What about this? Have you ever noticed that music is the only art form (or forms) that nearly everyone has some dearly held opinion about? When was the last time you even heard of people expressing loyalty to one painter or another ("I can't BELIEVE you like Picasso!") or serious novelists for that matter ("Steinbeck rules, man") or poets ("Sure I'll camp out for weeks in front of the bookstore so I can get the first copy of that new Robert Frost retrospective, man! I hear it's a bitch!"). Big manufactured hit music (what better example lately than the Spice Girls) is made to be fashionable for a short time, and that's it. Make room for the next face on MTV. We're not really talking about music here. It's about fashion, it's about popularity, it's about increasing one's sexual success potential. LATER, if you're still loving and learning about something the way most of us are doing with whatever we consider to be traditional music, and if you're still doing it when you're no longer on the prowl for a date, only then are we even talking about an interest in music.

And, if it's just a matter of taste, why not have a mechanic whose taste runs to poor repair work fix your car next time? It's his/her prerogative, right? No better or worse than any other mechanic, right?

Chet