The Mailbag

There are roughly three people who read this site. I know this because that’s how many people will occasionally email me regarding entries I slap up here. Tonight’s edition lets me empty the ol’ mailbag (of its meager, pathetic contents) and revisit a couple of recent topics a bit. Here goes.

First up Dr. Mac writes in response to my hook:

The fatal flaw in your music hook idea is this simple problem… most people have crap for taste.

You: “So, uh, what kind of music do you like?”

Simpleton: “Oh, whatever. Ashley Simpson, Maroon 5, R. Kelly…”

You: “…”

Simpleton: “So, uh what do you like?”

You: “Er… no hablo Engles.”

Granted this is arrogant and dismissive of other’s musical tastes. But let’s face facts: most people’s tastes suck. That’s why radio by and large is horrible. That’s why people buy entire albums and only listen to the single that they heard on MTV. That’s why there are 10,000 cookie cutter bands out there that get famous for 15 minutes and do their take on the same basic pop/rock song that 9,999 bands have done before them, and yet people buy it.

And yes I have contributed to this madness. I bought Candlebox. I liked Silverchair. I’m not proud (but I am clearly dated). But my point is that until people see the light, talking about music is fairly pointless. And by that I don’t mean they have to like the same music I like, or even like “underground” or “indie” music, I just mean that they have to have a decent opinion. If someone really, truly feels that Nelly is the most brilliant artist of our times I’d love to know why. But most people just listen to whatever’s on, whatever’s popular, and don’t know why.

The man speaks the truth, and this does represent a fairly obvious issue with my hook. But I think about it like this: Musical taste is something that comes from a variety of places. For example, I like some of the bands or even just songs that I do because I have actively searched for music of a particular style and discarded potential options that didn’t quite cut the mustard and finally found things that I like, developing reasoned opinions on based on originality, style, execution, melody, lyrics, etc, etc. This is by and large my current modus operandi. In fact a lot of the music I gravitate toward these days is stuff that one needs to give several detailed listens to before the real point—often musically but sometimes lyrically—becomes evident. Witness Broken Social Scene as an example where I didn’t like it (or perhaps more aptly didn’t get it) upon the first several listens but eventually was able to find the in fact rather brilliant melodies and themes running throughout until eventually I came to like them very much. But some stuff I have listened to came from very different places: I have an old White Zombie disc that I listen to occasionally because it was in heavy rotation during a specific period of my high school days that I recall fondly; putting it in the rotation brings back some of that experience and while the music may be nothing especially noteworthy, I like it anyway.

I’ll let you in on a quasi-embarassing secret that I have ABBA’s greatest hits album and I listen to tracks from it now and then because my parents had an old ABBA cassette tape when my brother and I were kids. We used to listen to it all the time. ABBA reminds me of innocence and being a carefree kid… in a lot of ways the music mirrors that so while it is actually somewhat terrible music, I can’t help but like it still. I have stuff in my library (my stuff mind you, not the albums and tracks that I can blame on Nikki) that I sometimes wonder why I have: Duncan Sheik, Michelle Branch, Journey and Kylie Minogue spring to mind. But the fact is that for various reasons I like the songs or albums or whatever. Sometimes I think it’s okay to say, “You know what, I listened to Boyz II Men back in the day and I didn’t think they were that bad.”

Not that I’m saying that or anything, I’m just making a point. Ahem.

Anyway, I guess I think the hook idea is still valid because even if I met someone (or many someones) that had a flighty, unspecific “taste” in music, as I mentioned before I think part of the beauty of the hook is that it gives an insight to a person’s psyche: Even if that insight is that they are shallow and vapid. If I were to meet someone who claimed that their favorite singer was Ashlee Simpson because they “Really liked her MTV show” or something, my hook is still successful because I don’t have to carry on several conversations to learn that they are a big dull dud, I have gleaned that information with one question and a single reply which is, if nothing else, economical.

Secondly, my dad replies to the pronunciation discussion thusly:

I have exactly the same problem with Vahr-Char and its cousin phrase just plain “Char.” Can’t help it, there is no way I can bring myself to say it that way so I tend to use tedious phrases like “…so is that defined as variable character or just character?” To which the response is invariably in SQL-ese “It’s VarChar…” At that point I just cringe and go on. A recent revelation was that xxx.gif files are not pronounced with a hard “g” as if they were the beginning of Frank Gifford’s last name but (and a book I was reading used this analogy) Jif like the peanut butter. Once again we could surmise that the “g” is related to something about graphics making jif an even stranger pronunciation. Why not GUI as “Jewey”? I give up.

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