20260514

I've been going a little stir crazy with this last week of university hanging over my head.. 

with this, i've felt especially vulnerable to my unfortunate comparison compulsions. I will say, though, one thing that never leaves my side is a skepticism for coolness. I believe that the rawest form of "cool" is found in not trying to be cool. Not a passive person, but someone who just IS themself. genuineness is cool. someone's "dressing the part" is superfluous and frankly makes me feel skeptical about their art's "front-seat"-ness. 

I think that I may have mentioned it on flounder, but I'm really trying to move away from this derivational rat race that I see surrounding so much art online... this sounds like that, this looks like that. I've historically been a perpetrator of just that in conversations. 

I think that similarities and influences are inevitable and worth appreciating. However, I get so tired of seeing what really just boils down to COPYING. I LOVE the cleaners from venus, and I have for many years, and I have always wanted to interpret and utilize the inspiration it has given to me with my own music. But now that i've seen one quadrillion other white guys capitalize off of "jangle pop lo-fi sensibilities of acts like R. Stevie Moore and Guided by Voices" I feel silly. i get it that you guys like that music too, and if i wanted to listen to cleaners from venus, i can always just put it on. I want to make music LIKE what martin newell's music MEANS to me, not LIKE martin newell HIMSELF!!! 

you want to be an "underground pop hero." I get it, but i feel like the originality and earnesty that i admire and respect from the artists i enjoy is absent in what I've been seeing and hearing recently. If i wrote music to sound just like arthur russell, id fully expect arthur russell's own spit in my face. copying is uncool, you're dressing the part, even SOUNDING the part, but at the very very end of the day, are you moving anything forwards? what are you expressing? something that someone else has said, exactly how they've said it? i'm not at the liberty to answer any of these questions authoritatively, so....

let me know what you think! email me at goomanstl@gmail.com !!!