Panic! at the Protocol Compound

I don't want to say anything official about it, but I think I've finally begun the slow, slippery descent into fogeyness. I hope not, as my fingers are tightly crossed, but I'm afraid that it is inevitable that I catch that oh-so-life-altering disease.

The symptoms probably began sometime in the middle of 2004, when the election - or re-election - of the president took over my life, and worsened this past December, when I graduated from college. That is usually the death knell for traditional music knowledge.

Unfortunately, this condition comes without warning and no vaccine exists that I know of. Attempts to cure it only seem to make its appearance more obvious. Sentences like, "Today's music is just crap" have begun to drip out of my mouth with alarming regularity and "I just don't understand it" has even become a quasi-slogan of mine.

Brace yourselves. It could only potentially get worse.

Without delving into a bunch of rock cliches to get the point across - it would only further date me - I realized today that I've got to do something. I'm beginning to get disconnected from the music more every day, as the conveyor belt continues to hurl artists at me that I don't know or don't care about.

Panic! at the Disco is the first artist to come to mind. I don't necessarily dislike the band, but there's something I definitely don't like. No, the fact that an emo band can get so popular doesn't bother me. It's something else.

The lyrics. I don't like the lyrics (which, I admit, may or may not extend from the fact they're a bunch of emo guys). The music, either, I don't like much.

And, for the longest time, I didn't think it was I who had the problem. But when a whole slew of artist became famous seemingly overnight - a sure sign I've developed fogeyness - I started to worry. I can't visit Rolling Stone without feeling a palpable sense of poseriness (which is not something that most people with fogeyness develop, so there's hope!). I don't know who some of the bands are, and the scary part is, I don't care either.

I think a lot of music out there right now is crap, and the good bands - The Mars Volta, for example - get little to no attention whatsoever. This is a typical opinion of mine - I am notorious for hating popular music - but I used to at least know the bands I hated. I don't even so much as listen to 99x anymore.

But what happens to guys who are out of the loop is that they overcompensate and listen to a bunch of newer music they happen across, playing it over and over until they're convinced they're hip.

And then you know what happens, kids? It turns out that the music they've been listening to actually does suck.