A sample:
"As fans we happily create a rogue's gallery of imaginary audiences for all kinds of music, and the more we keep real audiences at arms length the easier that is to do. Fandoms seem to require an Other, something to differentiate themselves against. So we're rhetorically hostile to fellow music listeners. We bundle up fans of particular acts, of course. But we also create stereotypes of people who listen too intensely (audiophiles, obsessive fans) and too casually (people for whom music is "just background noise"). We construct listeners who are too into music-- hoarders and novelty-seekers-- and the 10-albums-a-year buyer who's not into music enough. We project ideas of not listening the right way or for the right reasons-- calling into being the "hipster," the "rockist," the "fangirl." The implied contrast is to our own, naturally superior, modes of consumption. After all it's easier to suggest people fit into some kind of straw man category-- posers, ideologues, undiscerning bobbleheads-- than to risk ourselves by empathizing with what they hear or don't hear in the music...
...There's a kind of experience I think every music fan has had. I call it the "bad ears": It's a kind of one-on-one Wyatting, and it's what happens when the assumptions you make flip over and leave you the one vulnerable. It's when you're with a friend, and you play them some music you like and you want them to like too. They don't say anything. And suddenly you're hearing it with the bad ears: Every pretension, every flaw in the music becomes utterly obvious to you. The lines you thought were terrific are revealed as facile. The lines you thought were lovably dumb are chasms of embarrassment. The song ends. You want to vanish. And your friend smiles and says "Yeah, that was good," and then it's their turn."
--Tom Ewing @ Pitchfork
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