Jonny 290 posted:

edge is also terrible and successfully leveraged a bunch of audio equivalents of vaseline-on-the-lens glamour shots tricks to tread water

ShadowHawk posted:

All live music is terrible

N.Z.'s Champion posted:

Why is U2 so popular?

Big Market: Imagine you’re a middle-aged, upper-middle-class male. You live in a large metropolitan area. You have a good job. Your wife does Pilates. Your oldest just started kindergarten. Yes, you’re an adult, but you’re still cool! Your jeans cost $125. Sometimes you wear sneakers with a blazer!

You like the idea of being a guy who’s into live music, but the last few concerts you’ve been to were (a) too loud, (b) too crowded, (c) too foreign (you were lucky if you recognized one song). You’ll snap a few photos with your smartphone and tell your bros about it to get some street cred, but let’s face it: you didn’t enjoy yourself. There are millions of you. And you’re willing to drop cash to have a concert make you feel cool again.

Product Market Fit: Then you learn that U2 is coming to town—U2! Earnest, melodic, Oprah-endorsed U2! $200 a ticket? No problem. You get a sitter. Your wife is excited—this is going to be great! You invite some friends from college to join you.

On the way, you listen to the “early stuff.” The Joshua Tree pumps through the speakers of your Lexus SUV (no judgment—you have two kids!). The harmonies soothe. The lyrics are straightforward. You recall a simpler time before car seats and prostate exams. The nostalgia is so thick you have to wipe it from your face. You haven’t looked at your phone in nearly 11 minutes.

You arrive at the show and see yourself everywhere. Tasteful North Face and Patagonia jackets abound. The stands are awash in earth tones. No one is shoving. No one has a nose ring. These are your people.

Usability: The band begins with A SONG YOU RECOGNIZE! You’re on your feet. You’re drinking “craft” beer. Everyone is singing terribly.

And the best part—YOU CAN DANCE HERE! 80,000 people surround you and there’s not a coordinated movement in sight. Even the band sets a low bar. Bono doesn’t so much dance as lunge and bounce. The other guys seem content to nod and rock. All around you, middle-aged people are rocking and lunging and bouncing and singing badly. Is that guy wearing Tod’s loafers and a Barbour jacket? Yes, he is. And he’s in the zone.

The set is basically a greatest hits playlist. The band graciously performs two new songs that no one recognizes to give you a few minutes to use the john and grab another IPA. They might as well flash an intermission sign.

Even the political statements go down smooth: “Democracy!” “Fight AIDS!” How could you possibly disagree? You’re not only dancing and reminiscing—you’re spreading freedom and reasonably-priced medicines to distant lands!

And the kicker: not one, but TWO encores, the ones you know best—the ones you first heard that summer you painted houses or kissed Katie at the beach party. You’re closing your eyes now. This is sad and sweet. You put your arm around your wife. You’re wondering if Katie ever got married. A third of the crowd departs after the first encore. It’s no big deal; some of us have work in the morning! Anyway, the traffic will be better if everyone doesn't leave at once

Blackula69 posted:

i don't think so at all. it's all over the place and the last few songs sound the most post-punk of anything they've done in a long time. and the lyrics are actually about specific things

Squinty Applebottom posted:

lol whats it like living with your level of autism

Blackula69 posted:

lol literal autism

Displeased Moo Cow posted:

relive the magic

ShadowHawk posted:

sensori-motor responses to music.

ShadowHawk posted:

Honestly I think it's more this:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/06/286786987/for-some-people-music-truly-doesnt-make-them-happy

The researcher in the article calls it music-specific anhedonia and they made a little online quiz version.

Here were my scores:


The mean is 50 and standard deviation is 10, which puts me way out of "normal" for everything but sensori-motor responses to music.

Blackula69 posted:

lol literal autism

Blackula69 posted:

lol literal autism

N.Z.'s Champion posted:

Why is U2 so popular?

Big Market: Imagine you’re a middle-aged, upper-middle-class male. You live in a large metropolitan area. You have a good job. Your wife does Pilates. Your oldest just started kindergarten. Yes, you’re an adult, but you’re still cool! Your jeans cost $125. Sometimes you wear sneakers with a blazer!

You like the idea of being a guy who’s into live music, but the last few concerts you’ve been to were (a) too loud, (b) too crowded, (c) too foreign (you were lucky if you recognized one song). You’ll snap a few photos with your smartphone and tell your bros about it to get some street cred, but let’s face it: you didn’t enjoy yourself. There are millions of you. And you’re willing to drop cash to have a concert make you feel cool again.

Product Market Fit: Then you learn that U2 is coming to town—U2! Earnest, melodic, Oprah-endorsed U2! $200 a ticket? No problem. You get a sitter. Your wife is excited—this is going to be great! You invite some friends from college to join you.

On the way, you listen to the “early stuff.” The Joshua Tree pumps through the speakers of your Lexus SUV (no judgment—you have two kids!). The harmonies soothe. The lyrics are straightforward. You recall a simpler time before car seats and prostate exams. The nostalgia is so thick you have to wipe it from your face. You haven’t looked at your phone in nearly 11 minutes.

You arrive at the show and see yourself everywhere. Tasteful North Face and Patagonia jackets abound. The stands are awash in earth tones. No one is shoving. No one has a nose ring. These are your people.

Usability: The band begins with A SONG YOU RECOGNIZE! You’re on your feet. You’re drinking “craft” beer. Everyone is singing terribly.

And the best part—YOU CAN DANCE HERE! 80,000 people surround you and there’s not a coordinated movement in sight. Even the band sets a low bar. Bono doesn’t so much dance as lunge and bounce. The other guys seem content to nod and rock. All around you, middle-aged people are rocking and lunging and bouncing and singing badly. Is that guy wearing Tod’s loafers and a Barbour jacket? Yes, he is. And he’s in the zone.

The set is basically a greatest hits playlist. The band graciously performs two new songs that no one recognizes to give you a few minutes to use the john and grab another IPA. They might as well flash an intermission sign.

Even the political statements go down smooth: “Democracy!” “Fight AIDS!” How could you possibly disagree? You’re not only dancing and reminiscing—you’re spreading freedom and reasonably-priced medicines to distant lands!

And the kicker: not one, but TWO encores, the ones you know best—the ones you first heard that summer you painted houses or kissed Katie at the beach party. You’re closing your eyes now. This is sad and sweet. You put your arm around your wife. You’re wondering if Katie ever got married. A third of the crowd departs after the first encore. It’s no big deal; some of us have work in the morning! Anyway, the traffic will be better if everyone doesn't leave at once

Blackula69 posted:

lol literal autism

ShadowHawk posted:

Honestly I think it's more this:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/06/286786987/for-some-people-music-truly-doesnt-make-them-happy

The researcher in the article calls it music-specific anhedonia and they made a little online quiz version.

Here were my scores:


The mean is 50 and standard deviation is 10, which puts me way out of "normal" for everything but sensori-motor responses to music.

Crusader posted:

Fax Sender posted:

shadowhawk with all due respect i recommend you try a weed

ShadowHawk posted:

I've never tried a weed but I don't expect this to make my brain care about music any more than I expect it to make me see new colors.

It's not that I don't enjoy life, I really do, it's just that I really don't care for music. I can recognize it (and even perform it), but it just adds no value. Hearing people talk about music is a bit like listening to a food snob describe how much better the french fries cooked in one type of oil are than the other when I can't even tell them apart. If I didn't know better I'd suspect they were just making it all up.

My preferences in music are similarly strange, when people make me answer that question I feel a bit like how someone with no sense of smell would respond when asked to describe their favorite scented candle. I don't really listen to music in my spare time at all, it's just not a thing I do. I never spent any time in my teenage years locked up in my room playing tunes. I never invited anyone over to chill out and listen to music together. I listen to podcasts when driving or excercising.

If you looked through my "collection" or youtube history for music you'd find a bunch of things that aren't actually enjoyed for their musical properties -- funny videos, comedy songs, parody music, etc. Music can still invoke emotion in me through other means -- maybe I'll have a contextual memory about that particular song -- but if I've never heard it before odds are I'll be completely indifferent. The lyrics themselves can be poetry (quite literally, since the music isn't doing anything), but I'm not the kind of person who enjoys reading poetry or listening to spoken word performances either.

One time I had a friend list the three best things in life as "Food, Sex, and Music" and I literally thought he was making a joke along the lines of "Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking".

Blackula69 posted:

lol literal autism

Cold on a Cob posted:

u2 sucks if you have to listen to pap like that maybe listen to r.e.m. instead i guess? i dunno

PleasureKevin posted:

I really like the U2 album

Jonny 290 posted:

edge is also terrible and successfully leveraged a bunch of audio equivalents of vaseline-on-the-lens glamour shots tricks to tread water