Trying To Get To You

Monday, October 01, 2007

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.

4 comments:

Go Nicole Yourself said...

Yea! I'm not a hipster!

I have almost nothing on that list. I do have some Bowie, Costello, Beach Boys (not Pet Sounds, though) and ironic pop music. I have lots and lots of Aretha, Otis, Springsteen, the Stones and Sir Brown.

It's okay to make fun of hipsters. They're pretty yucky in LA too.

Anonymous said...

I laughed out loud.

Anonymous said...

My guess is that you found the collection of a person who has never really cared that much about music but tries halfheartedly to keep up and look cool, mostly by accepting recommended albums from friends, who have never really cared that much about music but try halfheartedly to keep up and look cool, mostly by accepting recommended albums from friends, who . . .

Ben Lazar said...

That was funny.