One thing I hate about rock n' roll is pretentiousness. When you, as a musician, exude an air of betterment than your audience it pisses me off....even if that air isn't your intended result.

Rush back in the 80's had this aura about them where it seemed they were making music just to be as pompous as they could possibly be. Standing on stage giving these long instrumental solos that sounded terrible. Yes, they were complex arrangements, but they sounded like douche.

I thought that kind of went away with the prog rock scene of the 70s and 80s. Yes, there have been bands who tried to bring prog rock back, Bigelf, but it just doesn't seem to have the same hold as it once did. 

I rarely catch the late night chuckleheads, but I caught Jimmy Fallon because I was pretending to be a cheerleader online, and he had a band called Battles performing. They had the same air about them, grinning like fools as one smashes the cymbals one more time or hits the keys in some complicated scale, or uses Mac computers to lay down a drum beat. I wish Fallon broke out the performances so you don't have to sit through the whole show, but he doesn't. They perform at the end (last bullet point on the video timeline).

I immediately went to Wikipedia and found out they were mathematicians - makes so much sense. I think we need to bring in a new category of music...nerd rock.

There was a reason the nerds didn't create a rock band; they weren't cool enough. They didn't have stage presence, didn't have bravado, and certainly couldn't bed a woman named Leela who was their blow up doll. Nerds belong in lab, classroom, office environment doing important scientific research and furthering the advancement of society through math and shit so Neatherdthals like myself who breed indiscriminately have a nice life for our 15 kids. I trusted you were on the pill Le-ah, Bambi, Candice, Garbanzo, Ticonderoca, and LaQueefa.

Anyway, here is Battles in another performance still high on their Pretense Mountain.