If you like my music, we can be friends?
 

It's true enough. Don't we tend to think more of a person if they like the same music we like? If they reaffirm our own decisions? I think it matters if you like the Simpsons. If you don't ....I probably don't like you very much. If I think your music suck, you might get offended. But you didn't write the songs......

Nobody likes the music I like

And I have no friends except for that Tom guy.

Rings true for me.

Tony, I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, but Tom works for MySpace. he greets everyone....automatically.

we kind of like you around here though. lil bit

Depends...if I share enough musical interests, we're cool. I like a lot of different shit, so I can't possibly expect someone to like all that I like.

Yeah, just think of him as Rupert Murdoch's little Myspace imp.

well, don't you look twice when someone tells you that depeche mode is their current fave?

Sure...they automatically become my second best friend for at least 10 minutes. Then they probably gush about Erasure and I beat them to death.

That's it! That Tom fucker is gone! Lousy liar and creep! And I got me a new friend!

Don't worry, Undertoad. I've a secret crush on you.

*blush*

But anyway back to the original question, I think we as a society are in trouble, because we are increasingly judging people by smaller and smaller criteria until we can only associate with people just like us.

I work with people from different cultures every day, and they are fine warm people with excellent senses of humor. Nigerian, Indian, Japanese. The different cultures amaze me. What also amazes me is what we don't have in common. And how important it is, or isn't.

As people talk with my co-worker Sudatta, they say things that I realize she doesn't quite "get". Someone said "I hate that elevator music" and I saw the comment go without acknowledgment. And I thought about it: the term "elevator music" is going out of use, since they actually rarely play music in elevators nowadays.

So not only has Sudatta not heard the term, but she has never experienced music in an elevator. But it's worse than that. When you stop to think about it, the entire idea, that there would be a form of music strictly for elevators, is totally bizarre!

So I tried to explain it: ok, they used to broadcast simpler versions of popular songs on elevators... simpler versions... which some people preferred, but which more, uh, cultured people, disliked, because they were simpler versions... and then this became a form of ridicule...

Wow. To us, the term "elevator music" conveys so much, culturally, that it's brutally difficult to convey it in mere words. Where we struggle to say "what is reggae", "what is elevator music" is even worse, because there are deep cultural notions involved.

But what if you're in the culture? Even then, each decade likes different things and sees art and entertainment from their point of view. A 20-something will see Springsteen as this over-the-hill folksy political guy, while a 40-something will seem him as the savior of an original form of rock, a hero to their sensibilities.

Does that mean that I, an American, can't be friends with the Nigerian / Indian / Japanese / etc or with 20-somethings or 60-somethings or 80-somethings. No, I find for me it doesn't prevent being friends, because the things that I rank in importance aren't so cultural, I don't need too much validation, and I don't have a very big pool.

Music is a big part of many people's lives and especially if someone listens to non-mainstream music, they like the idea of someone sharing the same tastes as them.

The type of music someone listens to can sometimes tell a lot about a person so if you share the same taste in music, there is a good chance you will share other, more important traits that can lead to a strong bond between two people.

What about all the people that think music is what's making the windows rattle when the ghetto cruisers go down the street?.

fuck them. that shit will rot your brains

No, I mean people that don't listen to music, at least intensionally, and think music is what's rattling their windows.... or telling them what's coming on the tube.

Music friends can be just that. Music friends..... Like the friends I had that I only saw at live shows. Kind of a shallow association.

But sometimes it's just a great beginning to a beautiful frienship.