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…in which normally tolerant partners reach breaking point

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Mrs Moose is, as you will imagine, a very patient and long-suffering woman.

There are many, terrible reasons why this is true, some of which are too awful for you to contemplate, but my taste in music is one of them. Actually she positively likes a good 80% of the music I do. Another 15% she tolerates. Then there is the 5% which she will tell me to turn off.

Today a thankfully rare instance of this came up, about seven minutes into this jolly wee ditty.

What is your partner’s musical breaking point?

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Comments

  2. I know from actual experience of that track that my GLW would get about 30 seconds in before a less than polite request to change to something else. I put it down to a knee jerk reaction rather than it actually being offensive, but hey, we’re all different.

  3. Ms Moles from thirty years of observation checks out of the room if I have on either: wittering women – Kate Bush, Nanci Griffiths and Natalie Merchant are the prime examples of this; or shouty blokes – The Clash being first amongst equals. There is the potential for shift – The Jam are also shouty blokes but she’s happy with a lot of Weller’s solo work as it’s so 60s influenced. Her 60s stuff that is, rather than The Who.

    • La Bush is also one of Mrs M’s dislikes. I have a theory that it’s because she thinks of KB primarily as a woman who twats about in a letoard making silly faces, rather than as a musician. After the recent “Maygate” business Mrs M said “Well I don’t know why anybody’s taking Kate Bush seriously… I mean ever, not just about this”

  4. There is no Mrs B these days, but Frank Zappa and The Fall were not exactly favourites in those faraway days. Now the disapproval comes from my 13 year old (“I had no idea the Beatles were this weird” was her appalled comment on a revisit to 1967-69 at the weekend), while my Daddy-worshipping 8 year old tries to convince herself she likes the latest Zappa bootleg or remaster. Poor kid…

  5. Me & Mrs O share very similar tastes, probably about a 99% success rate both ways. This falls down sharply when we get to The Fall.
    She absolutely hates them! It’s not just Mark E Smiths voice that grates on her, it is pretty much everything about them. Headphones only when the fall are played in our house.

  7. Dylan, first and last and always. Although she did like his Theme Time Radio Hour, and is always delighted when I entertain her with my impression of his Bobness’s dulcet tones.

  9. Hip hop, specifically use of ‘the N word’. In hip hop, ‘the N word’ is used to describe all people — enemies, friends, fans, people in the street — so the potential for her to hear it is huge. The solution is to play white-boy hip hop, and I can’t stick Eminem, so if I’m in a hip hop mood we tend to listen to a lot of Beastie Boys.

  10. I’ve managed to establish that the key things to avoid at Stately Counterpane Manor are:

    1. “Too mournful”
    2. “Too country”, and
    3. Contains mouth organ.

    As I’ve been on an alt-country/Americana trip the last couple of years, domestic harmony has been at risk.

  11. The things she hates:
    1 – Julian Cope
    2 – Roy Harper
    3 – Jethro Tull
    4 – Kate Bush – however as I don’t own anything by her, this isn’t an issue.

  12. I have been threatened with immediate ejection from the house if I so much as contemplate playing Captain Beefheart.
    Whilst she tolerates the Sex Pistols, they are right on the edge of her throwing cutlery at me.
    And the name Brain Eno should not be mentioned in our house.

    In fairness, she tolerates most things, even going so far as actually buying me 3 Metallica CDs a couple of Christmases ago. These were presented with the caveat “you can play those when I’m out”.

  13. The following are not popular with Mrs duco:

    1) Albert Ayler (“Usch – stäng av skiten!”)
    2) John Coltrane
    3) Thelonious Monk
    4) Eric Dolphy
    5) Joe Henderson
    6) Freddie Hubbard
    7) Andrew Hill
    8) Henry Threadgill
    9) Wadada Leo Smith
    10) Anything, really, that might be termed … jazz

    • Me too…..modern jazz and/or anything with “discordant sounds,” The Aerosol Grey Machine and George Harrison’s first two LPs admirably fulfilling this second remit.
      She really loves Captain Beefheart’s debut LP though.

      • Me too….anything with prominent soprano sax, in particular….

        …and any Van der Graaf, but especially “….Lighthousekeepers “….Mme Stoke came into the room as we got to “where is the god that guides my hand” and she threatened actual bodily harm….

    • They’re all what might be termed the “Weird” end of the Jazz spectrum, so no great surprise.
      Personally I’d have no problem with any of them except sometimes Ayler, Hill, Threadgill and Smith are sometimes not what my ears require.

      I know a LOT of people, both male and female who would never ever tolerate being in hearing of Albert Ayler.

  15. Not a fan of Mightily Tull or the Feat, sadly. And a certain tightness will appear around her temples should I play Iris Dement or similar “twangy” country singer. Likes the Dan and Stevev Wilson though.

  16. Bootlegs. ‘Why the hell do you want to listen to something that sounds this awful when the regular stuff sounds so much better..?’ We’ve actually just discussed this, and I have to be fair and say that she tolerates most of my music and we enjoy a large crossover of taste.

    In the car we have a system whereby my iPod goes on shuffle, but either of us has the power of veto to not listen to something – it actually rarely happens….except maybe for a wobbly Let It Be outtake perhaps….

  17. My wife is generally okay with my music. We overlap quite a bit, but she will turn her nose up at some of my metal, while she also has an unshared fondness for what I’ve just dubbed Radio 6 Indie – FrIghtened Rabbit and the like. She also gets Ryan Adams, which I certainly don’t.

    The dog on the other hand does not seem to enjoy anything I like and will leave the room and go sit in the kitchen if I’m playing black metal or dub reggae.

  19. The Fall seems to be a lightening-rod for disharmony. While she doesn’t own any Fall albums, Ms Moles is fine with MES. In a similar vein – anyone else still maintain separate music collections? This after 30 years…though we will not actually buy ‘our own copies’ any more, one is generally enough.

  20. I listened to most of that track Moose, waiting for something awful to blare out of my tablet speakers, but – nothing. What exactly is it that Mrs Moose can’t bear? (Apart from you, of course.)

    Couple of recent of examples from our house. Mr B asks “Who’s this, Louis Armstrong?” Um… no dear, it’s Tom Waits.

    And the other night, when I was listening to ITLTSN in the tub, Mr B declared that “Van Morrison can’t really sing, can he?”.

    Just this confound me further, he actually really dug a song I was playing yesterday – the 12″ of the Belle Stars’ Iko Iko. Not usually his sort of thing at all.

    I bloody love him.

  21. My FPO doesn’t like The Pogues or Julian Cope. On a car journey I played or tried to play Godspeed you black emperor!! Didn’t get very far with that one before I heard ‘What the hell is this rubbish’.

    Sometimes I try to play something I am sure she will like. Ron Sexsmith has a nice voice and strong melodies. Even with him I got ‘this is depressing me, do we really have to listen to it?’.

  22. I am lucky as Mrs Bungliemutt actively encourages me to switch on some tunes with her usual refrain of “this place is like a morgue”. She has a long-suffering acceptance of everything from Gregorian chant to Chuck Prophet, but has an unaccountable mental block where Bob Dylan is concerned, generally reacting with something along the lines of “what is that crap?”

  23. My missus rarely enthuses over the music I listen to. She likes classical music and went through a student phase of world music. we’ve been to gigs – she liked Django bates, found steely dan too loud and impossible to hear the words (they won awards for the best PA on the road that year); when we saw the Rolling stones, she only knew “satisfaction). She turns down “Yes” (surely symphonic) and when i played “crime of the century” and got to the end of “School” (side 1, track 1) asked if we could listen to the world service. I’ve never introduced her to the darker corners of my music collection. It’s my theory that even when one tries to second guess a wife’s musical taste, it crashes. I dreamt up introducing another musically-unappreciated pal’s wife to laura Nyro, and that didn’t work though I thought a soulful, poppy female singer songwriter would be just the thing for a woman who liked 60s soul. Just as well I long ago found that liking a woman who liked the kind of stuff I did (musically) was generally disastrous. what does this say about the kind of music I like? or does it say musical compatibility is not necessary for a happy marriage, and our music is like our shed – a place of retreat and private contemplative pleasure?

  24. Brooce gets the instant thumbs down from Mrs W. She simply cannot get past the Born in the USA macho denim earnest working-class blue-collar stuff.
    She is normally a woman of impeccable taste with but one musical blind spot – her favourite record is Rumours which in the early days led to our first proper row. Nowadays I have come to accept the magnificent splendour of Rumours – I particularly like the appalling drumming, the inept guitar solos, the whingy voices and the toe- curling lyrics and tomorrow I’m going to tell her what I really think…..

  25. As still somewhat new to my wife, resisting the insertion of current into said sentence, I thought I had hit AW heaven when she seemed to tolerate Jackie Leven in my courting tapes. Now we are bedded in, so to speak, she tells me she can’t stand him. In truth I like most of her choices, except bloody Bon Iver, and she likes an equivalent number of mine, except that number within the totality of mine is a minuscule proportion, which means she insists on me in headphones for most of mine. (And why do women play the same bloody CD time after time after time?)

  27. Another phenomenon is how gradually artists who were initially poo-poohed are now adopted by your parter. So I am now convinced of the genius of Led Zep (as a good post-punk all of that was rubbish in 1982) and she will tolerate solo Weller.

  28. It’s safe to say that Mrs Wad doesn’t share my new found love of hip hop and grime. On one memorable occasion, after I’d pushed it by playing two rap songs back to back, she burst out “for fuck’s sake, I’ve had enough of this sweary rap shit”, before realising what she’d done and going a bit red!

  30. The missus has, generally, awful taste in music. She loves “new country.” I’ve had to listen to quite a lot of a Garth Brooks boxset she got for Christmas.

    However, having played her lots and lots of stuff over the years she really likes Nick Drake, John Martyn, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, and, surprisingly, Tom Waits – although only the earlier stuff. She draws the line at the “old hobo banging on pots & pans” era Waits.

    I end up spending a lot of my music listening time with a pair of headphones clamped to my bonce.

  31. In the car we ONLY listen to my wife’s music. Otherwise disaster. My wife in fact is a far bigger music nazi than I am. I’ve told her so multiple times over the years to her face (both in anger and in jest) such is life.
    For the past 5 years she’s listened to nothing but A.O.R. Of the “limited release” Japanese import variety. Yesterday we listened to a Jim Messina solo album (of Loggins and Messina) ….it’s quite good.
    Sigh…
    The 5 years before that was all jazz fusion. So we still get some of that overlap.
    Although alarmingly she appears to be transitioning towards light jazz (with vocals) so lot’s of Michael Franks, Gino Vannelli, Al Jareu.
    When I first met her she was like a normal Afterworder. 2 huge books of CD’s. The first was filled with an eclectic selection of music a typical 21 year old Brit would be buying circa 2001. (Blur, their influences, their contemporaries, etc) The 2nd book represents her sharply fanatical turn to 60’s-70’s music. So really the two CD books represent the two afterword factions each with their representative music collections.
    She never listens to that stuff anymore though.

    • Yup, the “never the twain shall meet” rule pretty much applies in our car as well leading to having the radio on almost exclusively unless I’m prepared to listen to Take That/Adele/Coldplay/ Buble on pretty strict rotation. The problem is we also struggle find a radio station that we can both put up with for any decent length of time so long journeys are interesting.

      Whatever brought us together in the first place it certainly wasn’t shared musical taste. She even hated the band I was in!

  32. Like many in my family, she has little or no interest in the world of music but, through the kids, she’ll latch on the odd thing. Adele is a breakthrough artist into civilian territory and she’s very into her. There’s an appreciation/respect afforded to the Beatles but she barely mentions my other music. She will respectfully suggest that I don’t put together a playlist for parties and the like. I don’t subject her to my stuff in the car, unless it’s my work car. It’s all bleepy noise to her – and she’s absolutely right, a great deal of it is.

    I remember Noel Gallagher saying that nobody made any money from appealing to just the “cool” audience. Once you’ve got into the heads of the “squares” that’s when you hit the big time.

  34. Mrs BB barely tolerates ‘your country girls’ (Emmylou, Lucinda, Gillian, Linda, et al). She loved Margo Price the other night though.

    Dylan is a blind spot (apart from Street Legal because we were – ahem – stepping out when that album was out). And very weirdly, because she adores Bjork and Laura Marling, she really can’t abide Joni Mitchell.

    • Mrs T loves some country (Trisha Yearwood, Kim Richey, Gretchen Peters ), tolerates some (Emmylou, Martina McBride) and can’t abide some (Iris, Gillian, Joy Lynn White)

      • Mr B actually ‘accused’ me, like it was some sort of crime, of “making me like some country” by playing the fantabulous Trio CDs. I reminded him that one of his fave Dylan albums is Nashville Skyline, and he withdrew the complaint.

  35. Mrs Turtleface is pretty tolerant and we crossover probably 80% of the time. I’ve taken her to see the Stray Cats, turned her on to Edwyn Collins and she always accompanies me to every Roddy Frame gig we can make. She likes Nick Lowe (though maybe not as much as me) but like many others, The Fall are a problem, Half Man Half Biscuit are ‘funny lyrics but unlistenable’ and she’s really not keen on Heavy Trash. I love Tom Waits but she will ask me to turn it off.
    Mostly though, I think I do quite well. I’d happily dispose of her ELO and Santana collection however.

  36. I’ve found that in general it’s best not to play music at all when Mrs thep’s around. She may like it and ask what it is, but sooner or later she’ll want to talk, and ask for it to be turned off. Or it might start gentle and get loud and shouty.

    She nearly always listens to music on her headphones, and I have plenty of time in the house on my own if I want some loud, so it’s all good. She listens to nothing but podcasts in the car anyway, so that’s what I listen to if I’m with her. I’ve learnt a lot.

  37. African is ok but extended bouts of Zimbabwean staccato guitar put her on edge. Esp if I break out a few of my old dance moves.

    Jazz fine til it gets free form.

    Dylan fine cept for early period v nasal twang

    Zappa – nyet

    Loves the Dan 👍👍👍👍

  38. Mmm. Quite a lot of variation on location here. I’m sticking to the car 🚗 journeys. Short journey. All talk. Long journeys. A mix and match from us both. Fly solo. Go nuts.

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