To my elders,
While E may think her propensity to sing along with music in cars is... well, she loves it. The amount of effort she has put into mix tapes and now cds in her life is unbelievable. She trained me in the ways of rock music when I was a kid. She would tape stuff off the radio, purposefully cut off the bit where the DJ would say who it was or the name of the song, and then quiz me. No, seriously. And bonus points if I knew about where the band was from, etc. And yet we didn't care about their personal lives. Because their personal lives could do nothing but potentially ruin the music. Ahem, Matt Good being a... well, you know what I mean.
So has this carried on into my adulthood? Mostly. I know at least what country a band is from. Though I imagine most people do. But sometimes, despite what might be better judgment, I read interviews with some of the bands I like. Tragic, I know. A Dangerous Pastime, as it were. (Pun intended. Pour vous, E). So far I have managed to not let anything I've read change how I feel about the music. Or, after a few weeks, I no longer care. But it still makes me happy when a band I like actually turns out to be as witty and great in interview or story and they are in their songs. And I don't just mean in media stories. I volunteer at a music festival in the summer, and one of my friends once worked performer meals. Which means that she basically met everyone who played at the festival and, you know, stuck around for more than just their set. So Final Fantasy, aka Owen Pallett, is actually as adorable in real life as he is in interviews and between song banter in concert. And
Library Voices, who are clever and smart and well read in song, made puns about The Last Supper and there being 12 of them to fill out the table when going for the Sunday night meal.
And that story doesn't even begin to encapsulate how much I love and appreciate Library Voices music. I may think E's loosing her voice to singing along in the car is slightly embarrassing (hey, it happens. The voice loss part, the embarrassment is just for when it happens to me), but its got nothing on my band love. For Christmas, E got me
Chuck Klosterman's
Hypertheticals. Which are freakin hilarious and awesome. Though I don't think they spark as much debate as CK would have liked. One of these questions, my favourite questions, The Musical Reversal, goes as follows:
"Assume everything about you musical tastes was reversed overnight. Everything you once loved, you now hate; everything you once hated, you now love. For example, if your favourite band has always been R.E.M., they will suddenly sound awful to you; they will become the band you dislike the most. By the same token, if you've never been remotely interested in the work of Yes and Jethro Tull, those two groups will instantly seem fascinating. If you generally dislike jazz today, you'll generally like jazz tomorrow. If you currently consider the first album by Veruca Salt to be slightly above
average, you will abruptly find it to be slightly below
average. Everything will become its opposite, but everything will remain in balance (and the rest of your personality will remain unchanged). So - in all likelihood - you won't love music any less (or any more) than you do right now. There will still be artists you love and who make you happy; they will be merely all the artists you currently find unlistenable.
Now, I concede that this transformation would make you unhappy. But explain why."
E and I had a long discussion about whether this question was even possible. Not that its ridiculous, because that is the point, but the part that says that
your personality will stay the same. I suppose if this happens overnight my magic, your personality would stay the same, but if this is asking you to imagine your
life if this were the case, it is, E claimed, impossible. But for the moment, let's assume the first. That its magical, and you wake up and think its completely weird. It would be interesting to find out what band you hated the most, since you will now love them, and who you are really indifferent to, because they will not have changed. So why would it make you unhappy? We have decided it is because you like the music you like
for a reason. It reflects all the tiny huge things about yourself that you rarely even think about. Or, if you're me, only ever really thought about while having an extended conversation defending rock music to a hip-hop music lover, via hand written notes in 11th grade English class. (I had to do something to pass the time, and finding a music lover with such different tastes was fascinating.) So I, like E, values lyrics. Values the message of a song. I also value whether the music itself is interesting. Whether the singing blends with the melody (which is good) or is its own instrument, adding new levels to the song (which is creative and cool and not that common, and I hate to admit it, but is the reason why the singer from Fall Out Boy is far better than he should be). I like the melody and the rhythm and choruses and songs that have only 1 verse but are sung through twice with no chorus (like Mr. Brightside by the Killers and about a million Less Than Jake songs).
How is this embarrassing? Because when we thought about what The Musical Reversal would mean if it happened to us, E said she wouldn't be able to listen to Sammie anymore, aka the Sam Roberts Band, and I said that it "would, like, hurt my soul if I thought Library Voices made bad music." And I proceeded to tear up. And
not voluntarily. I actually started to cry. And I was laughing at myself while doing it, but it still went on for a solid 5 minutes. My mother was making fun of me. But I couldn't help it. It was like my heart knew how wrong it was,
not to like this band.
Not to like all the bands I adore. Because they are
who I am. I have always been this way. I had an existential crisis when I started listening to softer music in university and felt like I had abandoned the punk and ska of my teenage years. I admit that this is possibly a bad way to be. But then, I started crying from the
thought of waking up one day and not liking Library Voices. So I don't think I really have any say in the matter.
-K
One of my favourite Library Voices songs:
Bookish.
