Music samples by category

[skitty]

http://www.furia.com/misc/genremaps/engenremap.html

Does anyone think we've gone a bit far with the sub-categories? Do we really need 57 varieties of Metal?

[blake 3:17]

Considering I don't really listen to metal, it's fine. (I do own an Earache boxset and wish I had a few mainstream metal albums but...) This is going to be one more thing that makes me seem sooooooooooooooooooooo old, but I used to get magazines like Option and Vice and Spin and Forced Exposure and read every friggin review of every friggin record because there MIGHT be something amazing I'd never hear otherwise. This was before mp3s.

A few years ago I saw this really great band Brides since broken up but can be heard here: http://www.myspace.com/bridesbrides & I was like you guys sound like Sabbath and Swans and Joy Division and Miles Davis and James Brown and Birthday Party and weird Goth stuff and they were like 18 or 19 and they knew it all and hadn't spent a penny on any of the records. I forgave them. Those records had cost me a small fortune.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I was reading something about hipsters and the author was talking about how audiophiles and young people liking obscure music is "privilage" and yadda-yadda. And in the sense of trying to define yourself by your taste consumption there is something "middle class" or elitist about some of this. But I think more generally it's just the case that there is just much much more recorded music and access to it than in the past. You really needed to seek out "race" music if you were a beatnik or hippie in the 60s, you needed to know the hip record stores in the nearest city when I was growing up if you ever wanted to listen to any punk or underground music. Now it's like anyone with a computer can listen to "forgotten" blues or garage rock people, early British rock bands or punk bands that never even got distributed in the US and people used to pay tons of money for. You can find things online that have been out of print and unavailable for years.

It might be annoying that some smarmy hipsters dig up obscure shit for eliete cred - but for the rest of us who just like music, it's pretty amazing and democratizing in a sense (especially with file-sharing possibilities). Ironically, the culture status-seekers have responded to the masses gaining access to obscure (and previously expensive - if imported or rare) music by focusing on the (now relativly) obscure recorded music formats like LPs and cassettes.