Musings on the byways of popular culture
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I haven’t pimped my blog out here before, but I’m getting some comments to this piece I think the Afterword-type guy might find interesting.
https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2022/02/frank-zappa-sucks-teats-on-rotting.html
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About a dozen or so years back, I was sitting at a pavement café in The People’s Democratic Republic Of Lao, watching my fingers twitch and convinced I was going to die. I’d just downed a mug of coffee freshly brewed from beans grown up on the hillside. The kind of “artisanal” coffee now worshipped in peculiar rituals by Millennials and their even more peculiar generational offspring. My heart was knocking at my chest, trying to get out. I had the head-sweats. What, I quizzed myself, was in any way good about this? I wasn’t experiencing the mellow lift claimed by the caffeine hounds, nothing pleasantly energising. It tasted like all strong coffee tastes – like four spoons of instant in a small cup. Maybe there were top notes of shade-grown mulberry and hints of licorice, but I was too busy clinging to the edge of the table – and life itself – to notice.
I was haunted by a lingering sense of unease, and gut tremors, throughout the day. Since then, I’ve viewed the entire coffee business as a cult. I do have an espresso machine, which I use occasionally for a cappuccino when I’m feeling a bit above » Continue Reading.
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Windows Media Player, or whoever supplies the autofill info for when you rip a CD, seems to have come up with some new ways to slice-and-dice music genres and some pretty idiosyncratic choices.
Up until now, I have usually left the information as suggested, but, if I do change it, I usually only use “Rock”, “Pop” or “Alternative”. This probably tells you more about my lack of concern for the too-exact categorisation of ripped CDs than the scope of what I choose to call my musical taste…. but not much more.
However, the other day I was offered “Singer/Songwriter” (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band’s Shaved Fish); “Contemporary Pop” (Richard Hawley’s Coles Corner); “Classic Rock” (This Mortal Coil’s It’ll End In Tears) and … best and most weirdly of all … “Retrospective Pop” for discs 1 and 2 of The Rolling Stones’ Singles – The London Years and “Indie/Alternative” for disc 3.
I called the whole lot of them “Rock” and had done with it, but am still wondering quite what “Retrospective Pop” actually is: something you didn’t think was “pop” at the time, but now you come to look back at it…? Any better ideas?
