This Is Not For You

It was recently announced that the hugely popular and inventive Arcade Fire will be performing at the 2011 Grammy awards. Their most recent album, "The Suburbs" (which happens to be nominated for Album Of The Year, and two other Grammys), debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard Top 100 charts; quite a feat for any band, let alone one on an independently run label (Merge Records). The record is fantastic! It's complete and evokes such a nostalgic and thoughtful feeling throughout the entire album. No one else can make music quite like Arcade Fire.

Regardless of how good they are, the general reaction of music snobs upon hearing that Arcade Fire is to play at the Grammys is "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

I am one of those fans and I really don't know why I hate it when bands I love play the Grammys. Sure, there's the cliche, "The-Grammys-are-a-political-sham-and-don't-mean-anything- because-none-of-the-music-that-deserves-to-win-awards-ever-wins" excuse. It's more than just that, though. And I'm not the only one that has these feelings. Many fans of legit bands hate the overexposure. Why don't we want to share? Why does a band become less special when more people are aware of them?

Let me present an example. I can remember driving to my buddy Rogers' house with my pal Bentley when I was 18, blasting the "Master" EP put out by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It was fall of 2002. I had read a blip of an article about them, probably in Rolling Stone before it became a tabloid, and decided to look for it at Big B's Record Shop (of course, it is closed down now). They were weird and intriguing; when Karen O ground up her voice in a meat grinder on "Art Star", I didn't know what had hit me! Never had I heard a woman contort her voice that way. Nick Zinner made his guitar make anything but guitar sounds. Brian Chase brilliantly twisted his jazz style of drum playing into a dance-y, disco-punk feel. I instantly grew attached.

Anyone whose life revolves around music knows that feeling of discovering a great band before everyone else you know does. It's like sex at the beginning of a relationship. You're unsure, never having heard the band before, but you've already gone through the trouble of buying the CD or downloading the track. So you press play. The opening notes begin like foreplay; you're feeling out the music, letting it feel you out as well. There's something about that band that grabs hold of you and plunges you under the covers, blanketing and protecting your body from the cold of the U2's and Black Eyed Peas of the world; you know you've made the right decision. By the bridge, you're saying "Fuck yeah!", grooving back and forth, bobbing your head, tapping your feet, wiggling around, unable to divert your attention to anything else. Then the final chorus bangs out the climax. Before you know what's happened, the song is over and this new and exciting band has fucked your world apart; you are blown away by the discovery you have made...and you want more.

Fast forward, just one year, to the fall of 2003. YYY's first full-length album, "Fever To Tell" has come out, melts faces, and is a huge success. People whose musical opinions I respect are talking about them. They have become the buzz band of the zeitgeist. I should be happy that a band I love has reached this point in their career, thus cementing the eventuality of more music to be released with subsequent albums, allowing me to indulge in their sounds forever.

But no. Now Yeah Yeah Yeahs, my secret band that "I discovered first" had become everybody's favorite band. They even played the useless MTV Movie Awards. People whose musical opinions I DID NOT respect were talking about them. Frankly, I was turned off. Now came the part where it felt like having sex at the end of a relationship.

That's when we become conflicted. It's complete absurdity, but we become conflicted on whether or not we should continue to like a band because "the wrong people" like them now too. This has happened to me, band after band. Green Day and Kings Of Leon come to mind. I still don't know why this dilemma manifests itself in my brain. Shouldn't I not care about the popularity status of a band? Shouldn't I just enjoy the music because I like it and not worry who else likes it too? Maybe it's that I think my friends' opinions of my musical tastes will change and they wouldn't respect it anymore.

Not every band has the ability to shock and awe you, but the ones that do will always have a lasting impact on you. And I think that's a main contributing factor to why a lot of us music fans detest it when a mass appeal encapsulates a band after it felt like we brought their metaphoric flowers to blossom. We're like parents that don't want to see our kids grow up because we know what's out there in the world and we want to protect them from harm. The bands whose microphones we knocked over at a basement show will always mean more than the arena show you needed binoculars for. So when the band leaves the basement, becomes successful, and turns into the arena band, we feel cheated.

I feel very similar about Arcade Fire to the way I feel about the YYY's. They're two of my favorite bands out there right now. But I'm closer to 10 years older now than I was in my car heading to Rogers' place. I've mostly come to terms with my hang-ups about who likes a band or not. There are still plenty of artists that I love that will never be popular on a wide scale. I'm looking at you, defunct Nashville band, Be Your Own Pet. So who cares? I'll end up watching Arcade Fire's Grammy performance on Pitchfork.com anyway.