Yes, I realize the title’s flame-bait and yes, it’s partially in-jest.
One look at any arbitrary list of music I like shows that I’m hardly a connoisseur of fine music, in fact I’d say precious little of the songs I’d rock out to in my underwear in my bedroom mean anything of value to our culture as a whole. Discarding the whole “butterfly effect” thing, the world probably wouldn’t be a terribly different place if Offspring never existed.
But you know what? I’m okay with that. I don’t base my music tastes around the cultural significance of the work, or even around the politics behind them (which pisses off a fair few “all punks should be anarchists” types, believe me!) – no, I can still enjoy some of Goldfinger despite the fact I almost couldn’t disagree more with the lead singer’s stances on “animal rights” (I’m an animal welfarist, not an animal rights supporter – there’s a subtle difference, mostly when it comes to Ted Nugent).
So when having some form of discussion with a friend recently, he wound up showing me his last.fm page. At this point, my knee-jerk reaction was to fire up the common troll: “You gotta be high to listen to Pink Floyd”.
Now I wasn’t intending to berate SouL for his music tastes – everyone likes something different. Where this comment actually stems from is from a history of belligerent Pink Floyd fans (though ‘floyd are by no means unique in this respect – the various subcultures are heinous for this) who basically insinuate that you either like ‘Floyd or you have no taste in music. Personally, I’d rather go down to Tijuana for a back alley colon cleansing than listen to Pink Floyd.
The worst offender was a guy that worked at the tile factory I worked at fresh out of high school. He had a degree in Philosophy, and still wound up slinging around hot chunks of terracotta – in other words, he’s exactly the kind of person to get condescending when it comes to music.
His basic position was that you either liked Pink Floyd, or you were a neanderthal with no culture. The fact that I was too young to experience the educational system pre-”The Wall“, paraphrased from his opinion, basically meant I had no hope of every knowing what a deep and meaningful song could be like.
So that’s why now when I hear someone who says their favorite artist is Pink Floyd, I just can’t help myself.