that exists somewhere between Pop and Opera. It's not quite catchy enough to be on regular radio and it's not quite good enough to be called "classical." Never heard any of this shit before? Just look for large groups of white middle-class women; there's bound to be Popera nearby.

Josh Groban is the Czar of this travesty, and with good reason. He has the perfect mix of semi-talent and quasi-attractiveness that moistens the panties of every housewife in America. Just like Coldplay or Regis Philbin.


Middlebrow Answer: Horror-Core
I don't care what you say about the Insane Clown Posse; at least those guys put on a show. They've got jugglers and strippers and midgets in hobo outfits and pregnant manatees and all kinds of other crazy shit on stage when they perform. None of that haughty Radiohead ignore-the-audience bullshit here. You go to a Horror-Core show and you're getting an experience; a nightmarish, pulsating concert complete with soda cannons, horny hillbillies, and all the herpes you can take.

Of course, lyrically, Horror-Core falls a bit short. There are only so many ways you can talk about murdering a Bitch-Nutz with your Juggalo Hatchet. I'd like to see some of these groups branch out. I wonder what an ICP song about clouds or endless love would sound like. Probably something like, "I'm a murder that Cloud-Nutz with my Endless Love Hatchet."


Highbrow Answer: Post-Rock
Welcome to the User's Guide to Making Post Rock.
Step 1: Collect five non-Americans and put them in a band together. Make sure one of them is a girl. She should be shorter than 5'5" and be from Japan.
Step 2: Force the band to play their guitars with screwdrivers and wine glasses and anything else that isn't normally used to play a guitar.
Step 3: Every song must be longer than 10 minutes.
Step 4: No song is allowed to have lyrics.
Step 5: The band's name must be something obscure and strange like, "Godspeed You! Black Emperor" or "Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band." (those are both real acts, by the way) Bonus points for misusing punctuation in the name of the group.
Step 6: All artwork must be grainy and shot in black and white.
Step 7: At least 80% of the group's music must be amelodic and unlistenable.

If the first thought in your head after reading that list isn't, "HIGH-FUCKING-BROW" then stop reading this blog.

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