Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Last night I had another struggle with my belief that we're living in an age of cultural GENIUS. Going back over past entries and suddenly yearning to revisit the APTour -- you know, those sappy self-pitying droners who appeal inordinately to teenage girls -- I went on their site to be confronted with the ever-damned nuisance of some audio starting up whether you wanted it to or not. I was instantly confronted by some GENIUSES who named their act for a state, a definite article attached (they probably don't know it's a state, or that equipped with a definite article it helped instigate a war, and they might further not know as they came from another state, which they might not know is a state either); hearing the chordal progressions and angst I could clearly say that though I don't know much about modern musical GENIUS and had never heard of these greats before (nor ever again I trust) I'd heard their tune a million times over. Going onto Amazon.com I saw some happily anonymous blurb writer boasted that thanks to the Web 600 people!!!!! turned out for their debut!!!!! The album was at around 12,800, meaning it probably sells three or four copies a week if that, either to people who ran into the APTour site and LIKED it, or who didn't know better, or most likely both.

Part of the aforementioned GOD's genius was knowing most people hate pop albums because they're mostly filler. Filler is nothing new in music; symphonies have too much of it. But filler by Bruckner is apt to be more filling than an excuse for the seventh contractually-obligated song on a CD. Ol' Blue is to blame. When you sang as he could loading up albums with Gershwins and Van Heusens you don't need to worry of filler. But not every songwriter is a Gershwin or Van Heusen, and the geniuses of our time defiantly boast to the world that they are NOT, meaning even their masterworks' lead tunes sound like filler. Pop cannot come back for too many reasons, but when anybody can record an album, and anybody thinks he can copy some fifth hand chordal progressions and whine on top about a girlfriend, and further thinks the resulting mess worthy of leading off an album, it is a big reason.