Soothing the savage beast

Having spent six years working at a video store, it's safe to say that movies are my thing.  I paid a lot of attention to actors, directors and genres, almost to the exclusion of everything else in life.

As a result, I think anyway, I have emerged a music philistine.  And worse than that, I'm also a musical sheep.  Any tastes for contemporary music that I possess are a direct result of the company I keep (a tuneful osmosis of sorts), and actually has very little to do with musical self-discoveries I've made - notwithstanding a few lucky turns of the radio dial that introduced me to KT Tunstall and James Blunt, who have both been to Chicago in the last month or so.

Overall I don't think my ignorance has been a bad thing because it has given me rather far-flung musical preferences without a particular love for any one band or even genre.  I enjoy blues, jazz, rock, ballads, reggae, those weepy songs-to-slash-your-wrists-by, and even some classical stuff here and there.  

The Windy City is joining the rest of the US in a frenetic gearing up for summer music festivals (akin to Australia's Big Day Out), and I have no idea who many of the 'headliners' are.  But then again, I'd hardly heard of any of the Big Day Out bands back home either.  Even bands once considered as 'indie' (a concept that has always confused me) are now considered mainstream, and I still don't know who they are.  I need to remember to crawl out from under my rock every now and again.

But amidst all of this ignorance that I display on a daily basis, I have to bless Lexie for doggedly trying to educate me into the live music scene.  She's got me buying tickets to gigs showcasing the talents of people I wouldn't recognise if they walked up Michigan Avenue and smacked me in the face.  And the reason I'm going along is the same reason that my mother goes to see movies that my Dad enjoys - so I'm not left out.  

Where my mother first wakes up and then rolls her eyes as the lights go up on ANOTHER of Dad's action flicks, I have actually been quite impressed by the music I've been adopting so far.  I've bought CDs that I never thought I'd own, but at the same time I cannot name a single song on the current US top ten.  Perhaps I'm always destined to be a beat behind.

I'm not quite at the stage of dishing out $100US to see an open-air concert with port-a-loos and sweaty moshpits (and sweatier armpits), but I'm a blossoming musical parasite.  It just takes me a little while to get with the program.  But when I do, I like to think that I'm one of the most enthusiastic groupies you'll find.

And by the way, if anyone needs to know any useless movie trivia or needs a rundown of Oscar winners of the past few years, I'm your gal.  Learning all this new music stuff has not pushed the movie stuff out of my brain just yet.