Years ago, in the infancy of the mainstream internet, I used to be interested in the goings on over at the F***YouCrew.
Essentially the F***YouCrew was a live journal community of musical elitists. To join the community, you needed to submit a list of your twenty favourite musical artists, and the existing community would judge whether you were fit to join. If you were too mainstream, focused too much on one sub-genre, or were basically not one of the 0.001%, you were banned.
I never bothered applying – if you’ve read anything on this blog, you’ll realise that I’m pretty mainstream and mannered in my taste. Here’s a sample list, that wasn’t up to the community’s standard.
Throbbing Gristle
Pere Ubu
Kraftwerk
John Coltrane
Faust
Merzbow
Deerhoof
Void
Can
Albert Ayler
Os Mutantes
The Boredoms
Infest
Wolf Eyes
Blue Cheer
Masonna
Mars
Xinlisupreme
Pharoah Sanders
Steve Reich
To outside eyes, this clearly looks like a list of stuff that you’ve only know about if you’re a dedicated music enthusiast, but to the FYC community, which was largely made up of teenagers with access to infinite quantities of music through P2P software, it was boring and predictable. But this list was respectable enough to at least get polite dismissals.
this list is kind of like when i went over to the “international cheese” section of my local grocery store and they had a half dozen kinds of american cheese.
They could be much more impolite, but I don’t want to dwell on their insults too much. It was certainly interesting to see how unlimited access to music quickly developed into extreme snobbery. This kind of attitude was never going to take over the mainstream consciousness, but it was a weird little corner of the internet for a while. But it missed the point that enjoying music is supposed to be fun and entertaining, and not a competition.
https://fuckyoucrew.livejournal.com/664857.html
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I wonder what the record store snobs would’ve thought of this crew. The words from LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing my edge” are going through my head right now.
I was there when elitist pirates mocked the plebs.
They sound delightful
I found it pretty entertaining reading lists and seeing who made it (almost noone), but it was pretty nasty.
I totally approve of that list. 🙂
I think the point should be more to open the ears of people and show them what is outside of mainstream. Not to enclose yourself with people who listen the same.
Yeah, I’m down with most of those entries on the list – seems like an engaged music listener to me.