Remember when I got that angry anonymous comment a few months ago (I believe he/she called me a "fucking piece of shit") about a badly written post I wrote three years ago concerning Old Austin vs. New Austin? It happened again. A tossed-off comment I wrote in a post more than TWO YEARS AGO about how much local semi-celebrity/rock-twat Bob Schneider sucked has garnered an impassioned, anonymous response. I hope it's the same person. Here is he/she's comment:
"See Bob Live...then try and say he sucks. He is amazing. Only music snobs that have only gone as far as his mainstream records would say something like that. He is probably over your head."
My response (because I am insecure enough to respond to each and every criticism I get):
Dear anonymous friend,
Peace be with you. We all love and hate different things. Taste is a fickle mysterious omni-sexual bean dip created by our psyches, geographic locations, friends, relatives, fetishes, angers, joys, intellects, temperaments, digestive successes and failures, and our lord and saviour, Jesus Christ. You like Bob Schneider. I don't. Both easy positions to take, depending on our peer groups and loosely defined subcultural affiliations. However, I don't understand why you jump to the conclusion that I know Bob Schneider from his albums and not from his live show(s). I've never heard a Bob Schneider album and hopefully never will. I've heard a handful of his recorded songs on the radio or on CD samplers from magazines. I have seen him live, however. The very first time I visited Austin, with my then-girlfriend, now-wife and her parents to find an apartment for us while she went to grad school and to dump a bunch of our belongings in her cousin's garage, I saw Bob Schneider live. My father-in-law, a blues fanatic, wanted to visit Antone's. We went. Bob Schneider was playing. First impressions can be misleading, but I found Mr. Schneider to be a preening, mediocre, ambitious yet artistically bankrupt, arrogant dickweed whose songs were boring, calculated, and bloodless. He was the sonic equivalent of his then-girlfriend Sandra Bullock's film career. Additionally, I am puzzled by your assertion that "only music snobs that have only gone as far as his mainstream records would say (that he sucks)." Music snobs stop short at mainstream records, never going further? Zuh? Also, to be considered "mainstream," one has to have some sort of mainstream success. Einsturzende Neubauten have had more mainstream success than Bob Schneider (discounting the Sandra Bullock relationship--we'll just stick to music here). As for your last comment, is he over my head? I don't know. I don't find his music or lyrics horribly complex, but that could be my problem. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. My warmest regards to you and yours, anonymous. I might be able to dig up some high school reports you can critique if you're interested, though you have at least two more years of my blog entries to wade through first. Let's meet up for backgammon soon. Kisses.
5 comments:
I think it's a shame that Bob didn't have the moxie to use his own name on the comment.
I've read overviews of his career that used "eclectic" "edgy" and "sensibilities" in the same paragraph: three words that should be stricken from all journalistic lexicons.
If the best you can say about a man involves hackneyed college-paper junk phrases, how can he be anything but a waste of the connective tissue holding his organs in?
Keep it up, man. I'm glad me sis pointed me towards your blog.
bob schneider and the rest of the austin geriatric-rock scene suck. it's edgy compared to what, jimmy buffett? lawrence welk? BRING IT, SENIORS! what are you going to do, wave your cane at me when you manage to power down the window in your lexus lx 570 with the 'keep austin weird' and 'kinky - why the hell not?' stickers on the bumper? blow pot smoke in my face at stubb's? complain loudly about the way austin used to be before you cashed in on your third ipo and bought a loft?
"First impressions can be misleading, but I found Mr. Schneider to be a preening, mediocre, ambitious yet artistically bankrupt, arrogant dickweed whose songs were boring, calculated, and bloodless."
brilliant.
Here are two things I don't miss about Austin: the crisis of self-promotion overabundance and white dudes playing derivative blues. Somehow, Schneider merges both things, thusly 'local semi-celebrity/rock twat' is a sufficient enough encapsulation of the "Bob Schneider" experience, and I agree and grant you 'props', Josh. I also would have accepted: "he's the musical equivalent of a sponge soaked with rotten milk, stuffed in a sock, and anonymously dry-humped under the Lamar street bridge the duration of the production of both Sandra Bullock's 'Miss Congeniality' movies."
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