The Day Stephanie's Car Got Towed And I Met Shannon McCabe At The Coffee Garden And Sacramento Got A Little Smaller When I Found Out She Knows Tammie's Friend

First of all, Aceyalone and Jurassic 5 are fantastic musicians. If you don't know, the genre is hip-hop, the rhymes are fresh and the sound is dope. I mean that. And why shouldn't I? Why doesn't everyone see it that way? Not in such archaic lingo, perhaps. Nonetheless, the sound quality is good, the talent is apparent, and the beats are sound. When someone says, "It's just bad," to something as well-made as an Aceyalone or Jurassic 5 album they are no longer speaking about the music. They are speaking in stereotypes. They are generalizing. They are not thinking with their hearts, they are thinking with their preconceptions. 

You cannot dislike any music. It is senseless. You may have preferences, but to despise any song, ever, is to take your own human aspirations and smother them to death. At least these people are doing something with their lives. At least they're not still dreaming of recording a CD, of being listened to worldwide, of being played in a coffee-shop in Sacramento, California. They did something. Did you? 

You can have preferences. You should say, "This is not my preferred genre of music, but thank you for expanding my mind with these fabulous new sounds." The less you obstinately hate music, you start to enjoy it a lot more. Not just the stuff you think is "good," but everything. Country, reggae, hip-hop, experimental... Listen to it. Don't cover your ears or roll your eyes or stick out your tongue. Just listen. 

Hear that? It's someone's passion. 

How about I take your passion and smash it with a hammer?

And how about you think for a second that someone, somewhere, perhaps standing right in front of you, actually enjoys this music. A lot. Maybe this is their favorite fucking song. To tell them that what they enjoy--what has defined a part of their life--is somehow "bad" is not the best way to make friends.


In fact, maybe I'm just taking this a little too far, but it edges you closer to the list of people I can't stand. People who judge music. It hasn't bothered me so much in the past, but I'm looking at it differently now. 

I think people need to open their ears a little more. 

In my opinion, every single song ever written and produced and put to an album is good. And the acoustic stuff you hear on crappy sound systems in creaky old bars on a Tuesday night is even better. Everything is good. Some songs are better than others, some are more personally valuable, and some fade from memory like snippets of conversations overheard on a train. But none of them are bad. None of them aren't worth listening to. 

It's four minutes of my life to hear twenty-five years of one band's passion. 

If I like it, I'll get the CD. I'll play it at work. I'll share it, as it deserves to be.

And looking at me and telling me that something I appreciate is "bad" is basically an attack on my ability to know what things in this life are worth appreciating. Oh, this music is bad? I didn't know that. I guess anything else that sounds like this is bad, too... Guess that means I won't be listening to any more hip-hop at all... Oh, but you like Beyonce? That's funny. I do, too. Isn't she hip-hop? No? It's different? Go to hell. 

I like what I like. I'm not alone, either. Strange the power you have to tell a hundred-thousand strangers that they've been enjoying bad music for years. And the sad thing is, I bet there are a hundred-thousand strangers out there who hate the stuff on your iPod. And they really hate it. I don't know why they do, but they do, because they don't care enough about other people to see value in a work of art. They're blinded. You're blinded. It makes me sad that your strong biases have closed off your ears to the wonder of creation. 

Just LISTEN to it. Could you make that? 

Seriously. I know I can't.

'Cause I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away

And I'll be okay

I'm not big on social graces

Think I'll slip on down to the oasis 

- Left to Fry