Against Music Snobbery
(Part 34 of an unintentional, growing series in which Alice rails against one of the great pet-peeves in her pantheon, as part of a larger, futile attempt to fight back the twin fears that 1. she herself is a music snob and 2. real music snobs may look down on her.)

Look, now.
Now; the split second, even, before you get all raised-eyesbrowsy on me. Where did you first hear that band that you’re shocked that I’ve never heard of? That band you’ve been listening to for a whole six weeks, six months, six years now, already? Were you in their basement at the moment they realized brilliance and were you the only one there to recognize it?

Or were you helped along?

Because if you bought their record, it was probably because a friend told you to, or else you heard it playing at someone else’s house and liked it, or you listened to it at a record store, or you read about it online, or you heard about it on All Things Considered (in which case you’ll have a whole busload and half of music snobs laughing at you), or maybe your ex introduced you to a whole new musical world you had no inkling of before you walked into that party and started talking, or else your older sister used to listen to it in her bedroom at night and shut the door on you, and you’d put your ear to the floor, in the dusty yellow shag, there, to hear its vibrations.

If any of the above is true, you have not your own genius, but that of your friends and family and acquaintances to thank. And yes, I’ll say “genius,” because music catching fire inside our brains and bodies feels like nothing but.

And because it’s a better thing to be a bit grateful. It’s a better thing that we all go out in the world and thank whomever it was who first played for us Gang of Four or Shostakovich, Fela Kuti or The Velvet Underground, Joni Mitchell or Lady Day. Thank your old friend now. Send him an email and tell him about the excellent Tom Waits show you just came home from, how breathless and happy you feel, and tell him how you realized all at once, that you never would have been there in that wonderful, boney balcony seat, your spine rattling shivers through your skin, if it hadn’t been for him, way back forever ago, in his parents’ kitchen, sticking Rain Dogs in the CD player and playing it so loud his own dogs howled outside. Thank him for making you listen to it again and again till you stopped saying it was weird.

It’s a better thing to thank these people, even if they’re people who don’t expect your thanks, and I’ll say especially in these cases, better to thank them, than to thank yourself. Because if you pat your own back, that's totally a difficult and physically awkward gesture, man. It pulls your shoulder out of joint all weird. And then you'll secretly know you’re lying. And your mind turns you cagey and craven to prove it. And then, eventually, we have on our hands, way too many solitary, striving, and in the end, lonely, assholes.
And that’s not what music’s About, Charlie Brown.

Maybe you heard this music at a show the group played. Maybe you wandered into there by yourself, or your girlfriend’s band opened up and so you had to do the polite thing and watch their set because they watched your girlfriend’s, even though you’re tired and your feet hurt from this awful concrete floor for four goddamned hours. You stay and watch and listen and suddenly, the room gets that electric feeling. No one there knew this would happen, but it’s happening. This music is chastening the crowd. This crowd is moved. Or maybe there is no crowd. Maybe it’s a different night, one in which it really is only, just you and the performer. And somehow, you experience brilliance.

You’re still not so great. You’re lucky. We’re all humbled by the music itself. Thank the sound.


(Thanks to my colleague in Atlanta, as this diatribe was sparked, in part, by our ten-second phone exchange today in which we argued about nerds versus cool people and I was at a complete loss. Now I'm not.)