Take everything you know (or think you know) about music--all your ideas and opinions--and throw it away. Write everything down and burn it. Music is, after all, just noise. Why is some noise more aesthetic to our ears than other noise? This is what Walt Meadornack (pronounced MEE-door-nak) is all about. Redefining the aesthetics of sound.

Take a moment and try to assess why you prefer certain types of music and sounds over others. You can point to factors like talent and technical ability, you can cite a preference over sincerity vs. a sense of humor (or vice versa). Instrumentation, rhythm, and style are all irrelevant. What it all really comes down to is familiarity.

The human mind loves repitition. And the patterns provided by popular music are just the pleasurable and predictable orders of sound that our brains love to hear. You can talk about punk rock all you want, one listen is still all you need to get the Spice Girls stuck in your head. Hasn't Post- Modern nihilism taught you anything? One kind of music is no better, nor that much different than any other kind.

In practical terms, your dog is a much more advanced audience than man will ever be. Dogs have no musical preference. Sound is sound to them. They are frightened by the vacuum and annoyed by the dog whistle. Registering only volume and perhaps pitch, dogs make no differentiation between ska and the garbage disposal.

For us to hold music over the soothing grind of the garbage disposal is an absurdity. To be true purists of sound we must work against our instinctual need for repition and pattern AND our learned behavior (the result of the constant bombardment of popular culture that begins the second we leave the womb). We are infected by 12 bar blues progressions, 4/4 time signatures, and 12 tone harmonics, while at the same time our mind works against you by embracing familiarity. Walt Meadornack says FIGHT! Throw off the shackles of your mind! Reject the archaic and tyrannical formulas of the "verse/chorus/verse/chorus" Radio Man.

Here is a little experiment: Listen to a popular radio station for a while and wait for a song to come on that you have never heard before. (This might take days, depending on how advanced your local radio station might be.) When such a song finally airs, try to predict chord changes, verse/chorus placement, or even the placement of solos. Hell, see how long it takes before you can sing along! Chances are, not only will your predictions be outstandingly close (if not right on the money), but you will know the song backwards and forwards before the song is even finished. If you have any ounce of self-respect, you should be appalled that the Man (i.e. the Evil RADIO MAN) expect you to be satisfied with such unchallenging sounds. Don't be stupid and lazy! Walt Meadornack says FIGHT!

Here's another experiment: Fill a box with pots, pans, glass, even musical instruments. Be creative. Then find some sort of portable recording device. Go to your nearest flight of stairs, put your recording device at the bottom, hit "record", and dump the contents of your box down the stairs. Congratulations! You are now an intellectually superior and progressive musician among the walking dead of Radio Land. But don't rejoice yet- it will take a lot more than that to beat the Radio Man. Just ask Walt Meadornack.

The next step in your journey of sonic self-discovery is to listen to your recording. Listen as much as possible. After a while, what once was random noise will become as regular and comfortable as a pair of underwear right out of the dryer. Your brain will begin to remember the order and nuance of the sounds. The clank of a wok, the breaking of glass, the tinkle of bb's- your mind will train itself to anticipate each distinct and unique sound. Suddenly, your brain finds solidarity in the chaos just from the simple discipline of repitition. It's just like what the RADIO MAN does to you, except you're doing it to yourself! Sound is sound. The only difference between your "stairway experiment" and the never ending attacks of the treacherous Radio Man is that your sounds take a little more self-discipline to understand.

But don't misunderstand Walt's concepts as some self-righteous elitism, used for profit and self-congratulatory snobbery. These ideas are not new, or even Walt's property. The Futurists, the Dadaists, and the more contemporary John Zorn have all explored these ideas long before Walt's egg even dropped. Even punk rock was once based on the ideology of rejecting the past and moving forward into the unexplored crevaces of obnoxious noise. Too bad the Descendents had to start writing songs about their girlfriends. Don't confuse this frustration as preference. Ideally, one can listen to Hanson and a rattling furnace with the same enthusiasm. But we'll never reach that plateau by playing into the seductive hands of the glossy-faced Radio Man.

Walt Meadornack and friends need your help to fight the onslaught of the Mundane, orchestrated with Fascist efficiency by the Radio Man and his vast army of phooey-phonic Mole Men (yeah, we're talking to you Adam Curry!) So turn off Friday Night Videos and break out the silverware. Open your mind and find the music in the cacophony.