Quote of the Day: Fool Fighters Edition

"I love all kinds of music. Electronic or acoustic, it doesn't matter to me. The simple act of creating music is a beautiful gift that all human beings are blessed with. And the diversity of one musician's personality to the next is what makes music so exciting and... human." (On technological advances in the recording of music:) "That's exactly what I was referring to, the 'human element,' that thing that happens when a song speeds up slightly, or a vocal goes a little sharp. That thing that makes people sound like people. Somewhere along the line those things became 'bad' things, and with the great advances in digital recording technology over the years they became easily 'fixed.' The end result? In my humble opinion... a lot of music that sounds perfect, but lacks personality. The one thing that makes music so exciting in the first place. I try really fucking hard so that I don't have to rely on anything but my hands and my heart to play a song. I do the best that I possibly can within my limitations, and accept that it sounds like me. Because that's what I think is most important. It should be real, right? Everybody wants something real."

-- Dave Grohl, "clarifying" his Grammy acceptance speech from Sunday night, which was knee-jerked by a few pissy, hypersensitive electronic elitists as some kind of broadside against dance music, which it clearly wasn't

I trust that now that it's been spelled out in terms that even the Dennis Romeros of the world can understand, this ridiculous horseshit controversy can be put to rest.

Update: I honestly kind of saw this coming, but rather than making the wise decision to back off, Dennis Romero is actually doubling-down on his royal fuck-up. He posted another column in LA Weekly just a little while ago which takes full credit for Grohl's decision to "clarify" his statement, calls him a dinosaur, makes ridiculous veiled references to homophobia, and throws around the term "EDM" like it's the password to get past the velvet rope at a secret club. I'd link to it, but why? At this point Romero's just trolling, so I see no need to continue helping to give him the most attention he's gotten in his entire meaningless career. At this point, it's best to just laugh him off.

Fool Fighter

I'll make this quick and try to use language that's as unambiguous as possible, in deference to people like Dennis Romero of LA Weekly who are apparently easily confused and who misinterpret the meanings of really obvious sentiments if they happen to be expressed in too many sentences.

LA Weekly: Dave Grohl's Grammy Speech About Electronic Music Was Bullshit/2.13.12

No, Dave Grohl wasn't slamming electronic music during the Foo Fighters' acceptance speech last night at the Grammys. He wasn't even talking about electronic music when he said this:

"To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what's important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do. It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head]."

I can't even believe I have to say this, but see, the Foo Fighters had just won an award for Best Rock Album and Grohl had just mentioned how Wasting Light was special to him because they'd recorded it on linear audiotape and without a reliance on high-tech crutches like Pro Tools and Auto-Tune. He doesn't have a fucking problem with electronic musicians, DJs or artists; he was talking about how many of today's pop and rock musicians -- dozens of which you watched perform and win last night at the Grammys -- don't even need to learn to play or sing or do anything that was once required to be known as a musician anymore because there are now computer programs that can make them sound great whether they've got a shred of actual skill or not.

The fucking Foo Fighters not only played with Deadmau5 later in the Grammys broadcast, they had him remix one of their songs and then put the damn thing on the album that won them a fucking Grammy. They don't hate electronic music -- they hate crappy musicians who use technology to cover for their lack of talent and the technology that's rendered so much rock and pop completely sterile and dull.

So, yeah, to Dennis Romero of LA Weekly -- you're a fucking idiot.

I hope for your sake somebody eventually comes up with an Auto-Tune program for writers -- because that's the only thing I can think of that might help your hack ass.

On the plus side, thanks for proving that people who worship at the altar of electronic music and, apparently, only electronic music aren't the sharpest Pro Tools in the shed.

Babies, Babies, Babies

A funny thing, last night's Grammys: On the one hand most of the bands I listen to likely don't need the validation of a Grammy and so the awards were and are pretty irrelevant to me, and yet I admit to really eating up the fact that what could very well be the best album of last year actually won a Grammy for being the best album of last year: Arcade Fire's superb The Suburbs. It's rare that the cool-kid, music critic crowd and the views of the recording academy -- an organization which has proven itself over the years to be slavishly devoted to mediocrity -- intertwine, but I suppose miracles never cease.

If there's one thing, though, that we as a nation can come together and revel in following the Grammys, it's that the adults of the recording industry, whether intentionally or not, managed to rise up and strike at least a minor blow directly into the heart of Justin Bieber's rabid and hive-minded tween fan base. Let's be honest: Everyone expected that insufferable little shit to take the award for Best New Artist, and, predictably, when he didn't and the award went to obscure jazz singer Esperanza Spalding, Bieber's legion of wet-between-the-legs pre-teen girls completely lost their fucking minds.

See for yourself:


Yes, that's Esperanza Spalding's Wikipedia page, which was almost immediately descended upon by outraged servants to the One True Haircut. They made fun of her name; they wailed and gnashed their teeth; they wrote in all caps about how she should "GO DIE IN A HOLE" and how "JUSTIN BIEBER DESERVED IT," which of course is true because as you know, being a jazz musician, Spalding will be gone in two weeks while the Bieber juggernaut/choke-hold isn't at all the evanescent fad the cynical would have you believe. That Bieber kid is here to stay, I tell you. What I think this highlights, though, is the need for angry tweens to tone down their inflammatory and irresponsible rhetoric before some forlorn, emotionally unhinged 13-year-old takes this kind of hate speech to heart and really does try to shoot Esperanza Spalding in the head at point blank range during one of her public appearances. I mean, it's only a matter of time. And when it happens, Justin Bieber will be to blame.

In all seriousness, as anyone who's kept up with this site over the years knows, I hate the tween domination of pop culture with the heat of a thousand suns -- and the beaver-shit crazy, overly entitled reaction to seeing their current deity go down for even just a couple of seconds explains why.

Suck it, kids. It's about time you learned to get used to a little disappointment.

By the way, as I mentioned on Twitter last night, when 16-year-old Bieber stepped onstage dressed in black leather, that wasn't rain outside your window -- it was Michael Jackson jerking off in heaven.

Related:

That Stupid Year: The Ten Most Ridiculous, Shameful or Generally Unfortunate People and Events of 2008 (#9 The American Tween)/1.5.09

Kids Incorporated/4.24.08

Listening Post

I haven't watched the Grammys in years and sitting through them last night I was reminded why.

On the whole, the show and the award-winners themselves were so spectacularly awful that this morning the entire experience comes back to me only in bits and pieces: Will.I.Am dressed like Mr. Roboto; Green Day losing the final vestige of whatever punk cred they had to begin with; Mylie Cyrus looking like she should be on the menu of an Eastern European mail order bride website; Jamie Foxx assaulting the ears of America with an indecipherable cacophony while his sister, who has Down Syndrome and looks like Precious, flails around on the stage (proving that the man who coincidentally introduced Foxx, Robert Downey Jr., was right about the rule he set forth in Tropic Thunder); Celine Dion in 3D; Taylor Swift not being able to sing on-key yet winning Album of the Year; in a related item -- AUTO-TUNE; The Grammys essentially becoming the CMT awards; Kesha and Justin Bieber -- KESHA AND JUSTIN FUCKING BIEBER -- appearing together as a cold harbinger of what we can expect from next year's Grammys.

I could go on, but all it'll do is make my stomach hurt worse.

Still, there were definitely a few bright spots: The Eminem, Lil Wayne, Drake and Travis Barker number was damn hot, and GaGa and Elton John turned out to be pretty inspired. But ask anyone about the high point of the show last night and they're guaranteed to say one word: Pink.

Her performance of Glitter in the Air was absolutely breathtaking.

So here it is.



(Anybody wanna place bets by the way on how long before this video is taken down for copyright violations? Enjoy it while you can, kids.)