Citizens United against Non-inspiring Tunes Rage Abatement Group

Originally Posted by knkwzrd

I understand recent music history, Pang. Country versions of rap songs aren't a cultural movement, they're just horrid novelty trash, and you know it. This doesn't show a genuine appreciation of the original, it's just some asshole thinking "country singers are racists, right? Well, listen up! I'm going to get country singers to cover rap songs! ISN'T THAT HILARIOUS?".

This shit just reinforces all of the worst stereotypes of both genres.

Originally Posted by Pangalin

Maybe you and Shin can put together some kind of support group to help you through this trauma.

So I took Pang's advice.

If you're like me in this respect, and I know at least a few of you are, some of the nominations that have come up so far make you ashamed to be a human being.

Instead of cluttering up voting threads, use this topic to bitch and moan make oh so witty remarks about how fucking horrid some of this shit really is.

It shall be a veritable circlejerk of Serious Fucking Musical Scholarship.

I don't like showtunes. There. I said it. Can I have my Ph.D. in music theology now?

There were far too many tracks that I found snore worthy that I'm just going to lump them here when I come across any more. Which I'm hoping I'm not.

I also had a revelation that most Billboard Top 100s from any year would've beaten any of the craptacular tracks nominated here.

I'm gonna go check and see which songs I inadvertently pushed into the competition by having my own tracks disqualified. I hope I don't hate myself afterwards.

Well what do you know, Deni's tracks.

01. John Lee Hooker - Boom Boom
02. Muddy Waters - Baby, Please don't go.
03. Cream - Tales of Brave Ulysses
04. Dar Williams - Iowa
05. Death From Above 1979 - Sexy Results
06. Elliot Smith - Needle in the Hay
07. Man Man - Black Mission Goggles
08. The Decemberists - The Legionnaire's Lament

In retrospect, I probably should have given you a lot more leeway.

I'm really more irritated by the trance versions of symphonic songs that just tend to remind us that anything and everything can be commercialized for profit. Someone makes a complex and emotionally moving piece and another guy makes a stripped-down, repetitious version that removes all the subtlety of the original to capitalize on the memorable parts of it.

Frankly, I don't think the loss of subtlety is going to be a problem for county rap.

Originally Posted by Skexis

I'm really more irritated by the trance versions of symphonic songs that just tend to remind us that anything and everything can be commercialized for profit. Someone makes a complex and emotionally moving piece and another guy makes a stripped-down, repetitious version that removes all the subtlety of the original to capitalize on the memorable parts of it.

I think you're taking those tunes out of context though mate. There's not many people I know who'd sit around the house listening to banging trance music but if you were out at a club of a friday night having a good time would you rather listen to some symphony orchestra's rendition of Barber's Addagio for Strings or William Orbit's version? Although I agree that there's a lot of horrible commercialised dance music around, there's also a lot that's made for clubs and that only gets a general commercial release a couple of years after it has played out in the clubs and even then often after someone else has remixed and commercialised it. Classical symphonic pieces lend themselves to euphoric trance. The only reson they don't get played in their raw state in clubs is that people on drugs prefer a repetitive beat and have attention spans too short for full classical tracks.

As for the general topic of genre crossovers, I'm generally a fan. I have shit loads of tracks like that of all kinds of unexpected cover versions. If it's a tune I know and love being covered (Like Straight outta Compton) I enjoy hearing it interpreted in a different way and I find familiarity with the original track makes the cover far more interesting or amusing. Of course they don't always work, Sheryl Crowe's cover of Sweet Child O' Mine is a crime against music for example. To dismiss all "novelty" covers as a big joke however is rather blinkered.

I'm confused. Are we getting over it in here or getting angrier?

I dunno, rage and anger fitted the acronym better. Maybe I could change it to Rage Abatement Group, that'd still work.

Originally Posted by knkwzrd

Instead of cluttering up voting threads, use this topic to bitch and moan make oh so witty remarks about how fucking horrid some of this shit really is.

No, I will go on writing my comments in the thread. And do you know why? Because I don't fucking care and because it is hell of a ride. Whenever I write something about how much I detest a song, it doesn't take five minutes until some self-styled "music experts" come around and babble stuff like "omg you have no idea" or "geez how could you say that... xxx.mp3 is totally awesome, so shut up yo". This is entertaining to the extreme, you know that?

In fact, it seems that almost all tracks except the ones I nominated are utter bullshit and it once again demonstrates the extremely bad taste of music that this community has to offer.

It was pretty bad last year, but I must say wow, this year, it's pretty much disastrous.

I think a big part of the problem is that half of you decided it would be WACKY AND CAHRAYZEE to intentionally include shitty showtunes, or other things that neither you nor anyone else could actually like on any genuine level: music from Queen Latifah comedies? Wrestling theme music? Obnoxious spoken-word diatribes that barely squeak in under the rules because there's a backing drumbeat?

A lot of the music in SAUS sucks this year because people DECIDED to make it suck. What's left is Hyddyn Sceptyre, Frank Zappa and Pitchfork Media's Greatest Hits, yippee.

I didn't nominate a single tune that I don't really like or listen to regularly. I think the problem is not so much the joke noms, you always get those in these kinds of contests, it's the fact that so much of the music nominated is indistinguishable from the rest. I guess that's an indication of what a tight knit community we are that so many people all like the same kinds of music but sadly, it seems that the prevalent taste is at odds to that of the more vocal members here. Some people must like all this bland emo rock or so much of it wouldn't have got nominated. All that's happened is that the unimaginative kids who nominated it haven't spoken up to defend their decisions for the most part against the torrent of negativity from those of us who enjoy a decent, lively debate.

My only quibble is that after we all (Rightfully) had a go at Goldfish for nominating the same song eight times, there may have been other nominators who included eight more or less identical emo-rock songs but nobody noticed because band names like Arthur's Lunchbox and Seaside Retreat are so much more ambiguous than Napalm Suicide Machine or The Virgin Rape Brotherhood. There's simply too many very, very similar tunes for people to have been genuinely diverse in their nominations.

Maybe next time make it four tunes each and get more people involved for a bit more of a mix of stuff? Or those of us with more divergent music tastes can just suck it up, fight the corner of the decent tunes and prepare our trolling campaigns for the VGM contest.

Originally Posted by Pangalin

I think a big part of the problem is that half of you decided it would be WACKY AND CAHRAYZEE to intentionally include shitty showtunes, or other things that neither you nor anyone else could actually like on any genuine level: music from Queen Latifah comedies? Wrestling theme music? Obnoxious spoken-word diatribes that barely squeak in under the rules because there's a backing drumbeat?

The Red Army Choir?

By the way, I haven't had any time to really follow the contest this week, but from what I can see the main issue here is that everyone needs to chill the fuck out and maybe accept that not every song you personally don't like is the worst anything ever, whose nominator should be euthanised. Last year I found maybe fifteen to twenty songs that I really liked a lot, out of more than five hundred, and that's about the most I'm expecting this year as well. Not going to whine because every other song is not some eye-opening magical musical journey for me.

I don't think anyone's taking it that seriously and actually getting upset are they? Of course nobody expects to like every tune in the contest, that'd be silly and I've already found a couple of tunes I really liked and will hunt down more of so far. Likewise, I'm not expecting everyone to like the tunes I nominated any more than I'm expecting someone who's a big fan of teen-rock to suddenly have a life-changing epiphany when they hear Bomb the Bass and throw away all their old cds in favour of some new good ones.

I think some of us are just getting a little frustrated at the amount of very similar, middle of the road music on offer this year. The chances of discovering something new you like are vastly reduced when everyone has nominated mainstream guitar bands, or at least things that sound like mainstream guitar bands.

I just love it when I can randomly click on a thread in here and have a roughly 50% chance of seeing someone post something to the effect of "that song is good, but I would have nominated a different song by that band". I fully expected 90% of the nominations to be garbage, so there was really no surprise there.

Look, I open a voting thread and see people complaining and stuff (). Some of them in a very fun way. I mean, it is totally entertaining, and I don't think people should take it that seriously. It is just a contest. I think the aggressiveness in the SAUS forum has pretty much hit the top already anyway. People bash songs they actually like. People bash other people because they bashed the songs or because they cannot tell Hip Hop from Punk music. So what?

Guys, I thought SAUS was kind of like Xbox Live where half the fun of this shindig was the trashtalking... Am I missing something here?