Zilch Horizon

I useta think Night Shift with Michael Keaton was a good movie, and I useta think “Night Shift” by The Commodores was a good song. As a kid I couldn’t understand why they weren’t combined.

Okay, I get it, the song was about Marvin Gaye, and not about guys running a brothel out of the city morgue. To me, Marvin Gaye falls into the “no effect” category of music. The emotions are usually saccharine, nowhere close to aligned with my own, and I find the reverence shown by listeners to Gaye’s songs to be completely alien. I don’t want to hear about some dude getting sick in the morning and craving pussy. If my head is in the toilet, the last thing on my mind is sex.

The Commodores did “Machine Gun“. I linked it so you can take in what is undoubtedly one of the greatest recordings in the history of music. Yes, Lionel Richie was involved. How does one go from that, to the likes of “Night Shift” and “All Night Long”? Did you ever sit and ponder how excruciatingly banal that latter single is? The vocalists all sound as though they are comfortably seated. It has the edginess and pep of an expired Vienna sausage. Then the coke finally kicks in, and TAM BO LI DE SAY DE MOI YA, YEAH, JAMBO JAMBO!!! You can almost hear the school shoes being rung up at the mall Payless in the background. Actual funk is prohibited on store premises.

Quick quiz: name five (5) bands that were world-famous household names, grossed millions in record sales, that didn’t go on to stink horribly or go extinct over two decades. Five, not just one with an explanation. Five.

You can’t. Because in reality, everything that makes big bank goes on to suck unholy ass. Everything. If it’s profitable, expect it to embarrass you within twenty years. There are literally no exceptions.

The bands, TV shows and movies you grew up on are a laughingstock to any high school kid. Whether you believe it or not, this is by design. It’s planned obsolescence, just like laptops and washing machines. Corporate music labels hate nothing more than a solo performer who intends to support their own family with a storied career. They want robots who promote their interests without complaint, while playing pop-star for legions of paying fans. You have never heard, nor will you ever hear, of a positive relationship between a producer and any musician. It’s always pure slavery and exploitation. You will see a unicorn pop out of a cloud and fart cupcakes before you ever hear about a producer with integrity. Show me a high-profile music producer and I’ll show you a degenerate who fucks artists up the ass for jollies.

Natalie Merchant’s voice has always made my skin crawl, as far back as 10,000 Maniacs, a band everyone was supposed to like when I was in high school. My mental image of her is a short and obnoxious woman with B.O. and a sundress that she doesn’t have the shape for, which she uses to waft her natural musk about the coffee house or whatever as she brays like Katharine Hepburn on a vibrating saddle. That’s just my mental image, outside of her album covers I have no idea what she looks or smells like.

The later issues of Pete Bagge’s legendary comic-sized Bildungsroman HATE were padded out with text pieces at the back, which were okay (Lisa Carver is generally reliable), but featured as a regular columnist a guy I knew by his hoity-toity nom de plume as one of the major victims of Jim Goad’s even more legendary “Chocolate Impulse” zine hoax. This guy later went on to retire his pen name, and I think he died sometime later and also was not unliked by many of my peers, so I’m leaving out the details. If you’re curious, consult ANSWER Me! #4 (“The Rape Issue”), or one of the compendiums that collects the issues.

Anyway, this guy wrote a column that was basically Natalie Merchant fanfic where she wet-nurses him. Hey, we all express ourselves in different ways, and HATE was a definitively alternative publication. But my point is, any time I hear Natalie Merchant singing, I have to think of all that shit.

At the same time, one could argue that it serves me right for choosing to read magazines with HATE and RAPE on the covers while barely out of my teens. I did kinda volunteer to put all these terrible ideas and images in my head. I did this because of curiosity about the darkest aspects of human experience, and more specifically, how to find humor in them. Say what you will, for what I set out to do in life, I chose well.

I still can’t stand Natalie Merchant’s music, however.

If you’re around my age, you may recall a time when “rap music” was tolerable; even enjoyable. That’s because the guys involved had actual verbal skills, and were trying to impress living, breathing people, who were typically hostile towards anyone who might be wasting their time with public buffoonery.

But then rap music became astroturfed as THE MOST POPULAR MUSIC EVER MADE, and rappers started becoming [filthy] rich, living in mansions and driving Bugattis (yet still wearing oversized football jerseys and costume jewelry like a fucking ten-year-old). Every single TV show theme song suddenly featured “rappin’“. Every sitcom intro showed the cast dancin’ and gettin’ CRUNK! Almost overnight, American television became a bigger minstrel-show than it had ever been before.

Oh, you don’t agree? Well, I have it on high authority that the word “nigger” has been said more times in rap music by black people then it has ever been said by white people for as long as we’ve existed. You just don’t care unless someone white says it.

Thanks to the incessant saturation-bombing of rap music since the 1990’s, you can go into any college dorm and find 100 kids making their own on their laptops. Not one single one of them is doing so because of talent, skill, ability, or anything but envy and avarice. Not one of them can rap, so they all use “auto tune”, which makes them sound like a dying wasp trapped in a portable toilet. Not one of them wastes a thought on how they acquired their expensive equipment, which was utilized in exactly zero classic rap recordings.

However, for “normal people”, rap = blacks, so you’re racist for criticizing any aspect of the genre. You’re racist for noticing that rap music is the most violently racist form of creative expression that we know, and certainly the most profitable racist material ever produced. Blacks don’t know no better, after all. Let them have their thumping hate chants, right? It dey culcha.

Remember that cupcake-farting unicorn? You’ll see him do a pirouette atop the Eiffel Tower before you hear a decent rap song in 2025. Disco is heartier and more extant than rap these days. The “good stuff”; Outkast, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg? I got bad news for you, champ.

That was all last century.

High school kids nowadays weren’t even born when rap was good. All they know of rap is that artificial, shrill, jabbering bullshit that you’d drop dead before buying. That garbage that sounds like a mentally challenged hoodrat whining in a codeine-induced stupor; that’s their Van Halen. And because kids are all socially retarded these days, the more you criticize it, the more they’ll champion it. They won’t ever have that “moment of clarity” as a future adult, like you did with Debbie Gibson/Milli Vanilli/Guns ‘N Roses, because no one in their right mind would dare to tell them that their music sucks. What, you wanna get shot?

As much as I hate Natalie Merchant’s voice, at least she can demonstrably sing on key. No self-respecting vocalist would ever use “auto tune”. Employing such an abhorrent technique proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that you cannot sing a fucking note.

We are at a point in human history where McDonalds restaurants will blast classical music after 5pm. Not for mood, or overall dining ambiance. Because they want to ward off the “undesirables”. And guess what? By some weird coincidence, “undesirables” can’t stand classical music.

Personally, I consider any person who cannot abide any classical music to be a shit-hatted imbecile. For real, if you suddenly told me “I despise all classical music”, I would look right into your eyes and shout “THAT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE A FUCKING DUNCE”. After which, you would furrow your caveman-like brow, utter some “unf unf” troglodytisms, and fumble to pull up your sagging training pants.

I know, “what’s the big deal”, right? It’s just a genre of music that’s enlightened humanity for a hundred times longer than you or anyone you know will ever exist. So what if you hate it? Just don’t listen to classical music. It’s simple. No one’s annoying you ten hours a day by blasting classical music out of their cars and/or apartments at ear-splitting volume. Classical music isn’t playing in every single store you visit in the course of a week. Wannabe thugs aren’t accosting you on every city street corner, hawking homemade CDs of their own symphonies and etudes. You don’t even hear classical music in bookstores anymore, because the bookstores all went out of business.

You could probably go the rest of your life without hearing a single note of classical music, without even trying. People in general have lost the ability to appreciate it. It doesn’t feature urban persons yowling about wet vaginas and/or gun violence, so it’s easily overlooked.

Now, let’s say you proffer the fact that you despise country music.

Crickets. No one cares, unless “Beyonce” happens to be LARPing as a country singer, in which case, SURPRISE! You’re racist. Because Charley Pride lived and died for absolutely nothing. “Country music” is for dumb fat Wal-Mart shoppers, right? You know, stupid rednecks. White people who wear robes and burn crosses and shit, like all white people clearly do.

Never mind that no successful country music artist ever found fame without first being proficient on a musical instrument, typically a guitar. Even the singers. Never mind that the country music industry is so competitive traditionally that even the best players don’t make it sometimes. Naw dawg, it’s all cousin-fucking bumpkins like on Hee Haw.

Oh, but don’t suggest country music is primarily for white folks, unless you’re disparaging them. Then it’s perfectly okay.

Look, I don’t mean to harp or harangue, but you have to understand that I grew up in a far less openly-racist time period than today. As a teenager, I once stated that I hated gospel music, and no one suggested that a gospel singer might murder me if they heard what I said. I still don’t care for it, but I keep it to myself, because lord knows I wouldn’t want to accidentally cause a “bias crime” or whatever.

I joke about it being illegal to dislike rap music, because it is. Try talking shit about rap, I dare you. Even if you’re black. You might as well rape a blind toddler in a Japanese cemetery. You will receive abuse on a level heretofore unknown to anyone not on Death Row (the prison ward, not the record label). No one is allowed to hate rap music.

This has nothing to do with the fact that about 9% of all recorded rap music is defensible, and the rest of it is as solid as a house of (race) cards. It’s held aloft by marketing campaigns and corporate hot-air. Its overall inspirations can be summed up thusly: to make more money than the other rappers. That’s literally it; no music producer would bother with it otherwise. This broken merry-go-round has been in action for over 25 years.

No rational person believes that rap music has had a single net positive for the “black community”. Imagine if the heavy metal music blamed for the rise of Satanism in the 1980’s went on to become all that white people listened to. Imagine hearing W.A.S.P.’s “Fuck Like A Beast” every time you went to the grocery store, and if you complained, the manager looked askance at you and called you a bigot. Imagine being jolted awake at two in the morning by Judas Priest’s “Better By You, Better Than Me” pounding through your apartment walls. You go next door to voice your displeasure, and your white neighbor beats the living shit out of you.

Imagine that every heavy metal band is ignored except for the most demonic examples, because those sell. Every subgenre of metal is subsumed under one Satanic umbrella. Every metal song is about demons, murder, and killing your parents and/or self. Every TV show theme is a shredding, screaming thrash-fest. Commercials all strive to appeal to devil-worshipers and psychos who sacrifice housecats. Every car window pours out deafening shrieks of occult mayhem, nearly drowned out by thunderous drums.

Okay, I admit I made the mistake of making that all sound pretty rad, but it isn’t. Even if you like that stuff, you wouldn’t want to hear it all the time, everywhere, from everybody. It would grow tiresome within hours. After a couple of days, it might start to make you really pissed off. After a full week, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that you would start to feel violent animosity towards the music in question, as well as deep, festering resentment towards anyone who listens to it.

Do you get what I’m circumlocuting about here?

How do you feel when you listen to the same music that everyone else listens to? Do you feel like you’re part of something larger than yourself, or do you feel unremarkable and average?

Didn’t you once cultivate musical interests, choosing music and bands that specifically resonated with you alone, as a means of expressing your personality in public? Didn’t you once purchase and wear clothing that featured graphics of a specific band or their logo, for the express purpose of appearing different and/or interesting to other people?

Maybe to spark conversation with a member of the opposite sex, at a bar or club? Didn’t you useta wear a band’s shirt specifically for that reason?

Now you join social media groups based around liking those bands. Everyone does; it’s normal. It’s normal now to only consort with people who like the same things you like. Our tastes can go unchallenged, forever. Who knows if it’s healthy or not; it’s reality. Literally nothing aside from a nuclear bomb will make life any different.

I mentioned the Commodores earlier; in the Before Times, they were classified as “R&B”, which stood for “rhythm and blues”. For most of the 20th century, any working musical combo could play the song “I’ve Got Rhythm” by Gershwin. Like, a band could be laughed out of a rehearsal space for not knowing it. If you ever heard old band players say “rhythm changes”, that is a direct reference to the Gershwin tune.

When was the last time you heard anyone say the word “rhythm”?

Compare that with the last time you heard the word “beat”.

No one today gives a shit about rhythm because they can’t understand it, and no one today gives a shit about the blues because everyone is medicated and pacified. THAT’S why there’s no motherfucking R&B no more, thanks for asking. THAT’S why there’s literally nothing but shitty rap, everywhere. Because it has no fucking soul, and it’s about nothing but making money. No matter how it’s painted or tarted up to attract interest.

Every emotion you’ve experienced in life as a result of listening to music, no matter how personal or private, is immortalized somewhere on the internet, in the form of a comment. There are hundreds of YouTube videos featuring spontaneous reactions of people young and old, hearing a piece of music for the first time. Thanks to these practices, artificial intelligence can fabricate humanity’s deepest idiosyncrasies in a digital heartbeat. It is truly a disgusting, ugly time to be alive.

It’s only going to get worse.

It’s best at this point in human history to accept that anything you love in life that is in any way tethered to a corporate entity will eventually be ruined. It could be a band, a movie, a show, a line of toys, a book, or any sort of franchise. It can even be a person. If it’s corporate, you will see its ruin. Often the ruination will be intentional, because the subject (and its influence on the buying public) must be brought to heel.

Go ahead, laugh. You know it’s true; everything truly good goes on to be ruined. It’s entropy. Everything today is a shell of what it was fifty years ago. You have fond memories from your youth that feature experiences that no human beings will ever know, for the remainder of our time on this earth. Those experiences can and will never happen again. You couldn’t even pay to replicate them, not with all the money in the world. That is where mankind is at, a quarter of the way into the 21st century.

Try not to think about those experiences. You will slowly realize that those experiences make up the entirety of your life, up to a point. And that point draws ever closer.

Eventually, everything meets the Zilch Horizon.