I'm Cool Because I Knew About (Place Band Name Here) Before You

You know this feeling? You stumble across an album or someone gives it to you and you love it. You listen to it a lot, you know all the lyrics and melodies. The only problem is you know that the second this album catches on it's going to be huge. Now I'm not sure if you can claim this for old bands coming out with new albums but you can definitely do it for new bands with their first release. After you've loved your album for a few months everyone is listening to it, it's not yours anymore. That feeling of the album actually belonging to you is gone because at every party you go to people are playing tracks off of it and friends are humming the tune to one of the songs.

There is no cure once this happens. Sure you can flaunt it that you knew the album before anyone else but what does this accomplish? Nothing. The only thing you can do is know in your head that you are cooler than everyone else. Because honestly that's all it really comes down to is how cool you are. The catch however is unless you stumbled across the album completely on your own there is still someone else cooler than you. There is someone out there that recommended the album to you and there are therefore a lot cooler than you. It turns into a pyramid scheme because then the only thing you can do to make yourself feel cool still is to get tell more people about it. In doing this you are making that first person hundreds of times cooler while only marginally increasing your coolness.

So how can you overcome all of this? Well you have to realize that you in fact are not cool at all. I've come to realize it because there is always at least a couple thousand people if not million who heard it before you did. Sure I got Arcade Fire - Funeral back in October of 2004 and they were the shit of 2005. My cousin gave me Sigur Ros () back in 2002 and all I got was shit for listening to it for a few years but now everyone adores it. The past year the same thing has happened with Broken Social Scene, Rogue Wave, Animal Collective, My Morning Jacket, and The National. Now if you are into indie music at all you probably know all those bands, but if you don't help me become cooler by checking them out. After you realize you love them and tell 10 of your friends that you love them you're only helping me get cooler, but you're helping your cool rating too.

Samples of these great bands that will make you cool:
My Morning Jacket - Off The Record
Animal Collective - Grass
The Arcade Fire - Crown of Love
The National - Mr. November
Rogue Wave - Are You On My Side
Broken Social Scene - Cause = Time
Sigur Ros - Heysatan

Sorry for the people I poached these mp3's from I forgot to site all you guys but here are two of them at least. I use elbows: The mp3 Blog Aggregator to find all these links and I suggest you check it out.
http://20jazzfunkgreats.blogspot.com/2005/08/freak-folk-away.html
http://theunderrated.blogspot.com/2006/02/valentines-day-mix-2006.html
http://mockingmusic.blogspot.com/2006/02/listless-intellectual.html