Jazzmatazz
It's a lazy Saturday afternoon.
My windows are open, to air out the place a bit, and the smells of shawarma pitas and 99 cent pizza waft up from the street.
On a drive yesterday evening I was in a musical sort of mood, and put the iPod on browse in the Hip-Hop genre, whereupon it found itself playing through a couple of albums I have from a Tribe Called Quest and Dream Warriors. "Why don't I have more of this stuff?" I wondered to myself, and made a point to go by the record store today and look for the Digable Planets album I don't have, along with the US3 CD I'd wanted for a while.
Visits to the couple of cheap CD stores along Granville St proved fruitless, so I sucked it up and, after a chicken shawarma sandwich (like the ones I can smell now) at the Falafel House, I marched over to that shrine of horrendously overpriced music known as Virgin Megastore. Virgin was bad enough in Dallas, but here, seeing typical price tags around $24.99 for a single CD, it's enough to make a person lose his breath for a minute (as my brother would say, at prices like that you'd think the girl at the counter would at least give you a back scratch or somethin').
The one good thing you can say about Virgin, however, is that when they have a sale bin, it's worth checking out. No rows and rows of INXS Kick and EMF here. And as luck would have it, when I stopped just inside the door to have a quick look through the sale bin, the 4th CD I came to was the very Digable Planets CD I was looking for. What are the chances? I did some looking around the store for a bit, grabbed a couple of other discs out of the sale bin, and also found the US3 CD I'd had on my list for a couple of years.
Afterward I spent a couple of hours at the Caffè Artigiano enjoying a couple of my favorite lattes, reading Coupland's new book (autographed, I might add), and reflecting a bit on my musical purchases.
I think I've reached a point in my life where my own musical taste perplexes me. I'm not sure what that means, but I was poking fun of what the "Music" field on my Friendster profile has eventually evolved into. At one point in my life I claimed to like a little bit of just about everything (with the notable exception of Country, and even there I have a couple of songs I'll sing along to in spite of myself), but this diversity has now progressed into a strange Sierpinski-Gasket style subgenre scattering.
Originally I couldn't have told you which songs I would like or not within a general category, but now I have this bizarre list of little known classifications: shoegazer, dream pop, trip-hop, artcore, jazz rap, baroque, impressionist, jazz trio, and so on — all this aided by The AllMusic Guide and a few other references which provide special labels for just about everything. On one hand, it's a blessing, because I can more reliably narrow down artists I've never heard of but whom I might really like, but on the other hand, it makes me feel like one of those bizarre music snobs who say things like, "You know, they're so often classified as Trance, but anyone who knows anything can tell you it's really more like Ambient House with a little Electro thrown in for good measure." (I hate most Trance, by the way — another reason that people who lump all electronic music together as "that techno business" often entirely miss the mark when gift-buying for me.)
Anyway, what all that boils down to, more or less, is that next time you're in Virgin, be sure to check the sale bins, and US3's "Hand on the Torch" and Guru's "Jazzmatazz" are outstanding albums.
* * *
When I was sitting at Caffè Artigiano, a middle aged Sikh man and his wife sat down at the table next to me. When I'd finished my first latte, and was standing up to go order a second, my foot caught in the strap of my backpack under the table, and a struggled a bit to shake it free.
"Am I in your way?" the man, who had seemed to ignore me thus far, suddenly asked.
"Oh no," I responded. "I've got my foot caught in my backpack. You're just fine where you are."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Positive," I said.
"Oh thank you!" the man said, and smiled, giving his wife a knowing glance. "I think this is the first time in my whole life I am not in someone's way. You are so kind!"
I do what I can, I guess.
My windows are open, to air out the place a bit, and the smells of shawarma pitas and 99 cent pizza waft up from the street.
On a drive yesterday evening I was in a musical sort of mood, and put the iPod on browse in the Hip-Hop genre, whereupon it found itself playing through a couple of albums I have from a Tribe Called Quest and Dream Warriors. "Why don't I have more of this stuff?" I wondered to myself, and made a point to go by the record store today and look for the Digable Planets album I don't have, along with the US3 CD I'd wanted for a while.
Visits to the couple of cheap CD stores along Granville St proved fruitless, so I sucked it up and, after a chicken shawarma sandwich (like the ones I can smell now) at the Falafel House, I marched over to that shrine of horrendously overpriced music known as Virgin Megastore. Virgin was bad enough in Dallas, but here, seeing typical price tags around $24.99 for a single CD, it's enough to make a person lose his breath for a minute (as my brother would say, at prices like that you'd think the girl at the counter would at least give you a back scratch or somethin').
The one good thing you can say about Virgin, however, is that when they have a sale bin, it's worth checking out. No rows and rows of INXS Kick and EMF here. And as luck would have it, when I stopped just inside the door to have a quick look through the sale bin, the 4th CD I came to was the very Digable Planets CD I was looking for. What are the chances? I did some looking around the store for a bit, grabbed a couple of other discs out of the sale bin, and also found the US3 CD I'd had on my list for a couple of years.
Afterward I spent a couple of hours at the Caffè Artigiano enjoying a couple of my favorite lattes, reading Coupland's new book (autographed, I might add), and reflecting a bit on my musical purchases.
I think I've reached a point in my life where my own musical taste perplexes me. I'm not sure what that means, but I was poking fun of what the "Music" field on my Friendster profile has eventually evolved into. At one point in my life I claimed to like a little bit of just about everything (with the notable exception of Country, and even there I have a couple of songs I'll sing along to in spite of myself), but this diversity has now progressed into a strange Sierpinski-Gasket style subgenre scattering.
Originally I couldn't have told you which songs I would like or not within a general category, but now I have this bizarre list of little known classifications: shoegazer, dream pop, trip-hop, artcore, jazz rap, baroque, impressionist, jazz trio, and so on — all this aided by The AllMusic Guide and a few other references which provide special labels for just about everything. On one hand, it's a blessing, because I can more reliably narrow down artists I've never heard of but whom I might really like, but on the other hand, it makes me feel like one of those bizarre music snobs who say things like, "You know, they're so often classified as Trance, but anyone who knows anything can tell you it's really more like Ambient House with a little Electro thrown in for good measure." (I hate most Trance, by the way — another reason that people who lump all electronic music together as "that techno business" often entirely miss the mark when gift-buying for me.)
Anyway, what all that boils down to, more or less, is that next time you're in Virgin, be sure to check the sale bins, and US3's "Hand on the Torch" and Guru's "Jazzmatazz" are outstanding albums.
* * *
When I was sitting at Caffè Artigiano, a middle aged Sikh man and his wife sat down at the table next to me. When I'd finished my first latte, and was standing up to go order a second, my foot caught in the strap of my backpack under the table, and a struggled a bit to shake it free.
"Am I in your way?" the man, who had seemed to ignore me thus far, suddenly asked.
"Oh no," I responded. "I've got my foot caught in my backpack. You're just fine where you are."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Positive," I said.
"Oh thank you!" the man said, and smiled, giving his wife a knowing glance. "I think this is the first time in my whole life I am not in someone's way. You are so kind!"
I do what I can, I guess.