I am officially Out Of Touch.

[The Curmudgeon]

It was destined to happen, I suppose. When you distance yourself from the mainstream chart product, only dipping in to write mocking reviews on Amazon, I'm going to eventually lose interest entirely. There is a Light That Never Goes Out, Morrissey once said, but not in this case. See, that's how in tune I am, I'm quoting 25 year old fucking Smith's songs.

Looking at the charts over the last few weeks, I have literally no idea what any of them are. I've heard (and admittedly actually quite like) Taylor Swift's new single, but that's it. I decided to see just what I was missing, and switched on the music channels to hear these hot new sounds. I lasted about ten minutes before turning it off, the anodyne, bland dross, meaningless dance shit and empty, over produced ballads were just too much for me to stomach.

I watched a TV show where the guy said people should stop buying records when they hit 25. Fuck no. I'm not switched off to new music at all. But it's stuff that doesn't even scratch the surface of the popular charts, and I'm not some "oh, you haven't heard of them" hipster dick, there just is nothing in new pop music I remotely want to hear.

So I'm officially past it, I guess. The reason the Amazon reviews dried up wasn't lack of ideas or lack of material. It was lack of time and just sheer boredom with what's out there right now. Bad is one thing. Fucking boring is something else.

How about you? Are you still invested in the current music scene? Have you switched off from the mainstream or does the idea of new music seem like so much damned effort now?

[trashcanman]

I haven't listened to the radio consistently since high school, back when it was all Alice in Chains, Dr. Dre, and the like. But anyone who tells me to stop buying records can go and fuck themselves with a sandpaper dildo. I am still finding awesome music, it's just in spite of the corporate garbage being rammed down everyone else's throats. This place has been a huge source of music for me. Bands like Spector and artists like Scroobius Pip and Frank Turner are exactly the kind of stuff I'm looking for and I have the Fortress to thank for discovering them. To quote Bad Brains: "where oh where can jah love be found? My dear, it's here in the underground". I never hear any good overseas stuff or new acts worth knowing on the radio or TV, but get around and talk to people out there who give enough of a shit to go out and look for something new and you'll always find something worth finding.