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[Arachno-capitalist]

Who was it that said "Writing about music is like tap-dancing about architecture."

Genre labels are pretty much meaningless to me.  Music is either good or it isn't, no matter what category you try to force it into.  I suppose genres can be useful if you want to find music similar to something you already like.  But otherwise, I don't care what you call it.

My favorite genre will always be Tis távlas - the drinking songs of ancient Epirus. Or the Sygyt style of Xoomii school Tuvan throat singing.

[theinevitable]

oh man, LFM, our ideas about what makes good rock music are so at odds that I will just concede that we are always going to disagree on this.

when I was in 10th grade, I was obsessed with Led Zeppelin. And I used to listen to Whole Lotta Love over and over... but not the whole song. I'd just fast-forward to the point like 3:00 minutes in where the guitars get all crunchy and nuts and he plays the solo. Then I'd rewind to 3 minutes again, then listen to it again. I did this with a lot of songs. Find the 5 seconds which were the most intense, and listen to it over and over.
Then my friend Sarah told me to check out The Velvet Underground, and then The Ramones, and it all kind of went on from there.

Now when I get in that kind of mood, I just listen to something like "Don't Try to Call" by Husker Du. It's exactly a minute and thirty seconds long, and that entire time span is just intense guitar chords and crazy drums and yelling.

I mean, I like a lot of other kinds of music, but this is the music that really grabs me. I love some insane guitar solos and crazy complex jazz stuff and all, but... I dunno, man.

I also have a tendency to describe things I absolutely love in terms that make people think they're horrible.
"man, it's just... it's just a bunch of teenage guys playing their instruments as fast as they can for a minute and then stopping!"
"man, I love my guitar! it's really sharp sounding, and kind of crunchy, and half the buttons don't work, and it's sound doesn't really fit into most kinds of music..."
"oh man, (name) is such a cool chick! she's like, kind of socially awkward and overenthusiastic, and phrases things in weird ways, and is built like an adolescent boy, and she's a sociology major! that's like the department of being too liberal about stuff! plus, she makes really insane abstract art!"
"I love listening to LPs! They're all old and scratchy, and they're a pain to listen to, and you can't skip songs!"
"Dude, I just paid 7 dollars for this 45... and it only has 2 songs on it! and one is horrible!"

[Arachno-capitalist]

Inev has just described the formula for how DJs evolved scratching as an art form. In another life, DJ Inev would make the rudest remixes of rock guitar.

[AugustWest]

There... there basically isn't anything more antithetical to my point of view on the rock and roll music than the idea of "punk". Everyone can enjoy what they want and... totally penisltov to that... but anything where there is a PREMIUM put upon not really knowing how to tune or use the tools at hand is not my thing.

I don't know what "punk" is.  I've been around a lot of arguments about whether a certain band is or is not "punk".  It always seemed to me that the folks involved were more interested in talking about it than listening to it.

But what you're describing, Inev, I have no problem with.  You like what you like and you listen to what you think is good.  That's what it's all about.  Good music is good music no matter what you call it.

I think you and LFM are talking about two different things.  You use "Post-hardcore" (or whatever it was) as a label for a set of music that you like.  LFM has criticized the idea of post-hardcore, or any hyphenated genre -- not the actual music you like.  I tend to agree with LFM that when a genre defines itself in terms of another genre  (i.e. post-whatever, anti-this, neo-that) it is usually so self-conscious and removed from raw creativity that good product is seldom produced.

If I, as an artist, am defining myself as a "Post-Whateverist", I'm probably worrying too much about critics and genres and not enough about the work.  That's not to say that if a critic calls my work "Post-Whatever" it can't be good.

[melack]

Okay, let's... let's not delve into the "All punk bands can't play instruments and are all about the sceeeene" canard. And let's also not act like these "post-hardcore" bands went around calling themselves that like some badge of honor,  neglecting the fact that it was music journalists in desperate need of a way to describe them without confusing readers with a brand new word.

And August is right: genre labels are mostly terrible. Music is a goddamned dirty, disgusting underground root system with millions of branching paths, constantly growing and evolving. Tagging a genre with a certain label is a fool's errand when every band is basically tangled in a web of inspiration incomprehensibly complex.

To use a shitty metaphor.

[littlefallsmets]

Basically, what I'm saying... beyond my personal tastes (wherein, yeah, the vast majority of punk DOES sound like that to my ears, but if you dig it, I'm glad you dig it) it's...

Basically the whole "post" thing.

I can wrap my head around the idea of "hardcore". It's not my thing but I basically get it.

But the difference between "hardcore" and "post-hardcore" I am boggled at.

[theinevitable]

see, to me the two sound very different?

I am not kidding.

[pmcd9]

Music is for listening to, not arguing about.