Music I'm not embarassed to like

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Here's some music that I like and play reasonably often but which other human beings have given me flack for listening to. There's lots of other stuff which I like but which is just uncool, which I won't bore you with (Stevie Wonder, Faure, Concrete Blonde, &c).

Jimmy Buffet, Margaritaville. It percolated in my head for a while, just the mis-remembered phrase, `One more day/ in Margaritaville' which I would mumble to myself from time to time. [The correct line is actually more despondent: `wasting away again/ in Margaritaville'] It was emblematic of life in LA and a few other choice locations I have lived in: tourists pay lots of money to come here; when they draw pictures of paradise, they look like this; I have lots of pals and am paid to think about things that interest me; and yet it's all covered in a patina of ennui anyway. The song asks: when everything is perfect and you're still not happy, what do you do? Somebody once told me it's just about an alcoholic, which is a valid interpretation (`That frozen concoction that helps me hang on') but to me passes up the more important existential issues raised by the song.

Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach. Sitting in the dorm room in London, my roommate's clubber pals were all playing tapes of the usual repetitive club music, and I said, `oh, that reminds me of Philip Glass' and I put this on. To me it was incredibly similar: repetitive keyboards, lots of layers, but they gave it this confused look, since they knew in a way I'll never understand that this is artsy weirdo music, whereas their stuff is properly hipster club music. If you backed me to the wall, I could list the differences for you, but I don't care. Glass rocks, and had an immense influence on modern music. E.g., go listen to the keyboards on your Grandaddy CD again. If you're still scared of him, find some of his stuff post-1998 or so. [How about the Fog of War soundtrack?]

Coldplay. My idea of tempo is somehow slower than everybody else's; fast for me is is everybody else's mid-tempo. So Coldplay, which is cursed with the insult-title of `mid-tempo rockers', is OK by me. I think they're great at writing music to set mood. Of course, the music ain't rocket science, and you get it on the first listen, and they play it at fast food restaurants, but they definitely know how to play their instruments. Last time I used a McBathroom, they were playing Pete Yorn on the McPA, but `On your side' still makes me happy in a cozy kind of way (despite lyrics which make zero sense).

The Bossa Nova. I've written a personal ad on this before, how I think it's the most misunderstood genre out there. In the section on rhythm exercises in the music textbook, the bossa nova rhythm is always the difficult one that stops you up and keeps you from thinking it's all easy. It's wonderful and counterintuitive. It's sad that all the people who cover the Girl from Ipanema just give up and play it in 4/4 time.

Radiohead, Pablo Honey. I really think it's their best album. I got tired of Kid A pretty quick (except the Pyramid Song and How to Disappear Completely; are those on there or on Amnesiac?), and always skipped tracks on The Bends even though I had a tape copy so skipping tracks involved lots of effort, but I play all of Pablo Honey over and over again. There is nothing innovative in the instrumentation or the song structure, but the songs are all really fun nonetheless, and Mr. TY of Oxford, UK still shows himself to be an emotive badass. Mr. GK of San Diego, CA, calls them `The band that did Creep,' and I still agree, even though they've gone through all their reinventions and changes since then.

Should I mention the Beach Boys? They've become the hipsters' darling, so one doesn't have to defend liking them anymore. But it's a chance to mention a dumb trick that I saw online somewhere: try looking at Amazon reviews of the Great Works of Our Time sorted by lowest rating first (Go to the end of customer reviews on the main item page, click on See All N Reviews, then you get the little Sort By box on the review page). Here are the reviews for Pet Sounds. Or, here's Lolita.

So that's my list of things that make me happy despite persecution. Please leave your own in the comment box below.

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