well, it used to be that a person's taste in music was reflective of the soulful innards of the individual. it was like a metaphysical grocery cart, collected department to department, produce first, then dry goods, then refrigerated. what you get out with was usually in direct proportion to how much effort you put into it. if you did well, you would come home with the frost on the ice cream carton intact, enough food to replace the 80%-100% consumed items and a tranquil satisfaction, knowing that you purchased the one item that provided the impetus for the grocery excursion to begin with. you knew you wouldn't be back for another week and you acted like it. if you did not plan, list or map, you bought apples when you still had 5, slurp your way through a full carton of ice cream soup and forgot the friggin peanut butter puffins. again.
it used to mean a lot if a person had good musical taste. it meant even more if a person had bad musical taste. if someone said that they listen to fugazi, the flaming lips, chet baker and ulrich schnauss, your response couldn't be any less than teeming awe. this individual was certainly not bound by by time, by trend, by instrument, by intonation, by familiarity. this individual did not fall into the easy trap of finding and tying his identity with one genre. even if the person turned out to be a complete ass hole, you would still be forced to have at least a modicum of respect for him by virtue of this mad talent. but now, sadly, everyone has GREAT taste in music and is SO diversified AND lists every band they've ever loved on facebook. you don't know if the person's brilliant taste is genuine and hard earned and original or if he's hawked cds based off of someone's list on amazon.com. or itunes. or myspace. ugh.
i have always accepted and agreed that good taste is a privilege and mostly innate. it is not something that should be able to be synthesized or fabricated. and when i reflect on it, there is something quite menacing about the idea of an perfectly egalitarian culture, where everyone gets to participate in anything, on any level. people who, ordinarily, would first start with learning to love the ramones and then move on to madonna's early work and then graduate to radiohead, just jump in somewhere between the doors and bjork and come out looking like a pop music virtuoso.
something real wrong about that. reminds me of gilded gold, it's only shiny on the outside.
