Podcast Painkillers

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Editor’s NotePlease 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.

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