I'm the first to admit it: I'm a lucky guy. I own my own business (Red Cat Records); I'm my own boss. And I get to work in a field I love: music. To some fellows, that would put me on par with being the guy who gets to date supermodels. Or, to put it in a more musical vein, the guy who gets to date Neko Case (recently voted "The Sexiest Babe of Indie Rock" in a Playboy.com poll). So, yes, it is pretty cool doing what I do, and the worst day I've ever had on this job is better than the best day I had on any other job, hands down.

Still, you have to be careful when choosing to take one of your passions and turn it into a career. At some point, work is just work. There's still accounting, heavy lifting, dealing with the idiots whom everyone in retail has to deal with and, worst of all (in my case), seeing the ugly side of music that you never had to deal with as a fan.

I'm not talking about the "industry sleaze balls" that we all know and hate (they are, they were and they always will be with us). I'm not talking about the commodification of "indie rock" into a faceless corporate entity. (The same thing happened to plain old rock 'n' roll.) What I am talking about is all the crappy bands!

Don't get me wrong, I always knew there were crappy bands out there. Hell, my mantra always was, 99 per cent of everything is shit. Me? I've always been in it for the one per cent. But ever since "the suits" came up with the idea that Pat Boone was as just as valid a rock 'n' roll icon as Little Richard, there has been an endless supply of limp, soulless bandwagon-jumping fakes. Now, with the advent of Pro Tools, MySpace and its ilk, that shit storm has turned into a shit hurricane. On the plus side, the 99-to-one ratio has held, so there is a huge number of great bands that now have the opportunity to be heard everywhere. But, oh man, that 99 per cent.

Fortunately, I'm not alone with my dread. In fact, there are people out there who make my distaste seem pretty mild. The evil bastards at Rock and Roll Confidential are some of them. The motto of their web site is "Your band sucks," and their avowed goal is that you should "Fucking quit. Seriously."

Surfing their site, they seem to have a pretty good argument. From their RRCTV page where you can watch videos of terrible bands acting like brain damaged chimps (and not in a good way), to "The Barrel," where they take one particularly egregious band and shoot them like fish in a barrel. The victims are cast away to the Hall of Douchebags, where all the terrible band promo pictures are posted and allowed to speak for themselves.

The parade of wankery seems endless, but it is in the Hall of Douchebags that the lack of originality, humour and fun that pervades a truly god-awful band is laid open for all to see. The bad makeup and clothing, the pouting, the pretentiousness: it's all there, and it would be seriously funny if it weren't so deadly serious. If you can't even take a picture of your band that looks at all interesting, what hope is there for your music?

Here's a hint, bands: don't have your picture taken in front of a brick wall or on some railroad tracks, because maybe, just maybe, one or two (million) other bands have already used that motif. You can find a large number of them in the Hall of Douchebags.

So, while Paul Westerberg hates music because "it's got too many notes" and Art Bergman hates music because he "hates the charts," I personally hate music because the world is never, ever going to run out of crappy bands, and I am going to be stuck looking at their stupid gormless faces for the rest of my days.

But because of the one per cent of bands that make it all worthwhile, I wouldn't trade my job for anything.

Listen to this: "I Hate Music" by The Replacements.

Andrew Pearson is owner and operator of Red Cat Records in Vancouver.