me playing guitar (don't act like you're not impressed)

[Plug Drugs]

the reason i think "mainstream" bands usually sound better than underground bands (or whatever you want to call them) is because if you're in a band, you'd almost need that guarantee of a record deal before you can devote yourself to the time it takes to write good material.

Picture yourself in a band member's situation: usually a band's first one or two albums suck - is that because they eventually "got better" later on, or because they "hadn't found their sound yet"? Or is it because they never had the time to write decent material prior to getting picked up, nor the guarantee that their music would even be listened to? I think once a band lands a record deal, and they start working in a legitimate studio, they are able to devote themselves to writing their music which delivers a better end result.

If you don't agree with all that, and maybe are thinking "well I have shitloads of free-time and none of that's true for me", I suggest trying to pick up an instrument and play it; it's far easier than you think. Becoming a good musician isn't a matter of technical ability or public image, it's a matter of having the will to do it.

I'm not saying that I'm a good musician by any means, I am a mediocre musician. But the guy who taught me how to play guitar is a fucking genius on the guitar, but he's a shut-in who does nothing but play world of warcraft all day and tweak on adderall. He's not the best looking guy, but he's a fucking prodigy when it comes to the guitar - and he wasn't just naturally born to play the guitar, he put effort in to it back when he was a teenager. Before there was internet to waste his life away on, he was wasting his life away listening to the radio and playing guitar. I've tried talking him in to putting some of his stuff online, or trying to get in to a band, but ultimately he just doesn't have the motivation or the will to do that.

Then I see and hear all the time bands getting famous over youtube, and their music is really only 'good', not great (a lot of its downright garbage). If half the people out there with aspirations to become a musician or w/e they've always wanted to be went out and actually started doing it, the music industry (and society as a whole) wouldn't be in the toilet that it's in.

We look back at bands from the 60s and 70s and look at them as Gods, but really they were just completely normal people who happened to start playing an instrument when they were a teenager. Music as a whole took a slump in the late 80s because too many morons were admiring the fame that came with being a musician and weren't in it for the right reasons, and this idiocy rubbed off on a lot of other people as well. Although, the music-centered culture rebounded in the early 90s to bring us grunge and new genres, a lot of which are really good.

The musical culture is undoubtedly in another slump right now, and has been since at least the early 2000s. I just hope that since a rebound was possible in the past, that a rebound is possible again, and hopefully we won't be stuck indefinitely with shit music.