First, Tom Ewing’s in-progress formulation on how we understand and use music genres, followed by a minor corollary from yours truly:
Imagine you find a record you like in a genre you don’t usually listen to very deeply. Here are two broad ways you might talk about it publically:
“I don’t listen to much [genre] but I [...]

A friend of mine said this to me this weekend, describing a recent, fateful trip to a lame bar in Ft. Wayne, which he embarked upon under the dangerously vague group rubric of “seeing some band.”  First, what a completely alienating and bizarre, not to mention chastening, feeling for a music geek (which he most [...]

Swap out some nouns and Mad Libs this mug, 2010-style:
“Wanna be the big teen in hardcore circles?  Get some other dillheads together, call yourselves Antagonistic Decline or Vicious Tendencies or Unrepentant Youth or some such thing, copy every lick from the Dischord collection and write songs about military intervention, whether you know anything about it [...]

“That’s very simple. ‘Indie’ is short for ‘independent.’ Independently released music is not directly financially dependent on any of the four major labels (WMG, Sony BMG, EMI and Universal). ‘Indie’ does not refer to a style of music; it refers to the financial circumstances of its distribution. Anybody who tells you otherwise is lying to [...]

AIM IM with Mark: 1/29/09 12:55 PM
Mark: hey Eric
Me: hey Mark
Me: what’s up
Mark: are you into metal?
Mark: haha
Me: nah not really
Me: i like metal when it’s hybridized with other things
Mark: yeah, me too
Me: i really don’t know anything about metal, post like Slayer, early [...]