Maybe the Biggest Music Geek I Know

This morning I listened to the Pete Townshend album White City. One of the tunes popped into my head, and I started thinking about how I own the LP of that record, and have the tape around my place somewhere, but that I didn't have it on CD and that's just a shame, so I downloaded it and popped it onto my ipod for the commute in.



Listening to it on the bus, I began to think about the parallels between it and U2's The Joshua Tree.

Before long, I had outlined a whole presentation in my head on the subject - basically a compare-and-contrast lecture/article that I could deliver, including musical and lyrical elements, the projects' places in the context of rock music and popular culture, and the balance that the two albums struck in terms of exploration of the American Landscape and British Urban life. Then I started thinking about this presentation being a part of a course on the subject of rock and pop music seen through the prism of theater.

This was all brought on by a nice close listen to an underappreciated masterpiece of a rock record that I hadn't heard for a while.

It was a pretty good trip to work.

Then work happened for a while (as it will). And we were having lunch and one of the directors mentioned how her mother played dulcimer and is featured on a number of CDs. I asked "Plucked or hammered?" She said that her mom plays a mountain dulcimer, the plucked kind, and one of my other colleagues turned and looked at me with a look of mild astonishment and bemusement. "How do you even know to ask that?"

And I mumbled something about being into an eclectic variety of music, but I probably should have said something like - it's because I may be the biggest music geek I know.

I think we file this one under "winning and losing at the same time"