I have spent the last half-an-hour trying to find three albums with no luck. I whined about it enough that my honey got up and looked too. She's sweet that way, though it made me feel guilty. She was laptopping in the living room. Dunno what she was looking at, though at one point she did comment that there were a lot of "Jesus blogs" out there. I should think so. I asked if it was a plurality or majority. The kind of question I ask and want the answer to, but no one else is going to answer for me.
Two of the three CDs I was looking for are almost 15 years old. (I betray my generational proclivities by mixing "album" and "cd" as if the same word) There were moments in my life when I felt "cool" in music terms. I had a morning show on WVAU when I was in college. The problem with WVAU was that it couldn't use the radio tower on campus. That was reserved for the "real" radio station run by professionals. Instead, it was beamed directly to the student cafeteria and could be gotten (with some fiddling) in the dorms. I liked to think of myself as eclectic then. "Grits in the Morning" was Allen's and my gift to the world. And I was "Grits."
When I met my honey, my musical cool self confidence dissappeared. She had been a record buyer for an real record store. She knew "reps" and "catalog." Now I hang out too much with honey and Bry to have ANY cool going. Between honey and Bry, there is no music they don't know. I did get a little thrill when Bry told me that the Chapin lyrics I posted a couple of days ago were good.
Honey used to make fun of my mix-tapes for have "showtuney" songs on them unexpectedly. What's wrong with a little Cole Porter?
Now I hear that the two great indy record stores in L.A., Rhino and Aron's, are closing. I couldn't find any of the CDs I was looking for. They're probably at my office. Or lost in the fifteen years of absence.
Here's the deal though. Honey thinks it's really funny when I listed to my ipod mix with Gwen Stefani and Dionne Warwick side by each. But I say if I can go from "Hollaback Girl" to "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" without hurting yourself, I've got flexibility. if not cool.
5 comments:
Sporks, you are telling it like it is! Both on the point about feeling completely cool-insolvent once you know your honey or Bry (I feel the same way), and about it not being a bad thing for Dionne to rub shoulders with Gwen. 'Specially in your own personal iPod space, where information consumers are increasingly "disaggregating" information granules and "re-aggregating" them in new contexts(as *I* learned from the OCLC environmental scan findings at a Future of Libraries workshop last November). Perhaps I am just being sensitive to the hoots of laughter and derisive snorts that would greet my own collection of music, as it's pretty darn eclectic, and many things I own and love are not necessarily "rare," or "obscure" or "interesting" to better-educated ears than mine. I'm not trying to insult your TBO or my Bry in saying this, because I have learned great things and been exposed to many musical pleasures thanks to them...
One of the words of the year on WordSpy in '05 was "playlist anxiety," something slang and sporks often exhibit. I'm sure Bry and Honey mean no harm or arrogance in their smirking condescension. : )
slang--
excellent information professional analyisis! i have no playlist anxiety, scout. i'm a goober and i know it.
I don't think I've bought any new artists since the death of KSCA (I think that's what the call letters were) almost ten years ago. I'm that uncool. What can I say, I'm still in mourning. I guess you could just call me "Sandra in the mourning."
All right, I have to say, "Stop repressing me!" Along with Honey, I too, worked in a record store, waaaaay back before CDs even existed (all right, they just made it into the store when I quit), and I was not the coolest person there, by any stretch. Sure, I had my moments when I could introduce someone to a long-forgotten gem like the Pretty Things "S.F. Sorrow" or even The Velvet Underground to one of my compatriots, but I learned about Throbbing Gristle and Peter Gabriel from them, too. The difference between TBO and me? I spent all of my disposable income on music 'n' movies, and she's seen France and Spain, to take just one example. Who's better off? Simply a matter of taste, I'd say. And whose taste is "better"? Most would probably say TBO's, since she's into jazz and I'm not, and jazz is infinitely more "cool" than say, Jimmie Rodgers, or Lou Reed, or Husker Du, to a vast majority of people, even if they don't like it themselves, I'd wager. Eclecticism rocks, Sporky; keep on keepin' on. I always have my players set to "shuffle", so I am always getting nifty juxtapositions like yours. Nothing wrong with that. Now stop blogging so I can work on my own! ; )
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