Farewell

mudgel
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Oh no!  I think Ed just passed out after reading that!  Alas, poor Bapu, I knew his post count Horatio... 

Great post, sharke. 
 

...I often find EDM based communities to be very ego driven. A lot of those guys have very fixed ideas about how a track should sound and will shout down any kind of dissent. They can also be very anal about the excruciatingly tedious definitions of EDM genres and sub-genres.

 
Substitute any genre for "EDM" (e.g. "_____ Metal") that appeals primarily to 15- to 25-year-olds and the statement holds true.
 
It isn't exclusively youngsters that fall prey to the me-too syndrome, they're just the most up-front about their desire to mimic their idols because they're desperate for peer acceptance. Guys my age also persist in a fascination with how the Beatles got this or that sound, or expect a string section to sound like Mantovani, brass like John Williams, drums like John Bonham, and synth patches like Rick Wakeman.
 
I try to be open-minded, but I've got my own nits regarding musical taxonomy, too.
 
I don't like the way the term "R&B" is used today. It's not particularly rhythmic and it has no connection to blues. Sam Cooke's "Let the Good Times Roll", that's R&B. Alicia Keys, talented lady but sorry, not R&B.
 
Blues is an ocean of sameness. The biggest-selling blues record of all time was the result of a traditional blues guy taking a creative chance by adding a string section and abandoning the standard 12-bar chord progression. It was a one-time event and it hasn't happened again. Every blues guy today is interchangeable with every other. 
 
I take issue with what they call "Country" now, too. Seems this is where melodic rock 'n roll has taken refuge. Some truly excellent stuff is happening under the "country" umbrella - I heard Keith Urban doing "It's a Man's World" (now that's R&B) on TV yesterday and was absolutely floored. Not country music, though. Country music is descended from home-made music, simple and lyric-centered and meant to be sung along with. 
 
Progressive Rock stopped being progressive 30 years ago. Everything under that category today is built, Lego-style, from a stock library of sounds and techniques that got frozen with Dark Side of the Moon and Close to the Edge. I guess we all decided that nobody would ever do better than that, and stopped trying.
 
Carlos Santana shook up the world with Abraxis, melding traditional Latin music with rock 'n roll. Today, he's phoning it in. I'm sure he's developed new licks, but he knows better than to use them in front of an audience. They just want to hear Black Magic Woman. Again. The category Santana invented back then has now become part of the frozen library, even for its own inventor.
 
Metal, same story. Way too many sub-genres, often distinguished solely by tempo and tone. And none of them are exploring new territory. 
 
Jazz, ditto. It's now either music to fall asleep to or is so eclectic that only posers pretend to like it. Don't you dare try sneaking in a catchy hook or an infectious rhythm - that's not Jazz. 
 
Bottom line is genres are a marketing invention that mean nothing from a creative standpoint. They exist so that consumers know in advance what they're getting. But who really wants to know that? It's like movie trailers that give away the whole plot. I want to be surprised.