This quote is from the character Yul Brenner in Cool Runnings, but it applies in a very general sense to what most of Lilen’s posts have been about. I decided to begin my last post by pointing this out, instead of hiding it in a comment.
The essential irony involved in being offended by or hating a certain type of music is that people who don’t like it won’t bother to learn enough about it to learn what it’s really about. So they are essentially always criticising something they don’t know enough about to criticise properly, and certainly not objectively. This is how all criticism of music such as metal, as Lilen has continuously shown, is based on stereotypes which fans know to be extremely oversimplified and hence false.
This idea is also relevant to the continued theme of Millie’s posts about the underexposure of experimental music. While experimental music is generally not met with the same level of hostility as metal, there is a similar reason for the lack of coverage of experimental music in mainstream music press. This is that experimental music challenges people’s ideas of what music is, which makes them uncomfortable, and hence unwilling to engage with this type of music. This in turn is why mainstream music press fails to cover experimental music. This becomes a cycle of disinterest in anything truly original, because people like the ‘new’ (popular) music because it’s all they read about, so the music press keeps reporting on the styles that are popular.
As this relates to the history of music, even if certain ‘alternative’ (the term I’ve been ripping to shreds for weeks) style of music has a significant impact on music at the time, it will only be written about and hence remembered, if this style of music somehow becomes ‘popular’. This may occur, for example, if a much more ‘popular’ artist cites a lesser known artist as an influence.
