Editor’s Note: Please welcome new Knox Road contributor, Art Tavana. Art is based in L.A. and will be writing long-form, short-form and everything in between. Enjoy his first piece about our favorite kind of people. [Image via Lovato Design, photo by Joslyn Baker.]
Music snobbery is rooted in the blind pursuit of a transient experience; a temporary fix predicated on unearthing new music during the incubation phase of an artist’s career. But unless you’re Lester Bangs discovering Astral Weeks for the first time, it usually amounts to wasted hours on SoundCloud listening to bands that sound like shit Robin Pecknold wrote during a moonshine-induced bath in the backwoods of some mountainous terrain in the Pacific Northwest. While the archeologist (i.e. Indiana Jones) is rewarded with recognition in ’80s adventure movies and gooey diary entries from starry-eyed college girls who have a thing for bull-whips — the music snob is fulfilled with the momentary experience of listening to a band with 12 ‘Likes’ on Facebook that some tattooed baristas might find ‘interesting.’ It’s the experience of downloading a mixtape by a rapper named Jonwayne, who takes you back to a Brian Eno record during a daytime nap, followed by wondering why you’re listening to Beethoven’s Ninth, drunk, and writing about a band that sounds like the Savages, but looks like the Bangles. Coffee with condensed milk and a side of KCRW’s Morning Become Eclectic is routine. The need to break through the doors of perception and find something different becomes habitual.
It’s a form of masochism; a perversion based on the daily grind to discover new music before your peers do. For the sexual deviant, masochism is a form of physical abuse resulting from exploitive and violent relationships. My favorite kind. For the music snob; it digs deeper. It’s an acceptance, on a daily basis, that you’re always going to be playing catch up in a nightmarish slow motion race to discover a new remix of an old Dilla beat. Even worse is realizing that someone in the UK, probably some Londoner who thinks Marcus Mumford is brilliant, has more time and disk-space to invest in the music gold rush than you ever will. The sonic feeding process amounts to trench warfare for the music snob — who spends hours reading blogs, downloading mixtapes, and making a feeble attempt to tap into something special that deserves some ink. When a music critic in Canada or Australia writes about band you’ve never heard about — you simply cannot live without their new their LP, and within 24-hours, you’re comparing them to early-Talking Heads while listening to the Clash and praying that one day, you’ll hear the next Joe Strummer instead of some repetitive electronic mélange of everything you’ve heard since 2007 and every other boring Coachella set.
We look to Europe for something different and smart; maybe even learning some Spanish in the process of reading reviews in Madrid’s Ruta; while thousands of Europeans are obsessed with Americana and okie-sentimentality that seems manufactured on the pages of Rolling Stone. None of it makes any sense. Like the greedy American stock trader who lives in five different time zones — the music snob is always trying to tap into emerging markets before they become, well, emerged. In some cases, we lose ourselves in a caffeine-induced hunt that involves listening to Nina Nesbitt covers on BBC’s Live Lounge at 3 a.m., while reading about how this singer-songwriter guy named ‘The Frog’ is big in Spain. Meanwhile, you’re scanning a long email from Bob Lefsetz, bookmarking the artist page of some punk band that puked during their set at the Smell, and obviously — you spill your lukewarm coffee when you realize your SXSW playlist on Spotify doesn’t include Colleen Green or some indie lo-fi, shoegaze, alt-rock outfit from Portland.
For the possessed music snob, myself included, the arms race for sonic discovery involves preemptive strategies that require the occasional retuning. For me, the process is scientific, and like the Manhattan Project or attempts to unscramble the Spice network feed in the 7th grade — it’s done in complete anonymity within the confines of my war-torn Apple MacBook’s password protected womb. But it’s time I shared a secret with the world; a weapon in the war of music supremacy that you may already be using, but hardly as obsessed with as I am. My iTunes library of Podcasts, not too long ago, was minuscule compared to the army of music criticism I’ve collected in the past week. New tools, which are most likely not approved for use, have allowed me to decode BBC podcasts that “are not available outside the UK.” Zane Lowe’s BBC 1 podcast, which mostly talks about trite pop music, allowed me to be the first of my American friends to know about Jay Z and Kanye’s “four-day argument” during the recording of Watch the Throne. At least that’s what I tell myself.
Forward-thinking record labels are even getting into the mix. Stones Throw, for example, allowed me the pleasure of listening to Jonwayne’s new Daytime Naps mixtape — which offers a 67-minute dreamlike experience that taps into a transistor radio mix of sleepy melodies, buzzing sounds, and Brian Eno ambiance. Without the Stones Throw podcast, I would not have listened to Jonwayne’s new mixtape the first day it was released.
Like most of you, I couldn’t make it to Glastonbury because I don’t live in Europe or work for BBC. But with the Guardian’s Music Weekly podcast, I had the opportunity to get a full recap of Glastonbury directly from the soiled ground, right behind the windy bass-pounding Pyramid Stage, with early reviews of Beady Eye doing Oasis, Public Enemy without Flavor Flav, falsified weather broadcasts (witty apologies included), and the pleasurable experience of listening to Kieran Yates and Rebecca Nicholson talk about penises and the boring Rolling Stones set; which included a 12-minute “Midnight Rambler” rendition I’m glad I missed. Of course, I started following Kieran and Rebecca on Twitter for sonic discovery purposes only, and before long, I was reading about Kieran’s experience at H&M: 12 year old girls singing along to Juicy J on ratchet pussy so Y’KNO. This, my friends, would not happened without podcasts.
Music literature your fancy? Simon Warner’s first U.S. interview about his Text and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll book, which covers the influence of the Beat poets on rock ‘n’ roll, happened on WBEZ 91.5’s Sound Opinions podcast. I just ordered the book on Amazon. Then a few days ago, BBC’s Huw Stephans brought me to Brooklyn’s Empress Of — who recorded a session on BBC that sounds otherworldly during my Runyon hike. I’m now salivating over sounds from Coverville, The Unearthed Five, CD Baby’s Music Discovery podcast, and a music podcast from Barcelona, in Catalonian, which covers local punk bands and their obsession with getting shit-faced at Nevermind — a local pub dedicated to Nirvana. That’s all I could understand.
Music podcasts have literally altered my music discovery process. It’s a Frankenstein that I no longer have control, and that’s how I like it. Take it from me, stay away unless you’re prepared to start going on long walks, by yourself, while listening to Danish electro-pop while running down a steep hill during a now dangerous hike that includes a few advertisements, some music history, and loads of campy British humor.
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