the return of "Venom"

Here's a challenge:

1) Take a book or film or something you really like a lot.

2) Write about it in a way that is both completely accurate and yet makes it sound completely ridiculous.

3) Do it in such a way as to make other people who really like it (such as me) laugh hysterically.

This guy did it. Subject: The Prisoner, the original Patrick McGoohan tv series.

some music I don't like

In an earlier post I wrote about developing the proper "ears" to hear particular kinds of music. The expectations you find rewarding when applied to one type of music may fail on another kind. My experience is that native appreciation of particular music can lead to appreciation of related kinds. I didn't have to train myself to like my initial explorations in classical - it appealed to me instantly - but the more I explored, the easier it was to appreciate more difficult works that did not immediately appeal. Some of my favorite works now are ones I found rather offputting on first encounter.

In other areas, though, I find it tougher. I had to train myself to enjoy rock music at all, and that came through association via the back door of electric folk, but it stops abruptly after only about 10% or 20% even of what's considered the good stuff. I have some idea of where that line lies (that is, what kind of thing I like and what I don't), but it's even worse for jazz. I like only a very little, it hasn't helped me like any more, and I have no idea what characteristics make the difference between enjoyment and indifference.

Terry Teachout has just published a book about Louis Armstrong, whose work he clearly loves, and after much agonizing he's selected his five favorite Armstrong recordings. I listened to these, and I've heard much music like this before - if you hang around in dusty used-book stores as I do, you'll hear a lot of old jazz on the stores' sound systems - and I just don't get it. For the most part it doesn't repulse me, but its attractive value is nil. If Teachout is pulled by a strong magnetic field, I'm a piece of wood in that field. There's one tiny moment - the timing of the percussion clap at 2:27 in "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues" - that gave me a kick on first hearing, but that's about it. "Summer Song" might be a modestly attractive melody with an appropriate accompaniment, but that voice - ugh! Omit offensive metaphors here.

When I need to review, or otherwise wish to get familiar with, a classical work I don't know, I don't study it first as I think many people in my position would. Instead, I like to play a recording over three or four times without listening to it carefully, while I'm reading or driving. That way it seeps into my brain. Only then do I listen to it carefully, preferably with a score in hand. By that time, after the casual listenings, I'll either have gotten a handle on the work's qualities, or else can confidently conclude it has none, at least for me.

I've done the same thing for other music, especially rock. The first time I heard the Renaissance album Turn of the Cards, I thought "I don't like this much - yet. But I can tell that after a few hearings I'm going to love it." And I did. So I've given a fair try to respected musicians who didn't elicit such a hopeful reaction, but the results have not always been as good. Two conspicuous failures:

1. The Rolling Stones. I bought an album of their greatest hits, and listened to it several times. The appeal continues to elude me. It's like someone decided to come up with something that was sort of like the Beatles, but carefully omitted everything that makes the Beatles good.

2. Rod Stewart. A friend once sent me a 90-minute tape of his favorite Rod Stewart songs. It was agony listening to that thing through four times, which I did on a long commute, but I did it. And afterwards I could say, with full confidence and without fear of contradiction, "I Do Not Like Rod Stewart. Not in a car, not on the road, not in a bar, not with a toad ..."