Happy Two Month Anniversary! That’s right – the most obnoxiously titled column in buzz is celebrating two months of existence. Instead of carousing and carrying on, however, Carlye and Brian have decided to step back and take the time to reevaluate the column and see what they can do to make it better. An important step in this procedure is to better understand your fellow columnist. To do this, Carlye and Brian will step into each other’s metaphorical shoes and write an article as if they were the other person. This role-playing exercise, much like the hit Disney film Freaky Friday will undoubtedly make each person understand who they truly are … but, probably not. This week’s “self”-exploratory topic: What’s the best kind of music?
Brian: Carlye loves jam bands.
Hi, I’m Carlye Wisel and I love leggings. Besides wearing said garment, in my free time I like to complain and eat bagels in my sorority. More importantly, however, I L-O-V-E music. Imagine I said that like that Ashlee Simpson song. I don’t particularly like Ashlee, but I definitely enjoy her more than what is appropriate. Though the princess of pop is a ton o’ fun, I think the best kind of music is made by jam bands. I love guitar scales and the playing of them incessantly for hours on end. If there’s a pseudo-funk beat with a bongo drum and a white guy wearing a Rastafarian hat, I like it … a lot!
Basically, I don’t value songwriting. Being able to play a riff for hours on end is more important than constructing an enjoyable, condense song. Plus, I like it a lot when jam bands play covers and add some super sweet solos in the middle. I put stock in how a guitarist can bend a guitar string, not the melodies or movements he can create.
Brian doesn’t understand how I don’t care that Phish didn’t write their lyrics. He thinks that lyrics create an atmosphere, and are there to give a song substance and meaning, but I think he’s boring. I just want to go to Joe’s to get sorori-wasted and talk about Umphrey McGees.
I’ll end with an analogy to explain why I love jam bands: I hate how poems by Keats or Shelley are short and take time to understand; I prefer Dan Brown books in which everything is drawn out and written for a seventh grade intermediate reading class. I think jam bands are awesome because I, Carlye Wisel, am stupid.
Carlye: Brian loves indie music
Oh, heeeeey! I, Brian McGovern, am ready to tell you how much better my taste in music is than yours. Yeah, you heard me – I’m fucking pretentious. So what if I look like a cartoon character? So what if Pitchfork is my homepage? So what if my women’s jeans are so tight and ankle-tapered that when I try to hop over anything they almost split open? I listen to fuckin’ indie music, man, and I mean real indie music, not all that indie bullshit that emo-indie posers listen to. I’m hardcore indie.
I’d bleed for Okkervile River, they’re totally the best band ever. I don’t care if they sound like the musical love child of Johnny Cash and The Decemberists, they have an obscure name, which makes them soooo indie. Which I am. Therefore I like their indie music.
Lyrics gotta speak to me; they need to be poetry paired with slow, airy melodies about lost love and tragedies and any other sad stuff, ‘cuz I totally relate to that. But, I’m not emo. Don’t call me emo, really. That’s rude. Broken Social Scene and Built to Spill and all my other favorite 3-word bands are totally indie, too.
I think it’s so cool to wear tiny plaid button-down T-shirts, but hey -just because I wear tight clothes doesn’t mean I’m emo. Fuck Panic! and their exclamation point. They’re ruining music and punctuation for the rest of us. Mostly punctuation, though because emo isn’t real music! Ha! Haha!
Well, to provide you with a bona fide five-paragraph-essay ending: In Conclusion,
I, Brian McGovern, love indie music – almost so much that if it were an apple pie, I would pull a Jason Biggs and um … eat it- and there’s nothing anyone can do or say to make me change. So there.
