You Know You're an Elitist When...

So there's some musical cliche's that must be addressed.

#1 Any references to cowbell. Seriously, everybody's heard it or read it on some T-shirt. It's to the point where you don't need to have seen the original SNL skit to know what it means. That just kinda defeats the purpose. That and people wishing to affix social kudos to themselves usually blurt it out at random times. Seriously, stop. We all know (for better or worse) what you're talking about and it's kinda lame.

#2 Placing Captain Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters in your band influences (or any for that matter). Granted, this one is less so because of the lesser knowledge of this reference in regards to affluent popular culture but to anyone who has seen That Thing You Do several times it gets old very quickly seeing this fictional band being placed in every MySpace band influences. Seriously, if you're gonna be clever and still quote That Thing You Do put down Del Paxton. Now he's a real player.

#3 Making ANY sort of reference to turning ANYTHING up to 11 (this excludes quoting the actual line, any quote from Spinal Tap is in fact not only instantly relevant but also expected). It's incredible the number of musicians who are not familiar with Spinal Tap. Any self-loathing musician with any degree of decency has seen this movie and in fact can probably quote 70% of it. Due to it's once clever appearance in popular culture and the apparent elevation in stature to anyone who references 11 in conversation within musician circles suddenly everyone in the world has began to affix this connotation to virtually anything under the number ten. This isn't helped by the mere fact that Guitar Hero also makes much reference to this. This is probably one of the most heard quotes I hear and yet when I ask most of these people have absolutely no idea what it means let alone what movie it's from. Seriously, pod malfuctions and Big Bottoms win points with musicians, not tired references.

#4 Calling John Mayer a great guitarist. He's not. He's good. But he plays licks. And his time is terrible. Go cry now.

#5 Saying you hate the Beatles because they're popular. Usually people I meet who say this generally haven't given time to actually listen to the Beatles and form an opinion. They just hear people talk about how great the Beatles are and instantly, in an effort to indie-fy themselves staunchly say the Beatles are the worst thing that happened to music. Stop listening to Death Cab and get over the fact that your favorite musicians probably have just as much talent in playing their instrument and singing that the pop princesses with their Pro Tools and autotune do.

More to come, I'm really too tired to be angry. Which defeats the purpose.