“So, what do you listen to?”
It’s the getting-to-know-you music fan equivalent of
asking students their majors. With just a few words, your new
friend’s genre(s) of choice lets you mentally file away his
or her entire existence into a neat little category. It’s
generalizing, unfair and entirely useless, but we all do it anyway,
because it’s a lot easier to take people at face value than
to actually try to get to know them.
Most of the time, I like to pretend these categories mean
something. All sorts of assumptions and stereotypes pop up when
someone’s major is revealed. Bio majors on the pre-med track:
petty, heartless, masochistic. Bio majors going into something
else: probably couldn’t hack it as pre-meds. English majors
of the male gender (including yours truly): pansies. Geography
majors: People can major in geography?
By the same token, Top 40 listeners: even more petty, heartless
and masochistic. Alternative listeners: couldn’t take the Top
40 anymore. Indie kids: pansies. Punk rock fans: People still
listen to punk rock?
And people who say they listen to “everything” are
the undeclared students of music listeners. They know what they
like, but just haven’t gotten around to admitting it.
By the nature of being stereotypes, however, these
predetermined, categorical assumptions pretty much never hold true.
General musical likes usually don’t tell you much about a
person, or how compatible you might be with them.
At a bar last week with four others, the “what do you
listen to” conversation was repeated around the table by each
person as we searched for some common ground. It began with a guy
talking ““ and passionately at that ““ about punk rock. I
threw around the names of some essentials like the Ramones, the Sex
Pistols, The Clash ““ part of the GE requirements for any
music fan ““ but suffice it to say, I had no idea what he was
talking about. My roommate then launched into an equally
disorienting diatribe on Bach. Then it was my turn. Hip-hop. I got
asked about the Pharcyde, and went into a little clarification
about the futility of the underground/mainstream dichotomy. We
weren’t really getting anywhere.
Then, for a minute, there was hope. “I like Pink
Floyd,” one girl piped in, followed by a chorus of “I
love Pink Floyd!” We looked over at the last remaining member
of our little group. She shook her head: No, she didn’t
listen to Pink Floyd. So much for that.
She also happens to be my closest friend in the bunch, because
none of those things really matter. I’m an English student
with a documented penchant for hip-hop; that’s too vague to
say anything about me. But, say I tell you that I grew up in Texas,
was raised by my mom, and am deathly afraid of even numbers ““
well, now I’m starting to talk about the specifics of an
actual person, beyond those categorical assumptions.
There is one key area where a person’s music genre of
expertise should matter more, and that’s rock journalism. Out
of all the various parts of the musical ecosystem ““
musicians, labels, journalists, consumers ““ music writers are
the only ones where doing their job incorrectly is actually a bad
thing. (Sure, I scream bloody murder at the atrocities committed by
major labels, but it’s their job to sell at all costs ““
I just wish they’d show some decency along the way.)
Most of the older rock journalists out there from the ’60s
and ’70s majored in … well, rock. The younger writers
making a lot of noise these days come from an indie aesthetic
““ groups like Radiohead and Pavement, Sonic Youth and the
Pixies. Most have done their best to expand and become
knowledgeable about an extremely wide range of music. Still,
through no fault of their own, there remains for whatever reason an
over-saturation of writers with the same listening background.
Common sense says you should write about what you know.
Therefore, rock journalists, for the most part, have stayed away
from subgenres like punk rock and metal. I had no idea what my punk
rock enthusiast was talking about, because it’s just not
covered as much. And to get back to the analogy one more time, most
writers have the equivalent of a minor in hip-hop, which means that
insightful criticism of possibly the biggest cultural force in the
world right now is sorely lacking. Heck, music is created in
hundreds of languages besides English, but we’re pretty much
left in the dark about that, too. Listening backgrounds don’t
dictate at all who you are as a person, but they are a central part
of a music writer’s perspective. And that’s
what’s missing right now. Perspective.
As for me, I’m probably going to keep on asking strangers
what they listen to anyway, out of sheer habit. But we really
shouldn’t care ““ unless, of course, the person’s
a music journalist.
E-mail Lee at alee2@media.ucla.edu.