Time for another musical interlude.
You can tell I'm in a good mood if a snippet of song bursts from my lips, almost unbidden. Such was the case today when our Coke driver (a man almost of retirement age) popped in with our order. Without even thinking about it--without really being aware I was doing it--I sang
Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola
Go down Point Cumana
Both mother and daugter
Workin' for the Yankee dollar
I got just past the first line when the gentleman's jaw dropped. He looked at me again, trying to assess my age. Finally, as I was finishing up that chorus, he blurted out "You are too young to know the Andrews Sisters!"
"Says who?" I riposted. "I'm 51 years old."
"Bullshit you are!"
"Inside, I mean. Actually, inside I'm probably closer to seventy."
Whereupon our merchandising specialist, Don (who's past retirement age himself) spoke up from the other side of the room. "No", he said, "you just have an ear for good music, that's all."
That felt good, not least because I think it's true. You ask people what kind of music they like, a good 80% of them will say "well, everything, really". I really do like everything, or at least a little of everything.
Incidentally, "Rum and Coca-Cola" is a fascinating song. The guy who has the credit for lyric and melody--Morey Amsterdam--actually plagiarized both, and was sued for it. The song was banned on the radio, and not because both mother and daughter are workin' on their backs for that Yankee dollar (in 1945!): that just went over everyone's heads, including the Andrews Sisters'. No, the big problem with "Rum and Coca-Cola" is that it mentions liquor. Plus, it's free advertising for Coke. It didn't stop the song from becoming the most popular of the year...in an era of MySpace and YouTube it may be hard to understate just what an accomplishment that is.
Anyway...as I told that Coke driver, a liking for the Andrews Sisters can't really be called weird. Not when they are the best-selling female vocal group in the history of popular music, with more Billboard Top 10s than Elvis or the Beatles. If I'm weird, I'm in good (and lots of) company.
It all brought to mind the last time I'd made somebody's mouth hinge on a matter of music. Also at work. The satellite system at our store has something like sixteen channels covering a variety of genres. Most of them never get played, on the grounds that sixteen hours of "Spanish bullfighting music" will drive most of the staff to suicide (and most of the customers out of the store). Usually, the thing's stuck on what I call the teeny bebop channel, which lately means Katy Perry, Panic at the Disco (whose hit "Nine In the Afternoon" I actually adore), and other artists I might like if I didn't hear them umpteen times a day. If the grocery manager's gets his druthers, we'll get new country. Occasionally the boss seizes control of the music and we get songs from the sixties.
It was on one of those latter days when I heard, for the first time in several years, "96 Tears". My former assistant, who now works in produce, called across the back room. "Hey, Ken," he said. "Who does this song?"
"That'd be Question Mark and the Mysterians", I answered.
He was flabbergasted. "How in the hell do you know that?"
Actually, the only reason I know that is because the song features prominently in a Stephen King novella called "Hearts In Atlantis"...and because '? and the Mysterians' is the second-best band name I've ever run across. (The best, obviously, is Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers.)
"I don't know how I know that," I told him. "Just smart, I guess."
There's not much I won't at least give a listen to. But I've got to have variety: I've got everything from Gordon Lightfoot to Eminem and Nate Dogg on my iPod, but a steady diet of either will turn me off in no time.
This insistence on variety is, for me, the essence of iPod, the thing that makes Apple's gizmo impossible to live without. You don't get variety on the radio, no matter what station you tune in. We used to have a station in the Tri-Cities called DAVE-FM. Like its brothers in various markets (JACK-FM in Toronto, BOB-FM in London, and so on, it played lots of you name it mixed in with whatever the hell they felt like playing. Not as much variety as I'd like, mind you--the songs all fit somebody's definition of rock--but at least it covered everything from the 60s up to today. They still have the broad time range, but they've unfortunately ditched a good two thirds of their playlist and have become rigid: you can almost set your clock by certain songs. Ugh. (Plus their morning show isn't even a pale imitation of what it once was.)
Never have that problem with an iPod. Shuffle up the tunes and I'll get Manticora followed by Stompin' Tom Connors followed by Gustav Holst followed by...
Yeah, maybe I am weird.
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