Alright. Please. ENOUGH. This whole Indie Rock Dance Party Thing[tm] that started up a few years ago, that combined the most cutting edge, underground, not-yet-signed dance-punk with a handful of stupid top 10 pop tracks, 80’s hits that our older siblings wouldn’t have condescended to listen to if they’d been held at gun point, and the stupidest, blingiest of mainstream rap… What the HELL HAPPENED?! At what point did the dance punk (even the three year old, no longer cutting edge, raised-to-the-point-of-anthems dance punk) get thrown out in favor of pure “irony”? I use those quotation marks because it’s pretty clear to me that everyone just wants to dance to shit. To stuff they would NEVER admit to liking– which they’d never put on their iPod and would apologize for when it comes on their iTunes.

What inspired this rant? I just got back from what will most likely be my last weekend out in Manhattan for a LONG TIME. I paid $5 to listen to terrible ’80s tracks that even in my early childhood I thought sucked combined with top 20 hits of the last 5 years that I never believed ANYONE anyone actually liked who was over the age of 13. Apparently I was wrong.

Oh, Resonator readers… You know that it is not like me to make these vitriolic rants. It is more the domain of Shaun. I have always been the bastion of stupid idealism. But for FUCK’S SAKE can we end the Middle School Dance Party in Leggings? 2007 is a blessed time to be alive as far as music is concerned– between the genius of the Arcade Fire and Of Montreal and the danceability of Patrick Wolf, Simian Mobile Disco, the Klaxons, what could possibly be the excuse for playing “Wake Me Up (Before You Go)”?!

Manhattan, we are done when it comes to DJs.

As far as all of you who are enjoying the whole “I don’t really LIKE this music, but I’ll dance to shit rap and bad 80’s tracks because it’s CUTE” scene… Unsubscribe. Please. Because you are not our kind.

Yes, we’re snobs here at Res. We never claimed to be anything but. Open your ears for the good stuff… We’re not saying that you should be closed minded. What we’re saying is to have taste… That letting in EVERYTHING is not the same as being open to new things. You don’t even have to like everything we post (truth be told, WE don’t like everything we post– we disagree all the time).

But can we discontinue the stupid, ruinous ideal that says that hating on crap is the same as being a hater?

I blame the hipsterisation of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Can we please, ONCE AND FOR ALL, admit that at ANY price, this beer is crap? Can getting kids drunk on the worst beer known to man not be somehow related to making them dance to the worst music, as well? Put enough $1 (or $4) PBR in even the most discerning hipster, and they are probably going to love ANYTHING. That’s the problem. By setting themselves up for mediocrity… NAY… SHIT, by ingesting something terrible, can what is external to them seem comparably all that bad? Can we please end this fucking ironic love of all that lacks in quality?!

From now on, I’ll keep myself at Studio B when I want to dance. If I hear “Waterfalls” one more time when I’m somewhere that’s “hip,” I might just give up on humanity altogether.