Dolby Disaster’s first decade of existence is now in the books — I still remember getting the idea in the fall of ’12 around what must have been a special glut of great new music I was encountering. This of course would have especially included Nootropics by Lower Dens, Sweet Sour by Band of Skulls who at that point was still a “hot new band,” kinda, and maybe “Richard” by Obie Trice, in which Eminem threatens some full-bodied girls with violence after first trying to lure them into his car with Big Buford burgers from Rally’s. See, DD has always kept it classy.
But I can honestly say, throughout all my trials and tribulations this decade, that I’ve retained a FAIRLY auspicious outlook on music — I mean I’m not in one of those realms I’ve seen with some people where they ONLY like old because I’m not confined to the radio. The Internet and the blogosphere make for a special sort of connection, I think, between artist and listener, and this year alone I’ve come across what seems like an endless ream of interesting metal bands — False, Slough Feg, Jute Gyte, Abbath, the hilarious misanthropy of the Asian Jig-Ai and loads of others I’m sure I’m forgetting. There was the intimacy of bedroom pop like Shiny Times, the unabashed sexuality of the amazingly still virginal Marika Hackman (who poses topless on her album cover) and of course, as ever, dudes and chicks laying down some rhymes about crack dealing, or just the sh**-hole town where they live or whatever. Long story short: we’re definitely living in an age of freedom of expression and I as the administrator of this blog have seen to take full advantage thereof, to I think a symbiotic benefit for all involved.
Of course, there’s always the worry, I guess, that the music you like won’t “hit it big,” and for this reason never be “relevant,” by conventional standards. I think just growing up I tried to listen to underground music and also just root for the underdog. Also, the bands I’m ABLE to contact directly obviously aren’t the ones who have like eight different managers and a million followers on Facebook. So I really have no reason to have this outlook, but I guess that would explain all the quote-unquote “professional” analysis of people like Taylor Swift and to an extent Justin Beiber, people who are AESTHETIC models, primarily, and then just sort of parasitically slurp up whatever musical efficacy they can find laying around their swanky mansions. This is mainstream culture in America in 2019 and of course I feel clichéd doling out the tired old “alternative culture” diatribe for my frowning blog in the corner smoking a hookah and donning a cheap Fedora droning on about Saul Bellow — I mean that’s really not the way I drew it up but that’s what happened, sorta. Hence “disaster,” I guess.