Saturday, October 30, 2010

There used to be a Tower Records here


My cousin, who is my man-crush because he is the ultimate in awesomeness, sent me an external hard drive full of music containing about five thousand songs. Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, Alamalla Ramadan to me. The uber-most spaz-inducing gift Missus K has ever received.

Imagine how much time and money went into compiling that. And no, my cousin did not download them all. He wouldn’t say how he acquired them, but I’m sure he rolled some music nerd who was on the way to his other music nerd friend's house, or he found the external drive in one of the cases of illegal Viagra he gets in the mail every week.

Speaking of music nerds, I wear that banner proudly. I am a connoisseur of all types of music, save for any of that shit played on the radio right now: Hip-hop, bad country, pop, Lady Gaga Gabor…ack.

Anyway, I do love music and am a self-professed expert in obscurities and rarities. I am partial to 70s funk music – due to the fact that I was born an African American in a whitey body – but heavy metal and grunge occupy a great amount of GBs on my shitty MP3 knock off.

So I’ve spent the last four days perusing this cornucopia of music and there is virtually no band or genre missing – from 1920s-era blues, to old school country (i.e. Johnny Cash, which I do like), to one-hit wonder metal bands. I need a Dewey Decimal System to find my way around. Believe me when I tell you, IT IS THE SHIT.

With the vast variety of tunage comes a few bands that embarassingly and in full disclosure, Missus Kravitz used to proudly listen to - and which I will now confess to you. Warning: turn away from your screen, cause this is ugly.

BANDS THAT MK ONCE(and secretly still does)LIKED:
- Dead or Alive
- Duran Duran
- Bow Wow Wow
- The Go-Gos
- Madonna (yep – even saw her first-ever live show)
- The Carpenters
- John Denver
- Prince(saw him too when he had the spewing guitar, got me with that - 3rd row seat)
- Haircut 100
- The Bee Gees
- George Michael
- Allison Moyet
- Art of Noise
- Shelia E.
- Many, many other cringe-worthy lames

Now after seeing this horrifying list, you might say “Jesus, get him a rainbow window sticker”, but here’s the thing. I also liked hard-core, kick ass metal at the same time (and definitely still do). We’re talking Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Ozzy, etc. If they were English and wore spandex, I worshipped at their altar.

How did I pull off this duplicity and multi-social-group membership without being labeled a fraud? I was the original Ferris Buehler. I hung with the jocks, the suburbans, the skull-bongs, the Richie Rich’s, the rednecks and the knobs. The one group I did not hang with though was the New-Wave/Goths with the stretch pants and the painted fingernails (on the dudes).

Now I probably sound pretty righteous by saying all this, but it really was a case of me trying too hard to fit in with too many groups, and as a result, I really didn’t have my own identity. By senior year though, I found myself and just hung with the bad kids (while wearing a polo shirt and penny loafers).

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