Are the Foo Fighters Bad?

Whenever a question seems hard to answer, it is usually because there is no answer. The question itself is wrong. Like this: is casual sex bad? The answer is probably something like, depends on what you mean by sex, what you mean by wrong, what you mean by casual, and what you mean by is. Then even after you define all that...the answer will not answer the question. It will just be a choice, like picking an outfit, and you will maybe want to pick a different outfit based on who is seeing it, your mood for the day...

And there is this question that keeps surfacing, that is like this: destined for a convoluted answer that succeeds supremely in its failure to provide an answer:

Are The Foo Fighters bad?


I do not like the Foo Fighters. I saw them in concert a few months ago, and had to blog about it, and offered as much restraint as exists in my jaded, sweet little heart when writing up all the dad rockers and those sad played songs from 20 years ago... I felt sorry for the band, and sorry for the people who listen to it... which is to say, I felt contempt.

So there's me, thinking, this is so bad.
And 20,000 people thinking, this is fucking great. Give me your best, David Grohl.  

The question of whether the Foo Fighters are bad--is unanswerable. It is a stupid question. Maybe better questions would be:

Whom do The Foo Fighters please? 
And why?

I read a study a few days ago that was talking about music from a neurological perspective. Music, it said, releases dopamine (pleasure) in two moments: 

The anticipation of the emotional moment.
The emotional moment itself.

But what is this emotional moment? To answer this question, you can look at the Myers Briggs system, which derives from Jungian psychology. A person whose main way of processing (construing?) reality is through Introverted Sensing--cataloguing and drawing from the past--will get a dopamine release from listening to this band they've been listening to for 20 years. That buildup into the part where Grohl wails out, "Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you?"... will give them a rush similar to how you feel during sex or when eating a hot dog covered chilli and nacho cheese. You will be pulled to the moment you first heard that song, maybe in high school, and you'll have a rush of remembrance of all that came after: the wife next to you, in her matching Foo Fighters 2012 Tour shirt, will get up on your shoulders, and you'll be young again...forever...

A person whose main cognitive function is Extraverted Intuition, which compels itself compulsively into what is next (a person such as myself) will feel a sense of repulsion at this display. I will feel pity and contempt for these people who stopped consuming the New when they were teens, and bought a house, and "putter around" on the weekends. 

This is because my cognitive orientation is such that I will get no dopamine release from hearing a song from high school. Now remix it into some sexy-ass house...sarcastic and cruel with a buildup and drop that is explicitly meant to stimulate my pleasure centers: this could interest me. The fresh juxtaposition creates pleasure--the beat and the contents of that arrangement, as well. (Synths, beat, voice, effects, et cetera...)

I am destined to feel superior to The Foo Fighters. And people who like them, have liked them for decades...are destined to feel superior to me. We are perfect in our opposition. There is nothing to fix.