Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Radio & Music >

Arguments against music

08:55 / 22.04.02

Anyone up for experimental debate? Seriously, I'm talking some intelligent well thought out explanations for why music should be eliminated.

For example, music limits Talk Time. Our children aren't gonna devise pragmatic plans for a successful revoltuion when they can simply put on a Compact Disc and hear their favorite artist singing about one. Music is a bunch of people talking the talk, preventing truly radical measures from taking place. If we didn't have all this music to listen to we'd be communicating about Very Impoortant Shit with each other 10 times more than we currently are.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:00 / 22.04.02

Interesting notion... I've always subscribed to the idea that music should be inspirational (not only in a political sense), rather than a distraction, but now you've got me thinking. I guess it all depends on the music in question- to pick a basic example, I knew a whole bunch of people who gave up eating meat not entirely as a result of the Smiths' "Meat is Murder", but at least partially. Blaggers ITA were for a while very good at mobilising people for Anti-Fascist Action. But I guess that's probably not the case for a lot of music out there.

18:49 / 22.04.02

a lot of music works directly against the parasympathetic nervous system. just think of all those times you could just chill and relax (in the car, at work, at home), but you're listening to the ramones fucking greatest hits. music doesn't allow the luxury of mental quiet time, and therefore strips from us the ability to reflect. one who cannot reflect on experience will never learn from it. hence, music is stunting the mental growth of the human race.

18:53 / 22.04.02

i would say that music can both open and shut doors, quite simply.

wembley can change in 28 days

21:31 / 22.04.02

Two words: Britney Spears.

A

01:34 / 23.04.02

Over the years musicians have pretty much perfected the use of music to push emotional buttons. The right chord progression at the right tempo makes you feel all sad and nostalgic, or whatever. Bryan Adams has based a career on this sort of thing.

Unfortunately, this has been abused, and now bands like Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Live, and Korn make money by selling depressing music to depressed teenagers, which makes them even more depressed, and fuels the market for more depressing music (not to mention incresing sales of Prozac considerably). It's a vicious circle, I tells ya.

If not for this sort of music, the kids would almost certainly unite, overthrow the state and create an idyllic anarchist utopia. Honest.

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:52 / 23.04.02

Wembley; care to expand?

10:35 / 23.04.02

i get pissy when people diss britney spears. it seems that she's an easy target for some reason. i'd like to hear wembleys' points about why he hates britney. i hope he doesn't mention that she doesn't write her songs and her boobs. i am so sick of britney boob speculation.
i really really dig her music. baby one more time is really hard to play on the guitar, but i like to try every now and again with the distortion pedal on.
people say britney is leading girls the wrong way by being too sexy, but, hey, i knew all the words to like a virgin and varios other madonna as well as blondie songs when i was three or four and look how wonderful i turned out! well, sorta...

10:53 / 23.04.02

nice one suds - if I was a millionaire I'd buy you a dancing monkey !

I have nothing against any kind of music, it all has its place. Nothing pisses me off more than when people start slagging off pop music, bands like S-Club and the like, yeah its manufactured so what?its for young kids (and some adults), it makes them happy - exactly what do you expect them to listen to?

Well maybe not that guy I saw on TV rapping to Country and Western music - that scared me

sorry bit of a tangent

11:45 / 23.04.02

The marketing of Britney Spears pisses me off. The whole revealing school uniform thing that she started off with was so obviously aimed at the dirty old man market. It is a really cynical and disturbing marketing ploy, IMHO. And the whole virgin thing? It is the lure of the pseudo-innocent, with the promise of her being a 'right goer' or whatever phrase you prefer...that 'I'm a slave' thing was the single most pornographic sounding song I have ever heard in my life. Can we say hypocrisy, anyone? I don't give a shit about Britney Spears herself one way or another, but the marketing of her reminds me of those beauty pageants for 8 year olds, and leaves a v. unpleasant taste in my mouth...

14:41 / 23.04.02

cholister, i'm not dirty or an old man, and i dug baby one more time.
i think the marketing of belle and sebastian, say, is far more disturbing than how britney is/was. i think she rocks. and if a lady of twenty years can't sing sexy songs without being trashed for it, i get pissy.

wembley can change in 28 days

15:20 / 23.04.02

Rothkoid - I suppose I was aware at the time that my post was neither well-thought-out or intelligent as requested by Rage, but I simply couldn't help it. My reasoning? Why should Britney Spears be eating sushi, naked, in the back of a stretch limo with Da Vinci when Cyndi Lauper's been relegated to Gay Icon?

Ahem. Music has a power all its own. It invites and contains fantasy. Good music is designed to take the top of your head off and make you feel alive for however many minutes it can. I find the fact that the advertising industry seems to have got their own idea what music is quite sad. And they target a market that has a great deal of extra cash combined with a developing sense of taste; it's really quite hideous. And I don't think 13-year-olds are incapable of knowing what good music is, but they're more likely to be bought. Heck, I just used Ms. Spears as an example because, well, she's the anti-christ. She does dance well. But she can't sing. She's a fine entertainer but hardly an artist.

15:24 / 23.04.02

she bloody well can sing!

15:44 / 23.04.02

I just think that she is marketed for her sexualised innocence. I do not claim that only dirty old men like her, I just think that the marketing was, and to an extent is, pitched at dirty old men in a very cynical fashion - she started out when she was very young, and I find it somewhat disturbing that she's been marketed this way from the word go - I wonder how much of her image she is actually in control of. I have no problem with people singing "sexy songs" (I actually thought 'I'm a slave' was impressively pornographic) - I guess I just think that it is kinda dodgy - the whole 'I'm a virgin, fuck me' vibe - very phonesex line-y. I would not give a shit if she'd been marketed like this at the age of 18 or something - but she was basically a kid when she was dancing about in a tiny school skirt... sorry if sound puritanical, but i think that was incredibly irresponsible of her management.

15:47 / 23.04.02

She may very well be fully in control of her image now - and, like I said, I could not care less about her one way or another... however, I have trouble forgetting that she was so irresponsibly marketed from such an early age, when I don't think it likely that she had executive control over all aspects of her look, and when some adult should've been looking out for her. I am avoiding saying that the sexualised schoolgirl image encourages paedophilia, but it is not far from it, IMHO.

autopilot disengaged

16:19 / 23.04.02

music. causes. arguments.

autopilot disengaged

16:27 / 23.04.02

actually, while i'm here - thought i'd say rage's initial post made me think of chicks on speed's 'stop records advert' - which goes:

"be prepared. coming straight at you from the centre of the universe:
munich. 'stop records' has landed. not that circular object looping at high speeds - they're easy to stop. many have tried - with mediocre success - to keep these spinning objects from taking over. we here at 'stop records' are asking you, yr family and friends to join us - stop records noowwwwwwww..."

- before blasting into an amazing electro-punk fucked-up decadent artskool eurodisco cover of the B-52's 'give me back my man'. class.

16:44 / 23.04.02

one of the reasons why i love britney is because even though what she does MAY BE according to some, morally dubious, at least the lady does it with gusto. she does it with PIZAZZ.
i prefer music like britney's which adds some sparkle to my life, as well as le tigre and trail of dead, for example.
what i don't like is that boring middle of the road indie pop shite which is favoured by the stereophonics and travis. "it's so much better that britney!" i can hear their fans cry now.
yeah, but the music is boring!
britney is never boring. neither are le tigre and trail of dead, for example.
that was my two cents.

17:05 / 23.04.02

apologies if i sound a little too like ricky gervais in the above post.

00:39 / 25.04.02

You guys suck ass. I try to get something interesting going on in here, and I find my post has turned to a godforsaken Britney Spears debate. Is there no salvation? Utopia and Count Adam, thank you for not stupifying.

01:15 / 25.04.02

The only argument I can come up with which hasn't been mentioned, really, stems from a Buddhist 'be here now' angle: My walkman/discman has been all but surgically implanted for the past 14 years, and the sort of barrier it builds between me and the world is pretty thick and relatively impenetrable. Said barrier being the point of the discman, I guess, but I digress...

What I was getting at is that music, with all of its associations to past traumas and joys, perpetually forces us back into prior states of mind/being, preventing us from truly experiencing the present. Eg., When I'm on the streetcar in the morning, listening to song x which reminds me of memory x, not only am I blocking out my experience of, say, the cow behind me talking on her cell 'phone, I'm also blocking out the present day in favour of half-assedly reliving my past.

So there you have it: Mindfulness = Good. Listening to Music = Not Mindfulness. Listening to Music = Not Good.

wembley can change in 28 days

01:30 / 25.04.02

A valiant attempt, but what happens when you're at a concert? The purpose of being there at that time is the music, so to not be mindful of the music is to waste a good ticket.

I'm not sure about music forcing us back in to prior states of being. Would that suggest that any happiness I feel as a result of music is simply a throwback to the first time I was ever happy? I know some songs can be infused with nostalgia of a positive or negative kind (I've got Erasure's Siren Song. Don't ask), but the experience of listening to such a key song doesn't always feel the same. I'm of the opinion that the art itself invokes these feelings, and they are very much in the here and now.

06:19 / 25.04.02

abigail's point reminded me of someone who used to have a real anti walkman thing going on; he would imply that if we didn't have these things, then we'd communicate more. i disagree - i think it can create a little space around you, space that's needed sometimes, esp on a packed bus after a long day at work. i don't think humans were made to be in each others faces like we're often forced to be. i'd rather read, myself, as it has much the same effect, but quite honestly i think i *would* much rather have a good song, with the feelings or memories that evokes, going on than constant inane cellphone tunes and people yelling at each other. i think about the present nearly all the time - i think it's okay to take a break, although it's a fair comment.

The Natural Way

07:32 / 25.04.02

Totally agree w/ suds on the indie-is-shite thing. Fucking football chant bollocks - a pretty convincing argument against music if ever I've heard one. Britney poos on Starsailor (even the name makes me wanna kill) from a big height.

Still fucking w/ Rage's nice thread....

20:36 / 25.04.02

Ever since I first read this thread, the music that's playing at work has really really started to annoy me. It doesn't help that there's only *3* Sbux-approved CDs and they have to be played over and over and over....

...but the constant music seems to interfere with me thoughts. Very strange.

I can never listen to my discman on local buses/the tube. I feel like I'm missing something or I'm too cut off from everyone around me.

I know someone who won't listen to their walkman in public due to a fear of not hearing someone before they run up behind him and attack him, but I guess that falls into a different thread....

19:42 / 27.04.02

Rage: If I can't have my music, I don't want your fucking revolution.

20:40 / 27.04.02

Merzbow, Whitehouse, Atari Teenage Riot, Throbbing Gristle.

01:08 / 28.04.02

been thinking about this some more. i was totally isolated at school - really badly bullied - and music connected with me, made me realise there were others out there who were similar to me. i listened and read loads of stuff by anarchist punk bands crass and flux of pink indians and it had a profound effect on me. i turned vegetarian, i got the strength to stand up against the racism of the other kids, i got clued up about the cold war and politics and i joined cnd. i also helped clue my parents up about stuff. my sister and my mother both turned veggie soon after i did. crass 'organised' the first stop the city demo in the late 1980s, a forerunner of todays anti capitalist and reclaim the streets stuff.

when i came out, nearly the first thing i did was go to a queercore gig. a hell of a lot of stuff was inspired by that.

music i dislike does, as barry put it, interfere with my thoughts. music i do like enhances them. i have been inspired in my fiction writing by the music of lustmord and coil. i said earlier in this thread that music can open and shut doors. i believe that to be true. i don't only write fiction, i write about politics and mental health issues. my interview with a member of a feminist organisation resulted in more women joining it, and me organising a benefit gig and getting money and more members for the group. an article i did on self harm touched a lot of people who had gone through it, made them feel less isolated. music has inspired and guided me all the way. it has picked me up when i've been terribly low. i dread to think what i'd be like now if i hadn't had music to connect to and it has helped me go out and *do stuff* and make changes, both in myself and the things and people around me.

and yeah, basically, if i can't dance to it, it's not my revolution.