AP's 100 Bands you need to know in 2011-My reactions

I have been a subscriber to Alternative Press for a long time. Every year, one of my favorite issues has always been the "100 bands you need to know" issue. I have always read about each band, circled the ones I like with a pen and then spent months crossing them off as their albums came out and I got to know what the band was offering. Thanks to the internet, I no longer need to wait for an album to drop to see if I like a band, I can just go online. Which is fine. I would still keep the magazine on my desk for days when I felt like checking out a band or doing some general digging about for music. Now, I have never had a year where I have checked out every band, but consistently, there is a good 50-60 bands that I take the time and at least listen to a song.

Sadly, like the magazine as a whole over the last year or so, 2011's 100 bands issue was a big let down. On their site, they call is the "no genre left behind" list. While this may be true, it seems like certain genres are getting a bigger piece of the pie so to speak. I wish I was joking when I say that for a majority of the bands this year, I did not get past looking at their picture and their "sounds like/influences" list. Whether the writers or the bands themselves felt the need to try to be witty or this is just what it has come to for me, but it seems like there was just something missing. For the pictures, there were 4 distinct things you saw: dudes in makeup/dyed black hair, scruffy flannel wearers, hipster dildos or really happy neon/'80s throwbacks. If you get past that, (which i really tried to do) you get to see either some terrible genre classifications, listing of bands that are super popular right now but will be gone soon or a list of super obscure/ill fitting bands that seemed more like an attempt at "look at how deep my musical knowledge is, you don't even know bands that I am referencing." I know I sound bitter, but one thing AP used to do was introduce new things as much as report on what was going on. I would say this time, there was an unhealthy amount of "dace" music being referenced with some other sub-classification. Which, as a whole is starting to get me down.

There are things that make sense to me, "punk rock," "progressive rock," "melodic hardcore." these sub classifications make sense. If you like your hardcore hardcore, you would want to know if a band had some clean melodies in there before you get involved. "pop rock/punk" is another one that makes sense. It is poppy music with guitars. ( i know this is a little too black and white, but it works for example sake). The thing that is getting to is that we are over-classifying music. "prog dance folk pop" is something I saw somewhere. What the hell is that? I mean, I can kind of picture what it is, but isn't most "pop" music inherently dance-y? Folk seems to just mean, they play acoustic guitars and sing softly while sounding like they are in a cabin or around a fire. What I am getting at here is that just like racism, you can label other things too much. I also think it is funny when something is called "post-" something. It is logical, post means after and typically those bands sounds like what should or does come out of something else. A "post rock" band tends to be a wall of sound that rises and falls dramatically. But when you start calling something "post dance" "post hardcore" "post punk" haven't those already been created as disco and rock'n'roll?

But, I digress. What I started this about was the 2011 100 bands you need to know. Here is my take on it. I have about 15 bands that I want to look at further. 10 of the remaining 85 all seem to be over-makeuped metal stuff. 50-60 of the bands have almost the exact same explanation/influences and the rest seems to be bands started by people who were in other bands that fall into the previous categories but now have an indie-rock/folk band. Maybe it is just an off year, maybe this is all there is out there to choose from. I think a band like Red City Radio should have been in there, but no it was mostly poppy stuff. All i can say is at least this was free of that bullshit rap rock sing dance synth radio puke (see what i did there) that seems to be everywhere else. No longer do we have the "we just came to party" bands filling up pages. I guess there is that.