Confessions of a Music Snob
I am a music snob. And not even a good music snob. It's embarrassing.
There are the kind of music snobs who, in their skulls alone, have encyclopedias full of album release dates and band breakup years, jukeboxes of song lyrics and specific guitar chords, zines full of bands you've never heard of. These are the people that LCD Soundsystem writes songs about. They pop up as the hero in Nick Hornby novels, and they are the sole reason record collectors went to see High Fidelity, laughed at John Cusack's sad attempts to prove his indie knowledge, and then wrestled over one another to point out that, yes, that was indeed Bill Callahan playing the piano. They're the kind of people all of us hate. Hell, they're the kind of people who hate themselves. Yet we can't deny that after we're done having conversations with them, we take notes.
I am not one of those kind of snobs.
In fact, I can't even qualify as that kind of snob if I wanted to. I realized this when I was looking through the "What Would an Insufferable Music Snob Definitely NOT Have In Their Collection" thread on the I Love Music site the other day. The Singles soundtrack? Green Day's Nimrod? Anything by Blur? I have and love it all. And I don't love any of it ironically. (Is it even possible to really love something ironically?)
Nope, I'm not even good enough to be a true music snob. I can only qualify as sub-snob: the kind of music dork who actually likes some pretty embarrassing albums and yet is afraid to admit it in public.
The other day I was looking through albums at Cheapo with a friend. He found a used copy of Tori Amos's Under the Pink, an album that I was fanatical about when I was a junior in high school. "Weren't you looking for this?" he asked. And all I could do was kind of stare at him uncomfortably. How could I possibly go up to the counter and purchase this album--an album that's beloved only by the kind of girls who believe in fairies and have posters of unicorns on their bedroom walls? An album that I had sold years and years ago because I always had to hide it when friends came over? I couldn't possibly bring such contraband up to the counter unless I brought along enough other albums to cover it up. Okay, here's 25 SUAVES, BLACK KEYS, TRACY AND THE PLASTICS, AND (cough, cough) toriamos.
I felt like I was sixteen years old again, buying condoms.
Is it ever admissible to be embarrassed about something you like? Write me at mmaerz@citypages.com and tell me what songs--if any--should shame any music dork into silence. I'll post as many as I can on this blog.
11:10:29 AM 
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