N.B: My sister, The Buckets, is back with another pop-culture missive. Try as I may, I can't convince her to write more regularly. *tear*
Hi, I just knowingly listened to my first Vampire Weekend song a few days ago. I had seen that Honda commercial featuring “Holiday” fifty thousand times, and twice I accidentally downloaded songs related to Vampire Weekend by way of my indiscriminate clicking on Elbo.ws and TheMusicNinja.com. But since Vampire Weekend wasn’t really on my radar--I think as a result of some latent, unmapped disdain of my own--I promptly forgot I ever downloaded them. Also, I once downloaded “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance” by Janelle and Big Boi and thought it was their song. Lo and behold, it’s by Vampire Weekend. This one just got past me, or maybe I cast it asunder, but somehow I was out of the VW loop. Until now, over three years late.
This is extremely disconcerting. Why is that? Well, I pride myself on my pop culture savvy. It’s actually not savvy so much as disturbing, compulsive behavior that maybe borders on sociopathic. My daily pop-culture digest consists of checking Gawker, Jezebel, EW.com, E! Online, and BuzzFeed. And by "daily" I mean hourly. Of course, there are the not-so-irregular dalliances with Just Jared, TMZ, What Would Tyler Durden Do, and even more music blogs other than the two already mentioned. I watch MTV every morning. (They play music videos from 3AM until 10AM. It’s great. Check it out!) I watch the NPR music channel on YouTube all the time. How else would I know that I fucking hate Edward Sharpe et al so much? You should too; watch:
I just consume a lot, and then I talk about it a lot. I call my mom and talk about TV and celebrities and celebrity fashion missteps. Sometimes that’s all we discuss. I should have given Vampire Weekend at least five minutes along the way, right? In fact, my mom sent me a link to the “Oxford Comma” video on January 23, 2009. I didn’t even pay attention then. What is going on here?
I can only think of one other time I was so woefully late to a party, and that was with LOST. I watched Seasons One through Four of LOST in under three weeks from late December 2008 to early 2009. That’s over four years late, particularly embarrassing for a JJ Abrams/Felicity-loving person like me. With LOST it was different though. The LOST community--expansive, geeky, overactive--will embrace any convert. I mean, LOSTpedia exists for people like me. LOST became a thing of my own. It was the center of my social life; I spent hours discussing and reading about it online while at work. Being a LOST fan was so all-consuming for me, and I did it was such passion, that while I carried the burden of knowing I wasn’t there first, I made up for it in dedication.
So this is where things get really troubling: I really like some Vampire Weekend songs. "Walcott" is my jam. I bought it (yes, bought it) on January 25. I’ve now listened to it on iTunes 13 times, not accounting for iPod listens (as of 11:52 AM on January 28). I don’t really like the lead singer’s unnatural vocal contortions, sort of similar to my dislike of Justin Timberlake’s ubiquitous falsetto. But hey, I love JT too! The drums, and the piano, and all of the instruments are great. Very musical. I’m into it. This is really unfortunate, especially to the proprietor of this blog I am sure. (N.B: It is.) I am totally, 100% lamestream. I would rather profess my love for Ne-Yo, which is very real, than my love for VW, but I just can’t hide it. I spent the last few days reading the critiques of the band, and then watching interviews with Ezra and Rostam responding to said critiques. I won’t get into why it’s embarrassing. Google it, people!
There is something much worse about discovering a contemporary band late than there is about a contemporary TV show. Music fans are snobs. We all know it. They are. The music industry is now driven by the immediacy of the internets and the attendant viral marketing campaigns. Twitter may drive the music industry at this point. To be behind is some sort of dishonor analogous to wearing the Scarlett A. While the TV industry welcomes viewers to catch up via online marathons and illegal streams, being a music fan is about racing to find a download link before it gets zapped. It still remains more immediate, with a pervasive air of elitism and self-assigned classifications of bands. Moreover, music fans are perhaps the most rabid and opinionated of any breed of culture fans. There is such a corpus of thought and opinion on Vampire Weekend, and to contend with, and make way through it, is so intimidating.
Right now, I am the opposite of William Miller. I am not witnessing a mid-level band struggle with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom. No, I am fucking Sapphire, trailing Led Zeppelin, and I could be traded to Humble Pie at any moment for a case of beer.
1 comments:
This is a fascinating essay. There's always a struggle to understand the current world and to feel like you're on top. But as you point out, there is just too much stuff going on to be able to comprehend, and when you do discover something interesting often it's way too late to have an effect.
I commiserate with you on "LOST." I'm catching up on some stuff I bypassed in the 80-90s (OK, don't hate me).
Maybe the problem is that we don't appreciate what we're actually going through in the current world & we think it's not that important; it's only later that we find out "hey, we were in the middle of it all!"
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