BOOKS

I just wrote an entire paragraph trying to justify the difference between books and music.
the truth that i came to realize (after 6 or 7 sentences) is that there is essentially NO DIFFERENCE WHAT-SO-EVER.
Why? Well. i can’t really describe that either.
I mean, both things warrant the same response, which is as close as i can really get to why they’re the same thing.
i mean, literature and music has always gone hand in hand, because music has lyrics now.
i don’t really know.
but i might be slightly closer to understanding this whole thing at the end of this blog.
…this could be a long blog. just FYI. you might want to get yourself a snack, maybe some lemonade, i don’t want you dying of starvation halfway through my semi-pretentious blogging crap.

OKAY. now then. lets do this.

I just finished Fargo Rock City, by Chuck Klosterman.
Now, i’ve always ranked Klosterman as one of my favorite writers ever. he’s so deliciously snarky and he seems to actually understand the culture that he’s writing about, and accepts it. He isn’t like one of those detatched cultural critics who talks about music as though they’ve never actually experienced it, like they’re from a future era and they’re trying to pretend like they don’t actually associate with this culture crap that they’re talking about.
i hate people like that. which is why i love Chuck Klosterman.
Fargo Rock City is a book detailing the (insert adjective here) metal era of the 80’s (adjectives being things like, heavy, glam, speed, hard, death, etc.) and Klostermans involvement in it.
In my own personal opinion i feel like its the most siginificant book i’ve ever read about any type of music ever, mostly because he makes metal PERSONAL. which no one ever seems to do.
critics always make their reviews sound like “well, if you don’t like this you’re retarded because obviously its brilliant and everyone ELSE loves it so why don’t you?” or the exact same thing, except replace like/love with hate and brilliant with awful. they make their reviews sound like the voice of the people, when its obviously not.
critics are always just giving their own opinion of things, and i wish they would say that more often than they do, because that would give them so much more credibility.
you never hear a critic saying “hey, this is just my opinion, you might feel differently, and hey thats okay.” generally critics are assholes, or at least sound like it on paper, because they will tell you that your favorite album/movie/book is a pile of horse manure that should be vomited on, put in a bucket, and thrown off the end of an airplane so it can splatter into the ocean, causing the deaths of thousands of fish, because that would be a better use for it than actually listening to/watching/reading it.
This is why i could never be a music critic, because i love pretty much anything. i will even make exceptions for country (which i claim to hate) or rap (which i claim to hate when it’s mainstream). i listen to everything and anything, minus maybe 3 songs, or things i haven’t heard of or had time to listen to.
…wow, i’ve made it 540 words without really talking about the book AT ALL.
i should start doing that shouldn’t i? yes. well. here we go….again.

The reason i loved Fargo Rock City so much was because it was educational, funny, witty, and personal. Chuck Klosterman told us his side of the story about Metal, which is a side that never gets told. Metal is always laughed at, like its a huge joke, when obviously it wasn’t a joke to some people, the people that grew up with it.
its become totally ironic and funny to actually LIKE metal, especially 80’s metal (though really, there doesn’t seem to be any other kind, unless you’re not actually a metal fan and consider anything with lots of guitars metal ((this used to be me))) and this isn’t the case. I mean, i guess it isn’t as culturally significant (what does that even mean??) as something like The Beatles (duh) but nothing really is. Technically, everything about culture is about perspective. Metal may have sucked to someone who had access to other types of music in the 80’s, but if you didn’t really have too much access to anything else…it may have been the greatest music ever.
which is exactly how Chuck Klosterman felt/feels. but he probably had more access to music than i give him credit for, i really don’t know what its like living in a town of about 500 so i can’t really talk.

Fargo Rock City isn’t so much about “metal” as its about what its like to experience music.
thats why i liked it so much and had fun reading it.
as Klosterman was describing what it was like to discover Mötley Crüe as a 5th grader, i found myself reliving what it was like when I discovered Coheed & Cambria in 7th/8th grade. Music doesn’t mean anything to anyone except the person who’s living it, so its really pointless to talk about “music” in the abstract, because it doesn’t mean anything. Music is really all just math, its a time signature and a key and a number of instruments and a number of notes. thats it. So why does it mean so damn much to everyone and everything? because all of those instruments and notes make us feel something. but for some reason, nobody seems to get that not everyone feels the same thing, and therefore not everyone LIKES the same thing.
Chuck Klosterman probably hates half the bands i love (i’m a huge indie music nerd. and could probably be considered a hipster), and i am by no means a metal fan. but that isn’t the point.
I loved Fargo Rock City because it wasn’t ABOUT metal. it was about Chuck Klosterman and his reaction to said metal. And his reaction is the exact same reaction that any person gets when they listen to their favorite music.
I’m sure Coheed & Cambria means something completely different to other people, because all the other fans found Co&Ca in a different way than me. Me? i found Coheed when my sister would drive me over to middle school every morning, and something about Claudio Sanchez’s high voice spoke to me. Coheed & Cambria is and will be my favorite band for a long time to come. Why? i’m not entirely sure, i haven’t had time to really analyze this, but i assume that in some way i relate to the music and lyrics.
i don’t really know how i would relate to coheed’s lyrics, considering all of them are about this epic space story that is really amazing to me, but maybe thats the sole reason for my hero-worship of them: is because their story is amazing. and hell, i’ve always wanted to write a book (i’m still working on that one. close, but i’ve got awhile to go), so maybe i just have a lot of respect for someone who can combine the 2 greatest things in the world, books and music.
and maybe i just have a lot of respect for Klosterman, the only critic ever who has admitted to being biased when critiqueing something. So maybe thats the only reason why i loved this book. i don’t really know. i might hav ejust loved it because on some personal level, Chuck Klosterman has always spoke words that were on the same wavelength as my brain. he talks like i do, which is a big deal for me, because he makes so much sense all the time.

Long story short:
if you have any love for music, read Fargo Rock City.
and, after reading it, if you love Chuck Klosterman, go check out his other books, most importantly Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, which is his other favorite of mine, and Killing Yourself To Live, which is hella interesting and fun to read.
As for Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa puffs, i can’t really vouch for that book because i haven’t read it. its on my list, i just haven’t gotten around to stealing it from my sister’s bookshelf yet.

Either way, Fargo Rock City was a great book, at least according to me.
And if you don’t like it, you must be retarded. psh. loser.