I recently met a new co-worker with a music blogging background, and in a moment of self-aggrandizing weakness i said that i used to do some music blogging too, and gave a straight answer when asked the name of the site.
And then, somewhat fearfully, i put it in the Google to see if there was even anything there anymore, and there is, and one of the first things i saw was a review of a 2004 show by Aloud in which i said they were “kinda boring.” This right after, mind you, noting that they had drawn a sizable, attentive crowd. I didn’t even say i was bored, I said they were boring. Like it was a fact, not an opinion. The hubris! It makes me a little ill. And, frankly, it feels very male in a way that doesn’t sit well with me now.
And I used to do that sort of thing a lot. On purpose, even, maybe. (There are reasons, or there were, once, but they don’t matter now, and never really did.)
I hope i’ve learned a lot in the past two decades. These days if i write about music, i want to share the excitement of finding something that makes my ears fizz, and might fizz other folks’ ears too. I want to not confuse my subjective experience with objective fact. Not gonna sit in judgment like someone elected me an arbiter of good vs. bad, nope.
Meanwhile I just revisited an EP by the band that headlined that night, The Beatings, who I loved (there’s still a part of me that thinks they could nearly have been The Pixies of the aughts, or at least the Dambuilders of the aughts) – but I was hit by a lyric which now feels like a brutal slap of misogyny, and somehow I missed that back then? (and maybe that’s part of why they never broke out of the local Boston scene).
Aloud had a new record out just last year — which I like, in fact — so at least my mean-spiritedness didn’t harm them. But still. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I’m sorry.
I Hate The Sound Of Guitars 