Ugh, regular talkbass. Dude assuming that I have a big rig and my band is loud because my guitarists are having a volume war, rather than just because my band is doom and we choose to be loud. He's into metal, so I feel like he should know better.
Yup. It might be even worse for Rock, or genres not necessarily associated with being as loud anymore as Doom. At least when you say you play Doom, it's known for being a loud style of music. When I say "well I play rock," it no longer has those same connotations. Now it's all about having combos and what not (partially due to the expensive of stacks etc), but my idea of rock was formed seeing images of Cream and Hendrix with multiple stacks of amps, that's what it's supposed to be.
"Oh, it's too loud for some people" Well then some people can pound sand. That sort of music was never supposed to polite and cater to everyone, and it shouldn't. Play what you want and there's probably someone out there who wants to hear it (though that someone might just be the people in the band). But people being condescending over what you want to and how you do it just fries me. Maybe it's more of a perspective thing, like they see it as an entertainment job to placate as wide a swath of people as possible, versus seeing it more as an artistic medium in which to create what you want how you want, whether it has widespread appeal or not.
Interestingly, I see a lot of new "rock" bands that seem to be taking cues from like...'65, '66, you know, small combos, not terribly complicated, very sputtery fuzzes, etc, which I enjoy well enough. But I want to see more of that '68 style, stacks, improv, feedback, loud, etc.
