the emperor's new band

the following is based on a danish fairytale by the late, great hans christian anderson. it was originally titled keiserens nye klæder rock band.

once upon a time, in a gentrifying neighborhood, far away (at least it seemed far if you had to get there in traffic), there lived a group of very progressive, intelligent people called hipsters. the hipsters ruled their bohemian kingdom well, patronizing non-corporate establishments and cooking with all organic ingredients.

then one day, a band called deerhunter came to see the hipsters. deerhunter, or more specifically, deerhunter’s exceptionally thin front man, bradford cox, told the hipsters that the band could make a very special kind of music – music so unique that it would sound like the cacophonous wail of a dying chimpanzee to everyone who was stupid or unfit for his position. (most of the hipsters didn’t have day jobs, so they weren’t too worried about that last part, but they were deathly afraid of being singled out as stupid.)

and deerhunter had promised the hipsters that this music was so magical, it could separate the critics from the fan boys and the vegetarians from the vegans…

so the hipsters listened to the music and found it sounded like a very untalented rendition of the music from hedwig and the angry inch, but they were afraid their friends would judge them and their MFA degrees, so they praised deerhunter and wrote positive reviews of their albums in their trendy indie magazines. eventually they turned deerhunter into “trindie” rock darlings.

(almost clever 80's images anyone?)

deerhunter played large, well attended shows and each time the audience pretended to enjoy the nails on a chalkboard mania that the band performed. But then, one day, a very small-time blogger (a.k.a. me) went to one of these shows and proclaimed, “deerhunter has no rhythm! deerhunter has no style! deerhunter isn’t making music – that’s just noise.”

the whisper of truth was passed all around the internet, from blog to blog to myspace comment until, finally, the hipsters realized that they had been taken advantage of and, had they not embraced separatist nerd culture, wanting to prove themselves smarter than everybody else to mask their childhood insecurities, they could have spent their money on tickets to a show they would have actually enjoyed.

alas, they could not get a refund on their tickets or reclaim the wasted hours of their lives, but from then on, the hipsters realized that the smart thing to do was to actually tell the truth about their musical preferences. (this seemed like an especially good idea when they considered that their SAT, ACT, and CTBS scores, along with their regular viewing of the colbert report, had already confirmed that they were pretty smart. (or at least that they knew the vice president's name.)

and so they lived happily (a.k.a. organically) ever after -- their closets full of vintage tees, their fridges full of PBR, and their i-pods full of music they could actually enjoy.

the end.