All the Rage #10

     You are a really angry man! I'm sorry you feel such anger towards such a popular band. You see, now you must face this anger on a daily basis for a long period of time. I "hate" to say it, but Hootie is going to be around for a very long time. I must say that you are a fine writer. It is just a shame that you won't be recognized as such because you waste your talents on hatred. In closing I will say that I feel bad for you. Hatred on any level is a sickness and brings good to no one. In the end peace and harmony will prevail. Thank you for your time.

--Robert Jones

     You guys are spending an inordinate amount of time telling people what you hate...interesting. Then again, it is always easier to hate and exclude than it is to be constructive. If you don't like a certain variety of music...don't buy it. Your vitriolic negativity reminds me of the mean spirited right wing. Newt Gingrich would love to have you all in the Republican Party. In short, get a life and put your obvious creativity to a positive use.

--Anonymous

Wow.

I'm sitting here watching the responses come in on our "We Hate Hootie" special section, and they are both passionate and vulgar. Check out the letters page in the section itself to see some of the more intense notes I've recieved on the topic. So far, the mail is overwhelmingly against us, and I'm sure it's only going to get worse.

For the most part, it doesn't bother me. Those only articulate enough to invoke such witticisms as "cocksucker" and "Matt Asshole" against me are of no concern. When you hate yourself as much as I do, the mindless hatred of others means less than you can imagine.

The items that have clawed their way into my brain and stuck around for a while are the two you'll find posted above. You'll note that they're both measured responses that happen to be against the section. They're also very thought-provoking, and have inspired some valuable introspection. Not icky Gordon Lightfoot introspection, but good reality introspection.

It's a good question to ask: why hate? Why not more "peace and harmony"? Don't we all want peace and harmony to prevail? (That's aside from Sadaam Hussein.) Pop-Culture-Corn is not exactly everyone's one-stop internet haven; this isn't a top Yahoo! pick. It's just a cocky webzine. Why focus so exclusively on negativity? Are we eating our own baby by turning off others to what we're doing through our abuse of the power of hate?

To examine these questions, let me get melodramatic, way too personal, and slightly boring for a few paragraphs. When I was a junior in high school, my musical diet consisted of lots of Elton John and lots of musical theater. I'm not embarassed about this; both have their place in the big picture. But I wasn't exactly what you'd call a big pop music fan, nor was I remotely aware of everything that was going on in the world of pop, or even of what had gone on for nearly forty years before me. I was your basic clueless teenager.

Then I bought a copy of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run album, and it was all over for me. My descent into music geekdom began. Over the following years, I've indulged in a number of passionate ongoing relationships with other artists: Elvis Costello, They Might Be Giants, Ben Folds Five, Cake, the Beatles, and others. I've also grown to hate music that I personally feel to be disgustingly spineless: Better than Ezra, Mariah Carey, Duncan Shiek, Bush, Celine Dion, Hootie and the Blowfish. I've listened to a lot of different music, tried to keep an open mind, and developed some strong opinions.

That's all well and good. But what makes Hootie specifically so repulsive? It's as simple as this: their popularity. As a small indie pop group with a miniscule devoted following, they'd be easy to ignore and to write off. Instead, these guys are world-famous. They sell millions of records. They've become the background music for the decade. And in my humble opinion, they suck goats.

How does a pop music fan with an ear for the transcendent reconcile this? Viewed in one light, they're harmless, something I can turn off on the radio or, as suggested by Anonymous, just "not buy." But viewed in another light, they're a massive threat to the overall integrity of popular music. Think about what it means for Hootie to sell several million records. Their music is everywhere. Other bands who sound the same--but with less talent, if you can imagine such a thing--emerge onto the scene. Suddenly, the quality level of all the music we listen to is affected. Truly unique and talented voices are kept silent through sheer lack of exposure. And perhaps worst of all, their music becomes the one lynchpin by which those who aren't passionate about music can understand music in general. In other words, there are folks in Consumerland who own only the first Hootie record.

That makes me sick. It's not just enough that Hootie makes bad music, or that their bad music is everywhere. It's now written into our cultural fabric, as representative of our current pop climate as The X-Files, The Lion King and the Lewinsky scandal. When historians from one hundred years in the future look back upon our times, they'll see many things, but they'll see lots of Hootie.

Isn't that troubling? Sure, it's rare that a massive pop moment is seized by an artist whose music is truly worth hearing. Nirvana's smash success in the earlier part of the decade is the last example I can recall. Yet it's also rare that the massive moment is captured by music so bland and bereft of creative sparks.

I guess you could say, "who cares?" It's just pop music. But then, why do PCC at all? Why read PCC? And why listen to music, if it doesn't touch you and move you and give you strange, unwarranted anger at five guys who just happen to make records that (in one man's opinion) don't deserve to be heard?

Anonymous is right; it is easy to hate. On the other hand, it's easy to stumble into a CD store and buy the latest Hootie only because that's what people buy. To be "constructive" as he or she suggests, I recommend that Hootie and the Blowfish stop making music today. Right now. This very second. Barring that, I'll try and live with my hate...if you'll all try to understand just how much I treasure its vitriolic flame.