-- People who "don't care about music" listen to shitty music. I guess that seems like an obvious point, but since the inverse could just as easily be true, it actually doesn't make sense. Have you ever met someone who "doesn't care about finding out about music," who is not a record-collector, who doesn't seek out new artists, who listens to "just whatever it is I enjoy," who listens to like, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix-- that is, completely well-known and accessible artists? --or, you know, just listen to classic music? Instead, the opposite is nearly always true, that people who "just listen to whatever" listen to music I've never heard of, which is terrible, disposable, and constantly changing.

My point is not (only) to insult people who listen to mp3 blogs, movie soundtrack albums, re-mixes, covers, or the radio, or buy CDs at Starbucks--- although as I have said, these people's "whatever" attitude actually seems to involve MORE effort at listening to WORSE music than if you just bought the top 20 albums on that Rolling Stone list--- it is that there is no such thing as a "neutral" or "whatever" attitude, really. Someone who "doesn't read" is 10x more likely to pick up a not-acclaimed, anonymous mass-market mystery, than to read a famous novel like The Grapes of Wrath. Someone who claims to hold some position outside of taste is actually an enemy of taste, and not just an innocent bystander.

Two things: how does someone arrive at a "whatever" attitude, in a culture which is inundated with reviews, lists, music videos, Barnes and Noble Classics, the Criterion Collection, employee picks, and THE INTERNET?, and secondly, what is the "message" of this position? My contention would be that it is a secondary position-- that of being defeated by or of rejecting this culture of taste/the canon/the new. This is why no one who supposedly "doesn't care" about music doesn't simply stumble upon having really good taste, by accident and by the massive availability of good music. You've got to really want it, to be into total crap. And someone who has this neutral attitude is not AS likely to stumble onto something great as to something banal and mainstream. The mainstream AT LEAST serves a regulatory function-- it is still where some aspects of culture occur. But the mainstream is actually fairly risqué, and stumbles forward unwittingly. I have no *real* beef with mainstream culture, which has given us The Simpsons, among other things. What I would like to see destroyed is the attitude that masquerades as indifference to culture (even mainstream culture), while at the same time despising culture, erecting of taste an Idol that will condescend to them, that they may hate it and plan its destruction.