Moon Over Bourbon Street

MOON OVER BOURBON STREET

Music, Books and Tortured iPods

I've been playing around with a subject for the last couple days - wanting to write something, not really knowing where to start. Well brave readers, I found my muse. 

Today I was having a nice chat to a friend of mine over skype - the person in question can remain anonymous (you know who you are) - twiddling my hair, laughing at stupid jokes that barely make sense now, it's a pretty average conversation between pretty average friends. Behind me, my ipod whirs. 

The music shifts from bonnie King Charles to the theme from Edward Scissorhands. A fairly major jump, I admit, from alternative folk-pop to classical Danny Elfman at his finest. My friend snorts, I ask why, the reply is a 'nothing, nothing.' The conversation continues. The ipod whirs again. This time from Elfman into Dreaming of Appalachia by the Major Sevens, a bluegrass band I'd fallen in love with during my year abroad. Another snort that's covered up quickly with a question. Happily distracted, I natter on. Then the ipod whirs for a third time. This time my over-web companion laughs, stares at me in perplexed horror and asks:

"Seriously?"

I'm very confused, "Seriously what?"

"You're listening to that?" 

I'm still confused, "To what?"

"Your ipod is tortured. Listen to that."

I tune into the sound at last, it's Enter Shikari's No Sleep Tonight and across the internet, I'm realising that my casual acquaintance really is judging me. 

"It's just on in the background."

Rather unhelpfully I'm then told the mix of what has just played in the last few minutes. Now, I'm the first to admit my playlist is pretty eclectic. I like a lot of music and can't claim to be the most discerning collector when it comes to loading things onto my classic brick of an ipod. Yes, I've seen Britney Spears and the Spice Girls in concert and have more than enough pop on my itunes but then I've also seen the Strokes, You Me At Six, Pendulum and NOFX. I saw Fleet Foxes in a thunderstorm and Roger Waters perform beneath a giant floating pig at the O2. I've worked at music festivals and I've crowd surfed out of Brixton Academy. Of course, the consequence of this is the hotchpotch melee of opposing genres sucking you deep into their bewildering rabbit hole. And apparently there is something about this that is so far flung from wonderland that the very existence of this disparate collection has my inanimate ipod 'screaming out for real music'. Cheers buddy.

I suppose until now I've never really thought too hard about it. Over the last year, I've come to appreciate country music (courtesy of a car-ride to Florida over Spring Break), been introduced to the finer points of dubstep-a-la-Carolina and learnt that whilst not everyone loves music from the 60s/70s those that do have clear superiority. But ever noticed that those things don't necessarily sit alongside grungy, screaming over-grown teenagers with guitars? Nope, I can't say I ever really considered it. 

Anyway, that's quite a long story introducing a very simple idea. Or ideas. There's a couple of them. 

Let's jump in on the deep end, with musings that flounder in a sea of pretensions and too-much-free-time. 

The Question: what does music say about a person? Does it really say all that much? 

Trying to answer (because apparently my ipod has a terrible case of MPD and who wouldn't be curious to diagnose it), I had a google, found a quiz that asked the former questions and I filled it out. 

Out comes this answer: YOUR TASTE IN MUSIC SAYS THAT YOU'RE PHILOSOPHICAL.

According to this my music is reflective and complex. This means that I am 'intellectual to the point of being cerebral'. I'm also 'very open to new experiences, and even more open to new ideas and theories' whilst 'wisdom and personal accomplishment are important to me'. On top of all that I'm 'naturally sophisticated... drawn to art, especially by independent artists... [am] likely to be financially well off and not because I was born that way.' That all sounds rather nice doesn't it? I seem to have so many positive attributes and all because in an elevator I'd rather listen to jazz than hip-hop, or because my current 'most played song' comes under the banner of folk. I'm not entirely sure I buy into this though. I like the sound of it - even if I'm not entirely sure that 'cerebral' is the most comforting of descriptions - but is that my personality or is this just a response to how I like to think my personality shows? These quizzes aren't there to make enemies, they want you to keep on clicking and demanding more of them... so they'd appeal to how people with my taste in music want to be perceived not how we actually are. This is likely the same for everyone. 

Anyway, I had a giggle and that's the end of the first thought. It sort of takes us into the second and then into my small, personal project for the next few days.

Music and books. So the title of this bit of blogging is 'Moon over Bourbon Street', it's a Sting reference. Did you know that he wrote it after being inspired by a book by Ann Rice? The book was 'Interview with a Vampire', a novelised short story. There are loads of songs like this - inspired by or based on books, stories, characters and such. So I thought I might do a thing where I match my top ten books (aka the books currently on my shelf) with songs that I'm listening to. Or maybe the other way round with songs and what books I think go with them. 

I don't really know. I don't know if I'll actually do anything with this at all. I think most of what I just wrote was utter wattle. In fact, I would say that if you read all of that, you probably need to find some better hobbies than reading this stuff. Then again, please do read, it seems rather pointless to waffle on like this unless someone bothers. Contradiction affliction. Whatever. I'm bored. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
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