Share some of your most hated music

I like jazz, I don't know a thing about it, but it sounds good to me.

Oh, a great record. People don't talk about this one enough.


This one spoke to me right from the get go. Or at least the first half. The second half I think pales in comparison. But it's still certainly in competition as their best, because those first five tracks are seismic.


I think I still prefer OK Computer, because maybe I'm boring.






Not a bad way to approach things.




There are a couple here I don't know, but these are mostly good examples of why you don't need every song to be a banger, for it to be a great album. Songs should compliment eachother. Some songs need to take a back seat (but still need to be great in their own right)

Never a favorite of mine (and Nirvana, asides from their Unplugged, was never a favorite band of mine in general), but I'll always laugh at this song basically beginning with the intro of Teen Spirit.


Maybe the best song on the record. And it's because all of those drums at the end. But tastes can differ.



One of the greatest bands of the last twenty years. Maybe the best out of the blue resurgence in rock music....in history?

I hate heavy metal and rap music mostly.

And yet your favorite band is Linkin Park.

I recommend each of these. I only chose albums on the 9.5-10 scale for me in that list, because I feel like that balance between diversity and consistency is really there for the most part. WARNING: If you start the band Hell, start with Hell I and work your way up to III.


I've been on a big Swans kick recently, and have been very active in the reddit. Really hoping to go to a concert in September.


On the subject of diversity, some albums are a little better if you know the band's history. For example, most people's choice for the best Nick Cave album wouldn't be Abbatoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus. But it takes the diversity/consistency balance to a new level by include most if not all of the genres they built themselves on over the 20 years before that album, and even though one side is heavy and the other is light, there's just enough shared between both albums so they match like puzzle pieces. That album currently stands as my Number 4 of all time.

That's my favorite Cave album as well. Either that or Skeleton Tree

We have Crumb, in this very thread, advising The Doctor not to be Homer Simpson, because Homer Simpson is "one step behind," and "wrong." That's a bit condescending. We have a pack of people in this thread evangelizing to The Doctor about the virtues of jazz, as if an intervention is needed when people confess that they don't like the stuff.

You are the condescending jazz guy who is telling me that there is no such thing as the condescending jazz guy. You're jazz-splaining (sharing your story of personal conversion) and jazz-lighting (denying that jazz snobs exist). Well, I'm tired of paying the Jazzya, that honorary deferential tax that we must pay with obligatory lip-service to honored canons of jazz. Not everyone likes it. Not everyone has to like it. It's not a personal failure not to like it.

If we wind up cellies and you play that stuff on your wireless speaker, one of us will wind up in the SHU and the other infirmary. That's just how it is. You dig, baby? I don't swing that way? You hip? Skippity-Bow-Woop-Badinga-Zow!

Push hard enough and we can make a strawman out of any position. An elite attitude about jazz does exist and is widely distributed. This attitude is not generally found with other music genres (i.e., strangely there are "right" answers regarding a music genre in which there are no "wrong" notes, but whether you like country is a matter of taste, baby). No, people are not lashed in the street and disposed of their property or held back for promotion for not digging Miles Davis. You're quite right. But jazz snobbery does exist.

LOL, "Because I am evolved human who has the patience to learn." The implication here is that at least some of the people who dislike the stuff do not have this trait of wanting to learn new things. Nothing elitist here.

I think you've got it exactly backwards here. I know that jazz involves serious musicianship. I know that Brubeck went out hunting polyrhythms and that they're notoriously difficult to play. I know that Davis had perfect pitch and tempo, that he was a notorious taskmaster with his players. I am not a music theorist, but I have explored enough musical analysis of jazz to know that it's a much greater achievement than Soundcloud mumble rap.

If you really want to understand music, if you really have a personality that wants to understand things you don't get, then you have to go beyond the appetitive. You have to develop a sensitivity to what is objectively there. I find jazz annoying because of the dissonant virtuoso "shred" factor, however, I also know that it is serious music. Understanding does not imply liking or endorsing.

What you are describing is merely your personal habituation to a genre. As such, you're merely making the case for giving jazz a fair-hearing. Of course, the background assumption is that if you don't like it yet, you haven't listened to enough of it. But how much do we have to listen to a genre before we can say it is not our bag? What is a fair hearing?

I love the little elitist assumptions that thread through your reply. "I get that not everyone is as dedicated to growth and diversity as am I." Again, the default presumption here is "Don't like it? You haven't listened to enough of it!"

Another strawman. Although it is certainly true that one exposure invites hasty generalization, it is also an assumption from hell to suppose that side-opposition has only had one listen. This is part of the evangelical edge to jazz (if you just listened to the word, really listened, you'd be saved!).

So now your interlocutor has to prove to you that they (personally) have earned the right not like a genre of music?

I love how you are setting up the horns of an elitist's dilemma here. Your reasoning is compassing two possibilities.

1. The other guy admits he hasn't listened to jazz (resulting in the evangelical encouragement to go to church and get the word).

2. The other guy simply asserts that jazz is terrible, convincing you he's a jerk.

In short, you ask your opponent

1. Are you ignorant (haven't listened enough)

or

2. Are you stupid (just a jerk hating on jazz?

If only there were third or fourth option...

There is a fine-line here. If that is what it sounds like to someone who has listened to a fair sample of jazz (again, now much must we listen to?), then that is simply what it sounds like. When The Doctor is telling us that this is what it sounds like to him, he is not necessarily revealing ignorance or stupidity or contempt for others. He just doesn't dig it. It's not his bag, baby. Dig?

Of course, dismissing appreciators as being wanna-bees is just the same sin going in the opposite direction. I know that jazz is not only real music, but that the stuff I find annoying is among the most technically accomplished music in the genre. I know they aren't getting away with it, because my assessment goes beyond what I like--and this is why I think you have it exactly backwards--I can see that they're legit despite my intense dislike of it.

But again, we shouldn't be setting up straw-targets here. We're talking about the opposite attitude--that those who don't like it, haven't really heard it--that they're missing something and should (somehow) appetitively appreciate it after sufficient exposures.

Neither position is fair. You're not necessarily a scrub if you don't like it. You're not necessarily a hipster snob if do. And either accusation is unfair. If, however, you proceed from the assumption that the other guy is insufficient for not liking it, that may say something about you.

Wow, I feel like everything I was trying to say was misunderstood, so I won't bother refuting everything point by point. In fact, a lot of the points you're making are points I thought I'd already made, so either I failed terribly or you read everything in a more condescending tone than I intended.

I thought it was understood that my story was meant as advice for someone that wants to like jazz but isn't there yet. Or if "advice" sounds too condescending, call it a "sympathetic ear". I was trying to get across that I did not like or understand it at first, so the idea of not liking jazz is not foreign to me, but I eventually got there. It is not my mission to convince anyone to like it if they don't want to. If you hate it and you're fine with that, so am I.

I agree in hindsight that "I want to understand things I don't get" sounds (unintentionally) snobbish, so that would have been better expressed as "I'm willing to repeatedly subject myself to things I don't like in an attempt to like them." I don't think it makes me a better person, I just think it's a weird borderline masochistic personality trait that I have. (see also: My years of fruitless attempts to "get" the Grateful Dead which as of today have produced no results. Why do I do this? Should I do this?) I was trying to acknowledge that not everyone feels that is a pleasant use of their time and nobody is obligated to do that much "homework" if they don't want to and that's ok. So I actually agree with you there, I just completely flubbed that whole bit in the original post.

If I was deliberately condescending to anyone, it's the folks who put "art" in quotes when discussing a painting, or ask "is jazz music". Clearly anyone is free to hate jazz even if they've spent hours listening to it. My beef is with the dismissive "everyone is pretending to like it" attitude.

__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection

Say what you want about jazz, it at least starts good discussion.

We're clawing for the middle-ground here, both trying to look like the most reasonable person in the room, so we're trying to nudge the other into a slightly unfavorable position so as to privilege giving jazz a second chance or just accepting that The Doctor doesn't like it and that this is his prerogative. It's not that we massively disagree, but that we're intensely scraping at that small margin which gains a wee bit more leverage.

I totally read it as more condescending that you intended, because in a sense, it really is more condescending than you intended.

This is a hate thread, not a come to Jesus thread, but jazz always draws out the apologists. The Doc said he wants Jazz to stay off his lawn, and now he has nice young boys with pressed white shirts who just hopped off their bicycles to knock on the door to suggest giving the Book of Jazz another chance. I'm the neighbor with garden hose.
Stop being so damned reasonable. This is a hate thread, baby! Hate! Burning white-hot rage! Passion!

I get that you're well-intentioned. You're swell. You're a hip cat and you know how to swing. But I'm here with the counter-point. It's entirely possible for a genre to be good and real and for a person to have sampled however much of it is typically needed to get acclimated to it and still not like it.

The idea of "wanting to like it" seems a bit odd. There is a sort of accusation there, isn't there? I mean, if you find yourself wanting to like something you don't, then you must think that there is "something there to like," but that you don't quite get it yet. And if that it is the case, then you haven't sampled enough it or you're tone-deaf in some way. That is, "wanting to like it" puts a bit of blame on oneself, at least presumptively (how could all these fans be wrong?). Thus, this innocent-sounding locution gently implies one the premises of your argument that needs to be proved (i.e., that your interlocutor has not, in fact, sampled enough of it). Oh, you're a slippery one. You're like smooth jazz, Kenny-G-ing your sweet innocent-sounding assumptions.

It's not the form of the expression, but the content. That is, you are positioning yourself as one who has succeeded with jazz, because you have a trait (characterize it as you will) that has allowed you to appreciate what is "there." The subtle implication is that those who have not come to appreciate it may have not had the patience to be open to it.

Again, the great unanswered question is "How much do we need to sample?" We might add, "How much do we need to want to believe?"

It is theoretically possible, for example, to give oneself a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. That is, we become so convinced that blood pudding "must" be good that we eat it until we become so habituated to it that we "see the light."

If everyone tells us, "Well, Frank's a swell guy. You just have to learn to love him." We might find ourselves in an abusive relationship with Frank, convincing ourselves that it is our fault when Frank lashes out at us. It's out fault. We're not there yet.

There's that tricky question of balance and respect for oneself. Go too far in either direction and you're lost.

It's interesting that you chose the word "masochism" here as it does suggest that the possibility that we can go too far in attempting to adjust our taste buds.

And if it is possible to Stockholm Syndrome oneself, is it not also possible to ask other people to needlessly suffer for a scruple about the inherent quality of a genre? Might our dear "Doctor" not be put at risk here? Must we always have a "pro-jazz" intervention when someone says they hate the stuff? I agree, that how that contempt is expressed may warrant the intervention, but might we not just be a wee bit unfair to those poor souls who do not love jazz?

No, you didn't. I exaggerated your stance and mocked it to accentuate a counter-point. I am picking at implications and assumptions because I am trying to take the middle ground from you. That we are picking nits over the presumptive middle ground is evidence in itself that no massive flubs have occurred. The devil is in the details.

Sure, and again, there is fine shade of distinction between expressing contempt for what "sounds like" to you and what you say it "really is." I am in that awkward position of knowing that I genuinely don't like some of the best music of the 20th century (that complicated atonal "dark chocolate" jazz). That's a weird feeling and it comes with a bit of cognitive dissonance. If I don't blame myself for my ignorance or tin ears, there is a strong temptation to attack the music itself.

It is supremely difficult not to fall into either trap (i.e., blaming oneself or blaming the music). I've listened. I don't love. I don't particularly want to love it, but I don't want to turn my back on the good stuff either. I don't it is my fault for not liking it, but I know it's not the fault of the music either.

And this is the great loneliness of artistic appreciation. As much as we try, as much as we cheer, as much as we rant, as much as we argue, as much as we push subjectivities and standards at each other, the bottom line is that there is only so much that can be done in terms of "liking" and "preferring" something. I can't argue you into "liking" anchovies on your pizza. You either dig it or you don't. You dig? It's hard to accept that people see colors you don't see and hear space between notes that you don't hear. It's not so much being wrong (as wrongness can generally rectified) as it is loneliness--realizing that you fundamentally experience reality in a different way. Leaves you feeling kinda blue...

TBF, if I hated metal and rap my favourite band could well be Linkin Park

I think you might be getting long and good mixed up. It's a common mistake.

__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.

Wow, poor @Swan.

Swans is meh.

__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

...boy i got news for you......oogie woogie....boogie oogie.....get on up on the floor coz we boogie oogie woogie oogie no more!!!!!.......

..........BOOOOGIEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

It was.


Welcome to Hell.


Just be confident that most people understood the point of your post.

Not an intentional one. Again, change the wording if you must. Substitute "wanting to like it" with "curious about it".

I like Carlos Santana. He recorded a handful of Coltrane songs and mentions him in every interview. Therefore, I "wanted to like" Coltrane. I didn't buy the Coltrane LP thinking "God, I hope this sucks."

It's also not really any mystery why there is this myth surrounding the 'jazz scold'.


Jazz, along with heavy metal and rap, is one of the musical forms most likely to be accused of not being music (you know, something that is extremely annoying, and flat on its face ignorant). It also has the distinction of people accusing fans for 'faking it' and that no one could really like such noise (you know, a little more nuisance on the bowl of irritation that has already been served up)



So, if anyone is going to legitimately respond to such a bold claim, the counter to this needs to be strongly stated and explicit in explaining the qualities that can be found in the genre. It's what such an accusation invites.



But this isn't going to be a fair fight, is it. At least not usually. Jazz heads, very often, have deep understanding of musical theory and the history of music. They can break down compositions and point to the qualities of particular instrumentalists. You know, actual arguments based in something.


The other side just falls back on 'nope...I don't like it...not music'. At least, it seems to the vast majority of the time.



So, naturally, one of the parties is going to look stupid as ****, aren't they? Especially if they keep pressing the matter, and don't evolve their own argument to keep up in any way.



Now is all of this the fault of the jazz fan, who is constantly getting goaded into explaining the integrity of the art they love whenever it comes up in conversation. Who feels a need to defend it against the frequent dismissals it receives from the general population? Or is it the fault of the person who speaks without knowing anything about the subject, basically demanding to be corrected.


And, yes, the word is corrected. No need to be shy because, in regards to the strength of their arguments, they are wrong. Flat on their face wrong. Not that this means jazz is unquestionably good. Only that the point they are making sucks shit.



Now sometimes these conversations are obviously just friendly disagreements, and sometimes they are legitimately 'scolding' (that's where I come in, because I don't have the patience for friendliness anymore). But, as we can see from this thread, and the response to what was clearly a comment of the friendly sort, really more just a talk of how one might one day move from not liking jazz to loving it, mostly a personal anecdote that could be taken or left behind, and which mostly was by the person it was directed to, it seems some still can't help but see scolding in it. Because the exact right type of wording wasn't used. Because of all the horrible insinuations that could be seen between the lines of the obvious politeness of the points being expressed.


It's almost like some people are desperate to be offended. It's almost like, what's that word again....snowflakes?


Ya, snowflakes.

The nature of things is that something will be generally true, or true more for something, and that becomes an easy shorthand for that thing, and thus becomes exaggerated. It happens for professions, generations, genders, genres, everything. It's basically always somewhat true and basically never as true as that casual shorthand suggests.

Personally, I find I am able to appreciate jazz sometimes, but other times not at all. And when I don't really connect with jazz, it all just sort of sounds the same to me. My operating assumption is there's real stuff there, but also that the very nature of the music means sometimes it's just kind of a mess. And I also assume that, like with all things, if someone is REALLY into something they are inevitably at risk of occasionally creating depth that isn't there, but jazz is hardly unique in that regard.

But is depth ever really there? Isn't it the nature of art to defy its inherent flatness. It's inherent abstractions. It's inherent uselessness. And actually become something that has meaning. That can make us get in touch with feelings we have lost the ability to connect with in real life. Tell us things we don't know how to articulate. Know us better than we know ourselves.


We come up with reasons to assure ourselves there are clear ways to measure the depth in a piece of art. We can talk about influence, or technical ability, or uniqueness, or clarity. Even sales and chart placement! Maybe how it informed us of a social issue we'd never considered from that angle. And all of these things are important, to differing degrees. And they all help us find ways to explain to others why a piece of work resonated with us. But, at its core, with any piece of music or film or literature, the bulk of what we respond to exists in the spaces between all of these more measurable elements. They are things we probably don't talk about at all, because there aren't even words for them.


There is a magic element we will always respond to. Maybe it's real magic, or maybe its just a trick, but either way we fall for it all the time. And would it even matter if part of it is just a trick?



So I think that we can argue about whether a jazz recording, with so many things going on at once, might sometimes be given the benefit of the doubt that everything there is intentional genius. And that sometimes, yeah, sure, maybe what we are responding to was nothing more than a mistake. But....does it actually matter? Is there really any distinction between these things at all? One is just lots easier for us to talk about. The conversations with the proofs. The conversation with receipts. But that doesn't mean its more important. It's just a better sounding argument.


Art has value in for both what it intends and what it doesn't necessarily intend, but that we find there anyways.

We should remember that jazz is a big tent. A lot of it is quite pleasant and melodic. The Real Jazz Coalition™, however, tends to push John Coltrane and Co. as "the stuff." But it's not just. It's also ragtime, blues, Dixieland, swing/big band, fusion, bepop, etc.

Jazz is rich in surprising microstates, but then again so is a handful of dirt from your backyard, or a shuffled card deck. A film with a complicated plot is necessarily a good film. Sometimes it's just a "taco in a taco in a taco."



Music is about venturing out and coming home, permanence and change, novelty and familiarity. It's written for the ear, but it's not always written for your ear. The shame comes in the sense that one's ear is not complicated enough, that one cannot venture out far enough to see the larger pattern (Why can't I jam on mathcore? Well, probably because it's written for robots).


Part of it has to do with active memory, I think (e.g., we can only comfortably hold 3-4 integers in our head at a time, at a certain point we get swamped by complexity). Also, there are the limitations of the human ear (20-20K Hz) - there is a reason that songs are between 24 to 200 BPM with most falling between 50 and 130).



I trust the intersubjective consensus. There are enough serious musicians and theorists and critics and everyday fans who endorse the complicated, shreddy, atonal stuff, that I know that for a significant number of listeners there is a "there" there. I'm just not one of those listeners. And I'm OK with that, and I will not be assigned music homework on the default presumption that I am "wrong" or "on the verge of seeing the light." I'll listen to a song, but I won't be sentenced to anyone's playlist.

Well, it depends very much on what we mean by depth. Per the below, we probably are using the word differently:

It sounds like you're talking about depth as "ability to provoke meaningful responses in people." Which is a fine definition. But I think, under that definition, everything has depth (also fine, if not especially useful as far as definitions go). But for me, that's just the definition of art itself.

When I say "depth," I usually mean layers of meaning specifically intended by the creator. In the case of film, that means intended symbolism that we are meant to notice and derive meaning from, as opposed to incidental meaning that we sort of create or notice ourselves. That kind of meaning is not unimportant, but I would not call it depth.

Preemptively, I think there are some weird edge cases where people have this weird amorphous sense of how to create things conducive to finding meaning (IE: they understand, in their bones, that certain themes resonate, even if they could not explain why or articulate a specific intended meaning or symbol they're trying to convey). Which is what you're talking about here, I think:

This is a topic we discussed on the podcast a lot, whether a film is doing something smart and subtle, or if we're just thinking about it so much that we're able to make our own connections. And then we discuss whether or not the distinction even matters. In terms of valuing a work of art, probably not. But I want that distinction between value and depth. I care about the distinction between "dabbles in things where people can find meaning" and "is trying to convey a specific meaning."