our hyperopic musical tastes

[roid]

What is hyperopia?

Hyperopia, also known as long-sightedness or far-sightedness, is the condition in which close objects appear blurry. A longsighted person may have good distance vision but will have trouble with close objects.


i was done being elitist with my music tastes a few years ago. i used to define myself with my taste, but it was getting in the way.

i will listen to anything that crosses my path now. i still have my tastes, but hey if it's THERE then why not get into it instead of running away and blocking the ears.

these words havn't been more true:
-.it's all good.-

there is still something underlying that bothers me about the whole scene though, that this doesn't cure.
the thing is that i've found that there is sounds that i like everywhere, you can spread your fingers far and wide to find all the music you love, you can even keep yourself confined to just your city alone and STILL find the music you love.

so the thing that still bothers me is when i look at people, watch their habits, and wonder if they are simply trying to be cool with their music tastes. there is so much sweet music everywhere, so why are people choosing only to stick to a certain amount of ultra-popular artists?

thanks to mass everything (but i'm talking of mass marketing) these artists are servicing the WHOLE WORLD at once. people in all countrys are eagerly awaiting the latest release of one person, or one group. we live in a world of a few billion, and millions of us are confining ourselves to just a few GLOBAL artists. the scale is all wrong. do we really realise we have tons of local (and i mean REALLY local, within your city) artists that would love to be making you happy with their locally produced pulp?

it's like if there was only a few really great wine makers in the world, so we all just bought our wine from them. where does that leave all those people who want to make wine locally? the very nature of mass production (or in artists case: mass marketing) makes it hard for someone new to break into the scene and grab your attention away.

a certain amount of people, born in every culture, are predisposed to various ways to live their lives. in every culture there are ARTISTS. musical and otherwise. if only a few artists worldwide mass produce their wares, so everyone has them, where does that leave your LOCAL artist?

it's like beauty. i got sick pretty fast of peopel pointing to celebritys and saying "oooooo arn't they pretty!! they are the most pretty person i've ever seen".
bulldust! i look around the streets and see the very same tallent.

equally, i wonder if we are all looking too far from our homes for our music. discouraging local artists from bothering to compete for our attentions - even though they closest to us in their spirit.

[Will Robinson]

I think maybe people tend to find comfort in the group-think-mentality.
Like when a bunch of us kids used to go to the beach at night to drink beer we would gather around a big bonfire and the more people that would show up the bigger the fire would get.
We didn't really know everyone yet we didn't all break off in small groups and build our own fires, we would gather around the one common flame. It wasn't about the quality of the flame so much as it was the attraction of the group. All those people around the fire made it seem more attractive than the thought of starting a new flame.

Some flavor-of-the-month pop star grabs enough attention with a catchy melody and a hook line and soon everyone is gathering around their flame because its popular. A self perpetuating thing.

Thank god we're also fickle and can change our minds for no apparent reason otherwise we'd never get anything new and the human brain can only listen to Hammer Time so many times before it explodes!

[woodchip]

Kinda like when the beer bars would play "Smoke on Water" by Deep Purple...over and over and over.

[Lothar]

Speaking of music from local artists... here's some music from artists here in Seattle that I think is pretty good.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/fromheretothere

[Testiculese]

"why are people choosing only to stick to a certain amount of ultra-popular artists"

Because they are lemmings with no identity of their own. They will blindly listen to what is fed them on TV, and assume they must be cool because of it. They're far too concerned with what other people think is popular, since they have no clue themselves. This is also why you see people wearing TOMMY HILLFINGER splashed across their shirt. Why?! Why, for any reason, would you buy a shirt with...some dude's name who happens to make crappy clothing in a completely shallow and bull@#$% fashion culture? Because they are bovines out in the pasture (and they are resembling them more and more physically). They're told what to wear, they wear it.

The same mentality also heaves itself to the surface when some idiot lemming happens to see a celebrity. Holy ★■◆●, look out, pandemonium! It's just some person..c'mon. If you like their stuff, and their not busy, say "Hi, I like your stuff", and if you're an autograph person, get one if you can. For some reason, I was watching TV..I forget the channel..but Jay-Z walked into some donut store or something by surprise, and the girl behind the counter started....crying. How weak. He talks lyrics he probably didn't write himself. Or maybe he did. So he's a poet. Why is she crying?

[Duper]

heh, welcome to old age Roid. and welcome from the rest of us "eclectics". Although i disagree.. it's not ALL good. That's a very broad statment and infact, some of it's very BAD. (I'm taking this to an extreme which I don't really believe is the context in which you framed it.)

I have a quote above my desk which states: "There is nothing more dreadful than creativity with out taste." and in much of the music world, more specifically the pop scene, the creados "It's ok, it's 'art' " is rampant.

...bleh. what a load.