Sunday, June 21, 2009

Why Artists Have Such Bad Taste in Music ? - Or How Billy Bob deceived me (dumbass!!--me that is)



I think it was Blake Butler who complained a while ago about writers having terrible taste in music. Of course he was referring to "most writers." Writers like me, of course. (Maybe he wrote this on his blog a while back or maybe he said this in a bar.)

At the moment, for example, I have a huge crush on The Boxmasters.

(And I didn't even know Billy Bob (W.R.) Thornton was the lead singer. This video, The Poor House, was starting to haunt me. And I was thinking "Man, this guy's got style." And I fantasized a life and past and mind for this guy who could look so suave on stage. And then it turns out this guy is an actor. An actor. An actor! Well, I feel used. But, still, the crush persists.)

One would think that writers with finely-tuned "ears" would naturally have good taste in music. Wrong. The writing ear is, evidently, completely unrelated to the ear that writes (and reads as a "writer.")





For the record I'm also a big Madonna fan. And I'm hot for Katy Perry. Spanish pumpkin divas like Shakira and Paulina Rubio. I also am "into" Crash Test Dummies, Enrique Iglesias, Fastball, The Go-Go's, The Killers, Johnny Cash, Big Country, blah, blah,.... no rhyme or reason except for my stupid music ear.

Note: while writing this post the power went out (3rd time in last week) so I dropped to the floor and gave my dogs' tummy rubs and though about how bad I felt when I met Jack Gilbert. His first books had impressed me greatly and then here was this little, lame man nothing at all like those poems (more like "Refusing Heaven," actually, which hadn't released at the time yet.)

Lying on the floor this blog post was going to make some great twists and turns. Then the lights came back on. I had to walk the dogs. It was still raining. The greatness evaporated. Blah, Blah.... and now I'm listening to "The Poor House" and ya know what I feel great. W.R.'s style (what isn't fake, stage, acted, anyways?) gushing through me like sunshine.....

And now I'm letting "Turn it Over" (Boxmasters again) fill me with a different angle of sunshine. This song sure has a lot of "one Headlight" to it... but hey who's counting.... It's past my bedtime..... My brother's an alpine chicken...

6 comments:

BLAKE BUTLER said...

oh ron

oh ron ron ron ron ron

oh ron ron ron ron ron ron ron ron ron ron ron ron ron ron ron ron

no ron

no ron

no

no

ron

BLAKE BUTLER said...

i want an alpine chicken brother!

Ross Brighton said...

What exactly was Blake advocating you listen to instead? I'm curious.

I for one get a lot of shit for liking hip-hop - I'm either too white for it, or it's "out of character" being a weedy nerd with obscure taste in most things, and white.

I recently (friday night) got called a hipster for not liking sonic youth though. I always thought they were the quintessential hipster band. you can't win whatever way you try.

And I also dig on Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga. There. I'm embarrassing too. Let us compbine our powers to summon some perverted ur-captain-planet-esqe being of horrific taste to destroy the reputation of writers everywhere!

and I hope you liked the book.

Rauan Klassnik said...

Blake:
yes, yes, yes, yes--all over the place, yes, yes, yes.....

and, bad luck man, only writers with bad taste in music can have "alpine chicken brothers"-- try Belgium instead

Ross:
Blake was not admonishing me. it was just a casual comment somewhere along the line. Blake's like the bible or Whitman. he says everything.

Ross Brighton said...

Goddamn. I wish someone would compare me to the bible.

And I wish more people admonished each other - it's a wicked cool verb. I'm jealous you used it first.

RL said...

Well, Gideon liked that first video. A lot. He must be a writer.