A song that gets me. Or: Vice Versa.

My musical taste is far too eclectic for my own good. Some might say that's a good thing but for me it's kind of a curse. I listen to virtually every genre of music. It always seems like I can find something to like whether it be in rock, folk, metal, bluegrass, hip-hop, avant-garde japanese noise-trance, electro house, blues, rockabilly, or classical. There always seems to be something that resonates within me and fills me with a sense of awe. Why is this a curse? I'll tell you why. BECAUSE THERE IS WAY TOO MUCH F***ING MUSIC OUT THERE. Rarely do I delve headfirst into a genre but rather I dart between random artists. My brain decides to go from one musician to the next, not letting me get a true education in any full genre. The only exception being psychedelic improv driven jam rock. Which is only the case because personally, as a musician, that is my preferred genre to play. I absolutely love death metal bands like Gojira and Meshuggah but I'm too busy and way too easily to distracted to dig deeper into the genre. I mean seriously, the new Skream record just came out! I need to get my British jungle/dubstep fix in! And after that I have to lose myself in the new Roots album because those guys are pushing serious boundaries in hip-hop. Two hours later I'm on to the new Noam Pikelny album because I haven't heard a banjo in a week or two. Do you see my predicament? Talk about first world problems.  So for this "favorite song" (ha) blog entry I've decided on a track I've been listening to a lot recently by Talking Heads entitled "Born Under Punches" from their epic album Remain In Light. This song combines African rhythms (the very basis of modern pop music) with an American rock sound that was so heavily influential on the indie (vague word alert) rock  music we hear today. David Byrne's lyrics are absurd. Enjoy!

J-Zone's Nostalgia

   As good as J-Zone's points are and as astute as is observations of the modern day Hip Hop day climate may be, he is merely a spectator of an inevitable paradigm shift within his art form. The internet, as J-Zone says, has been a blessing and a curse for Hip Hop. One the one hand new up and coming artists have found a means of easily making and distributing music. But on the other hand this means that the scene is inundated with tons upon tons of absolute crap. As J-Zone put it in his blog:
   
   "Limited distribution isn't as big a problem as before. Everybody is almost equal, shit we all have myspace pages. But look at the flipside. Everybody is almost equal, shit we all have myspace pages. There is so much shit out and the internet lurks with a million people doing the same thing, its virtually impossible to stand out" 
     
   Reading this point brought to mind an interesting parallel from chapter 2 of Storey's book. One quote from Leavis stood out in particular: "What has changed is the status of the majority. No longer can it command cultural deference, no longer is its cultural authority unchallenged." This is what happened in Hip Hop and is one of the things that J-Zone is most disappointed in. Following the advent of the internet the majority took over Hip Hop and started setting the trends as opposed to the small minority of incredibly talented and hard working individuals who laid the groundwork before them.

    Taste? Taste to me is an individual's subjective opinion on what they find aesthetically pleasing or intellectually stimulating across a broad range of mediums. Pop Culture is made of arts, entertainment, and people that (on purpose or by accident) appeal to the tastes of the masses. Below is something that I feel is impossible to dislike regardless of your personal preferences and tastes.

  

Defining popular culture?

    Even before delving into John Storey's book Cultural Theory and Popular Culture I was intimidated by the mere thought of attempting to come to a clear and concise definition of the term "popular culture". Coming to terms with either of those two words individually proves a challenge as we see in the first few pages of the text. The task just seems so daunting. But hey, that's what this class is for right?
    The first thing I did was think about the images that come to mind when I think of pop culture: Celebrities both talented and useless, bad reality television shows, Lady Gaga, The Simpsons, award shows, reference humour, internet memes, and fast food. Though that hardly covers gambit of everything that is pop culture I did notice that a majority of the things I thought of were less than intellectually stimulating (except for The Simpsons and some good popular movies). It kind of seems like popular culture (or how I see it) is used for escapism. A way for normal people (like myself admittedly) to temporarily forgot about our stresses, obligations, and problems for a little while and be entertained. 
     Anyway, back to defining the term itself. Since Storey gives us four different definitions of the word culture, four definitions of the word popular, and six definitions of the term popular culture, it is evident that it will be pretty hard to hone in on one simple answer. I'm pretty excited to see where this class goes as it is already more complicated than I had originally assumed.

 Below is a video by electronic music producer Madeon entitled "Pop Culture" in which he samples 39 different pop songs in to one beautiful mash-up.

Futurama Fry is an image macro series that uses a still of Fry squinting his eyes from the TV show Futurama, and is typically paired with overlaid text using a phrasal template. The top line reads “Not sure if X”, with “or just Y” as the bottom line, and is used to represent an internal monologue. (Source: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/futurama-fry-not-sure-if-x )

Here is one of my favorite Futurama Fry memes that was posted to reddit.com with the caption: "Whenever I don't get a pop culture reference..."