A Horrible Confession

I like The New Radicals and Fall Out Boy.

I have a degree in sound design from CalArts (technically, I have a BFA in theater, but CalArts has a sound design program that I studied). I spent a lot of time in college hanging out with the music school students. Were I more talented, my days would be spent creating masterpieces on the guitar and synth (the big analogue ones with the patch cables and such. My work has an original Moog Modular that I restored and constantly play with). My music collection runs from Phoenix to Aphex Twin to Brian Eno to Penderecki to Mozart. I consider myself a music snob. I don’t listen to terrestrial radio because I can’t stand the repetitive playlist. I get my music from the underground station on Sirius, and blogs, and the What.CD staff picks, and Becomes Eclectic on KCRW (everyone who doesn’t know about this show, it’s run on Los Angeles’ NPR station every weekday morning, and is amazing. They stream it online.). I am the insufferable prick who points out that the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” is a ripoff of “You Never Can Tell” by Chuck Berry.
Back in the nineties, when I was in college (class of 2000), I was watching MTV. The video for “You Get What You Give” came on. The video was fairly innocuous: a bunch of kids take over a mall and let the pets out and something and I think Robin Sparkles is there. I don’t know. I’ve had a lot to drink since then. The point is, the song was pretty good. I went out and bought the CD. There were songs about ODing, I think some stuff about suicide, altogether some pretty subversive material coated in catchy pop hooks. I love this album. I am the only one of my friends that does. Well, except for one, but he loves it in the way I love the Breakin’ movies and Snakes On A Plane – because they’re shit.
Fall Out Boy is a band with a great name. They also have some really fun songs. “Sugar, We’re Going Down” is on my playlist for when I shower in the morning. Altogether, these guys write solid songs, and divorce the Simpson girl without the boobs. The second part would usually make me not even want to try their music, but I didn’t know about that when I first heard them. I am the only one of my friends that likes this band as well.
I don’t want you to think that all of my friends are a bunch of hipster music snobs like me. My best friends, who I have known since I started high school, love Matchbox 20 and Blessid Union Of Souls. If that name isn’t enough to drive you away, they’re the guys responsible for that “Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me For Me)” piece of shit that was mildly popular back around 2000. These guys have horrible taste in music, and they don’t like either of these bands.
In college, a buddy of mine who was getting his Master’s in sound design went out and bought Blink 182’s big album. This guy was a music major at Oberlin, and a huge fan of Wendy Carlos’ work in “A Clockwork Orange.” Wendy Carlos is the one who made “Switched On Bach,” which, as a big analogue synth fan, I listen to pretty regularly. Anyway, this guy who had a degree in music from a pretty serious school, and could wax philosophical about classical music reworked on a Moog, loved Blink 182. He sat in the sound studio at school and listened to that album for three hours with headphones on. He heard a band that was tailor-made for that day’s youth. I heard a band that couldn’t play their instruments, and whose mastery of the English language paled in comparison to a third grader. I opened up to him about my love for The New Radicals, and he laughed at me.
These are my guilty pleasures. Now I only listen to them in my house, or through earphones so no one will laugh at me.
These are my guilty pleasures. I know I shouldn’t like them, but I do