Love & Hate

Two columns over at Pitchfork this week both make reference to the vast amount of music available to us in this day and age. I should point out first that while I read Pitchfork almost daily, I rarely read a full review (although their reviews are really the power they wield). I'll maybe read a paragraph or two of a review of an album I'm interested in, mostly to see how they are justifying the 5.8 or 7.9 or 8.5 they are giving it. I do however, read the columns completely (Why We Fight, Poptimist and Resonant Frequency) - that is where I find the really interesting and fascinating ideas. But back to the point - too much music out there and the old twins love and hate. When you are as in to music as I am you often think of yourself as a music lover - the one thing I shared in my "About Me" is my music fandom - but this leads to all sorts of problems. You look for things to love and this can be costly in terms of time and money. I spend hours listening to new music - it's the reason I watch the Wedge weekly, listen to several podcasts that are devoted to new music, read blogs, review sites and aggregators that will help me find my next love. Plus I lose those hours to music that I already know I love (I can feel my brother agreeing with me as I type this). I have justified this in the past by the power, joy and wonderful sensation of falling in love with new music - it can be exhilarating! But when faced with the amount of music that it is possible to expose oneself to you do have to choose what to limit yourself to. Perhaps you can write off entire genres - "I don't like rap/country/classical" - or time periods "Nobody's made truly great rock since 1973/1979/1987/1991/2000" - or levels of popularity "If they signed to a major label, I'm no longer a fan" - or locality "I don't like anything but local music." So you choose to hate music in order to cherish your true loves. When I was younger, I was very much in tune with that hate - I was an angry young man after all - but somewhere along the line I decided to be nicer. Perhaps it's my job that makes me want to feel only the positive emotions of love and joy and lose touch with the anger and hate but maybe I can embrace and cherish my inner angry young man to say no to more music and YES to less? Why the Frente album cover up there? Because I love it and I know few other people who do.