On Music - Part I

I have a confession to make: I have never heard a song by Radiohead. Obviously, I can't prove this objectively, but it is true that with a gun to my head I would not be able to name a single song by the highly regarded British (?) alt-rock (?) group.

This trivial point is germane to the extent that, in my experience, Radiohead is the litmus test band for people who are "Into" music. That is, there is a clear line of delineation between those who utilize music as a convention of emotion and communication in their lives and those to whom their own personal taste in and knowledge of music is a work of art in its own right; a massive living canvas that must be constantly touched-up and improved upon lest . . . .well, the analogy has broken down at this point, but you see what I am driving at. Essentially, that there is a clear line of demarcation that separates the musical Philistines from the musical Hebrews, and Radiohead is that Shibboleth.

As the detectives among you may have deduced from the evidence present in this post's opening line, I am a musical Philistine. Music in my life is a tool. I engage it more or less as an ambient means of capturing or producing emotions that I find pleasurable, useful or necessary. This is not meant to denirate music in any way; few things are as expressive. Do you know how difficult it is to capture certain feeligns in prose? Before emoticons, it wasn't even believe possible.

;).

The marketplace of ideas is fraught withh the lyrical buildingsromans of the great and impassioned musical connoseuirs of our generation (read: Mr. Holland's Opus, High Fidelity), but what of the musical Philistine, the Reagan Democrat of the minstrel world? As it is the charge of this blog to explore the unexplored for the rest of the world, I hereby bring to you the latest in our journey into This Dirty Life -- The Maturation of the Musical Philistine:

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The first time I felt ownership over a piece of music (that is, that it was "my" music) I was 8 years old. For her birthday, my older sister had gotten a radio with a tape deck and a singles tape ot The Beach Boys. I don't even remember what song the tape had on it (I think it was I Get Around, but I could be wrong), but what I do remember is that we played that tape thread-bare. We felt like the coolest kids on the planet -- we had mastered the vertical and the horizontal and by God if it didn't sound catchy. Until the wee hours of the morning (read: 9 p.m.) we jumped and danced around like idiots, listening to that one song over and over and over. Looking back, we were probably so damned cute that even now I sort of want to throw up thinking about it.

Then, there was a long Boyz II Men phase.











OK, I didn't want to talk about the Boyz II Men era, but I suppose I should. I got turned on to Boyz II Men (Rule #1 of Blogging: Never combine "Turned-on" and "Boyz" in the same sentence) by an older cousin. I had been staying at her family's house for a weekend in 2nd/3rd grade and she was kind enough to make me a tape of BIIM's debut effort, Cooleyhighharmony .
Unlike the Beach Boys single, this was an entire album of music for my consumption. More than that, it was an entire album of music different than anything I'd ever heard (e.g., anything my parents had played on the radio during family car trips).

I must have listened to Cooleyhighharmony a thousand times. I memorized (not knew, memorized) every lin and measure and every music I heard during that time period I subconsciously compared to the work of Shawn, Nate, Mike and Wynea (see? I still know all their names --- even if I can't spell that last fucker's). Boyz II Men were Cooleyhighharmony was my musical universe.

Then, one day in 1994, everything changed. That year, Boyz II Men released their second album, II. .
Like any fanatic pre-pre-teen, I begged my parents to but me the first copy I saw (I actually think it was my first CD). When I took it home and gave it the first dozen listens, though, something was different. I could tell I didn't like it that much. Maybe it was the fact that I was (even at that age) expanding my emotional horizons, maybe it was simply that I was growing up a bit (is there any difference?) but listening to that album, I knew that this music didn't really mean or articulate anything for me. I didn't understand what was happening in such cogent terms, obviously, but I sensed that my relative distaste for II was an accurate reflection of my own feelings, while the sainted status of Cooleyhighharmony had more to do with its sheen as my first album glossing over its imperfections than it did with any predelictions towards the boys from MowtownPhilly.

The Emperor had not necessarily lost his clothes, but at the very least, he was certainly wearing white mesh shorts and just emerged from the pool.