My New Favorite Band is...

Lowbrow Answer: Mumford & Sons
Where they hell did these douchebags come from? All of a sudden, every girl I've ever met is selling her ovaries to get a ticket to a Mumford & Sons concert. I don't get it. They sound like a roofing company or a real estate firm. If you're going to pander to upper-middle class girls with semi-coherent, vaguely poetic ramblings about love, at least have the common courtesy to call yourself "Coldplay" or "John Mayer."

Every girl tells me how dreamy it is that Mumford & Sons used to be homeless and play on the streets of London or wherever. I'm sorry, but women don't like poor dudes. They like diamonds and Audi's and guys who pick up the tab at The Geisha House. I know you like to think that Mumford & Sons are some motley band of starving artists, but they're not. They're on Island Records, for Christ's sake. They probably use hundred-dollar bills to blow coke off Megan Fox's chest.


Middlebrow Answer: Florence and the Machine
Okay, so she's pretty hip. And her voice is sometimes great. And "Dog Days Are Over" is a fucking good song. But I already spent all my energy liking this band back when they were called Metric /La Roux / The Gossip / Goldfrapp / The Yeah Yeah Yeahs / Silversun Pickups. Does the planet really need another tone-deaf anorexic girl mincing around stage in platform shoes? Hey honey, see that thing you're doing where you're not quite hitting any of the notes? That's called going flat.

I don't really get this whole heroin chic look that Kate Moss made famous. You know, that thing where you wear a lycra unitard from the 1980's and you overuse dark blue eye makeup and you wear stilettos that are 15 inches too high and your legs look like fleshy toothpicks and you vomit up every packet of Splenda that you allow yourself to eat and your boyfriend looks like he was kicked out of The Strokes for being too cool. Can somebody explain it to me? Mischa Barton, I'm looking at you.


Highbrow Answer: The London Philharmonic Orchestra
You ever notice how pop music is totally inane and stupid? Yeah, me too. Here's an idea. Don't listen to it. You want well-crafted, profound art? Bach is your boy. Or Mozart. Or Liszt. Or ANY OTHER European classical composer. (Except for Wagner. Antisemitic prick.) As much as I appreciate Katy Perry's futile attempts at harmony, I think I'll stick to Beethoven's fifth. You may have heard of it. It's the one with the 57 separate instrumental lines and 15 sections of syncopated rhythms. Oh, but yeah, "California Gurls" is great too.

It's hard to argue with 40 different instruments all playing the same song. Look, I like Lady Gaga as much as the next guy, but her music really suffers from a distinct lack of contrabassoon. I think that earthy tone could really add some depth to songs like "Pokerface" or "That one where she's dressed like a French sex toy in the video." Mankind has taken the time to invent the English Horn - why not use it? (I will hunt you down and kill you in your sleep if you ever say anything bad about the English Horn. Goddamn miracle of nature.)

Best German Classical Composer?

Lowbrow Answer: Ludwig Von Beethoven
Ode to Joy? Really? You're going to write an epic symphony, your last, in fact, and you're going to call it "Ode to Joy?" Why not "Ode to Puppies and Sunshine and Butterflies?" Happy people blow.

The only reasons anybody knows who you are is that they've either seen "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" where you're introduced as "Beeth-Oven," or they've seen Charlie Brown cartoons where Schroeder plays your Moonlight Sonata over and over again until I want to kill myself. Either way, my friend, you're deaf and you're lowbrow.


Middlebrow Answer: Richard Wagner
Wagner's Ring Cycle is the most epic opera ever written. It's basically four operas in a row that take seventeen hours to perform. I can't even sleep for seventeen hours in a row, let alone write an opera of that length. Well played, Richard.

On the other hand, you're an anti-Semitic douche. You wrote essays on why Jews are inferior creatures and Hitler and his Nazi buddies all listened to your work. Asshole. Besides, my feelings concerning The Ring Cycle are identical to my feelings concerning a Porn-star's Penis: Just because it's long doesn't automatically mean I want it in my ears.


Highbrow Answer: Johannes Brahms
You know that piece of music that has become the Lullaby? The one that gets played during Loony Tunes cartoons when Daffy Duck is sleeping and Bugs Bunny is sneaking up on him with a sledgehammer? Brahms wrote that. He wrote the lullaby. What the fuck have you done recently?

It's also widely rumored that Brahms seduced Schumann's wife, Clara. What a legend. He could have gone after any girl in 1860's Vienna and who does he choose? Schumann's wife. That's like being offered a choice between fighting a Whooping Crane or fighting a Velociraptor, and choosing the raptor. Just because you enjoy a challenge.