I'll provide the people of this city...

Considering that I plan on writing about music, I feel that I should broadly outline my opinions on music. First, I believe that music is principally art. This may not seem like a novel idea, and it isn’t, but I feel that music is used in so many different ways that most people don’t think of it as art. People view music as: a way to relax, as entertainment, as a beat to dance to, to sell things, background so that one doesn’t have to endure silence, etc. (I wonder at the struggle Joni Mitchell had when she got so disgusted with music, and the music industry, that she stopped listening to it altogether. I also wonder how an artist I respect so much can believe that the New Radicals were a breath of fresh air.) While music is all of these things, it is art first.

Second, because music is an art form, it should be judged as such. Music has rules, theory, and its own language, and should be evaluated along these terms. I don’t believe that “I like it” or “It sucks” are meaningful or acceptable ways of discussing music. I understand that music is very personal, but if there is going to be any intelligent discussion of music we can’t just leave things up to a matter of taste. The Beatles are better than Anal Cunt, and it is just wrong to believe otherwise. I will leave that explaination, if anyone really needs it, for a later post.