This week my heckles are up after a particular conversation with someone about music production. It started as a pretty harmless coffee catch up and the usual queries about one another's activities. Knowing full well he was recently finishing some pop-rock tracks in his home studio, I enquired as to how it was all going. The expected reply, that it was all nearing completion, was forthcoming but was then followed by the most effusive pomp about how good it all was, and he was now exploring doing something a bit different. The he said “I’m going to focus on making my next tracks a ‘cool electro’ album.
‘Cool’ electro? Are you kidding me? And this coming from someone who actually works in the music industry! I found this 'genuine' genre description so cringe-worthy that it took all my effort to stop the involuntary wince so as to prevent a full mouth of hot coffee dribbling down my face. I paused, gulped and summoned an earnest, inquisitive tone and replied, “Cool electro? Now that’s a departure from the classic rock albums you are used to writing!” Unfortunately, Mr music mistook my statement as further interest on my part and misconstrued it as a question, as if I was demanding further clarification on the subject….. groan.
This is the point in the conversation I commenced my own internal dialogue while he repeated “cool electro, you know” and began his know-it-all pontificating about said electro album…what I actually heard, instead, was... blah-blah-blah-blah-dee-blah-dee-blah-blah-dee-blah blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah (in much the same tone as a whiney guitar in G-minor). My internal rant kicked in and immediately drowned out his feeble attempt to maintain any semblance of ‘cool’ from that point on. All I could think was “c’mon mate – you cannot seriously think that any discerning music-buying audience is that stupid?”
The lesson here is, one should never use the word ‘cool’ when describing something pertaining to oneself. It is the ultimate turn-off.
Using it as an adjective relating to yourself, ironically has the reverse meaning when it is contextualised by an onlooker. At an absolute pinch you may use it sparingly when describing inanimate objects in your possession but absolutely only, in this instance, in the company of your nearest and deadest who may share your precise tastes. The same goes for numerous other superlatives such as ‘awesome’ or ‘fantastic’. Let’s face it absolutely no one likes a boaster or a big-head!
On the other hand using cool to describe things that have NO relational value to oneself is completely fine and can be lavishly bandied about in describing pretty much everything. A brief example of a reasonable use in my book is: Hey – did you just see that uber-cool homeless guy, wearing that way-cool tartan tuxedo, walk by just now? (quite frankly where was this imaginary dude when I needed a distraction from the mediocrity of that coffee-date). I digress…
My point is there are plenty of other words to use when trying to evoke the flavour, the concept, or the genre of electro. Even citing other 'like' examples or using make-believe words can help the astute electro lover in getting the gist. Had the coffee-wrecker said “my music will be a Miami-bass driven, beatsy exploration of glitched-up, orchestral samples on a Wolfy-esqe psychedelic tip”, then I would have instantly thought….WOW – how cool!
I doubt Mr music on his pop-guitar tangent, will realise the errors of his ways, nor see that he is well out of his depth in electro land, only inevitably releasing more trite music into to the plethora of noisy waste of time albums out there…. Sigh!
Mr music, I'll leave you to your generic pop music I think you were really trying to describe.
Give me some hot, dirty, sweaty, bluesy electro to listen to, while I drink my coffee alone, any day!!
