Fun With Cliches

I'm writing this from a cafe in Williamsburg, one of Brooklyn's meccas of hipsterdom. I just finished a meeting and have a little time to kill before my next one...EVERYONE in this cafe has a Mac. Literally. Twelve computers, all Macs, including mine. Steve Jobs would kvell.

One of the things I love about iTunes is that if I can see what music people have on their computer if we're sharing the same network. An iTunes network named "Professor Esser" just showed up. So I'm checking it out as I write, and I'll be damned if it isn't the most "Willamsburg" collection of stuff I've ever seen in my life. I mean, it's right out of central casting:

Pavement: check (whole catalog)
Devendra Banhart: check (3 albums)
Animal Collective: check (3 albums)
The National: check (3 albums)
Modest Mouse: check (3 albums)
Architecture In Helsinki: check
Deerhoof: check (3 albums)

Then there's the "Pop I love ironically" section:

Ace of Base: check ("The Sign")
Barry Manilow: check ("Copacabana")
Backstreet Boys: check ("I Want It That Way")
Belinda Carlisle: check ("Heaven Is A Place On Earth")

And of course, there's the classic rock section:

David Bowie: check (9 albums)
Lou Reed: check (3 albums)
Iggy & The Stooges (5 albums - 3 Stooges, 2 Iggy)
Beach Boys Pet Sounds: check
1st two Elvis Costello albums: check

And finally, what would a music collection be without a little comedy?

David Cross: check (3 albums)

No Stones, Springsteen, Aretha, Otis or James.

I'm not really making fun. Ok, maybe I am, a little. It's not that the above artists aren't worthwhile. It's that it's a cliche of the music taste of a hipster come to life. I guess the thing about cliches is that they're sometime true.