old, bored, hard of hearing

i was thinking the other day, "i haven't posted anything on xPQwRtz for a while".
so i headed towards my laptop, turned it on and found my attention taken up by completely different things.
you see, right now i can't be bothered and this is mainly due to, 1. being busy and, 2. what i've been listening to recently.

i'm still not listening to anything new - there's nothing new worth listening to is there?
but i've been getting bored of the same old sounds and so i spent a month or so digging through my record collection looking for stuff i'd not listened to for, literally, years.

and i came across these gems:









genesis' "nursery cryme" has become my favourite album of recent weeks, closely followed by rush and hall & oates.
a few of these records got ripped to MP3 and as a consequence were logged on my lastFM playlist.

and this is where the point of this post finally arrives.

someone took a look at my playlist one day and left a remark, "hall & oates! how did THAT happen??!!"
i replied, "because i like them. in the same way i like marillion and rush and...."
their response was, "well i have a fondness for marillion but i'd never TELL anyone about it."

and that immedieately struck me as ridiculous for reasons that i'll reveal shortly.

a few weeks ago i was driving up the M1 motorway with a friend of mine who happens to have been in a band that many of you regard as semi-legendary C86/post punk heroes.
his band of the 80's featured scratchy thousand mile an hour guitars, thumping bass and falling over drums.
i'd got my iPod on the car stereo and what should pop up but the 10+ minute wonder that is "the musical box" by genesis.
my friend sang along to EVERY note - vocals, guitars, keyboards, everything - halfway through he said, "do you have the version of this from the live album? that's my favourite."

so, why did the comment left on lastFM strike me as ridiculous?
well, look at my example above.
it's simple really.

it's SO MUCH COOLER to just be honest about EVERYTHING that you like rather than try and hide the things you think might not fit the "image" other people have of you.
why only let your stupid lastFM log jingley jangley sub-byrdsian guitars when on a friday night before going out you like nothing more than a short sharp hit of slayer?

get it?
good.