Friday, July 13, 2007
Open Letter to the Young Woman who just sold me a Twelve Pack of Summit at Booze-Mart
Dear Young Lady,
I know that the industrious young employee's at Booze-Mart pride yourselves on efficiency, so I didn't interfere with the seamless transactions of alcohol for currency upon which your establishment has built it's obviously solid foundations. Yet somehow I find myself compelled to write this. Now that I have added it to the AM blog, I expect the world to take notice.
First off, let me say that you seem to me to be a nice young thing. I particularly appreciate the tight green T-shirt and the low riding jeans that displayed some curves about your hips and lower stomach that engaged my imagination in some truly novel ways. You're always polite with a smilet when I make some witty observation on the advertising strategies of various breweries and such. These traits, combined with the fact that you work in a liquor store must make you a fairly prized object of competition amongst the young men of your social group.
I'd like to confront you upon choice of music. Every time I pop in to grab a box of Summit Extra Pale Ale for 10.99 a twelve pack, you seem to have the shop radio tuned to pop country.
This is an affliction I hate to see such a delightful nymph languishing under.
More than once I have yearned in my soul to reach over and switch that radio from that painful, monoculture schlock to KFAI - 106.7 in St. Paul, 90.3 in Minneapolis - where I almost guarantee that the very first song you hear will be awesome. Perhaps it will be some dirty Mississippi Delta Blues or some energetic, new Hip Hop from East Africa that helps you and your deliciously exposed caramel mid-riff get your groove on . . .
But I digress. You see, pop country is not culture. It is crap that be mass produced, the most important aspect of pop country is the highly developed infrastructure that allows them to blast the same stale music into suburbs all over the country. I has only the stalest of connections to the forms of country music that were popular in previous generations, and none of the honesty or ideological variety that defined a genre of such artists as Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie. Pop country is intended to sound like every pop country song that came out before it (or worse like a twangified version of '80's hair metal) and with just about the entire distribution network owned by a few rich, old, white men who are proud of their slave own'n, Hispanic hate'n family histories. No artist who writes a song that offends them or their take on how America should be will ever get radio play again.
Try KFAI. A lot of what you will here on this station are local artists, or musician well respected by other musicians in their communities. Not a good looking guy who has managed to turn his vocal talents into something that makes him a millionaire (and lets those bastards who own those radio stations and record studios remain multi-millionaires) ; women and men with so much music in them it forces them to live in poverty just to keep making music.
There is a huge fucking difference. Once you start listening to KFAI, music can become so much more to you. Once you begin to take in all of the different styles and comprehend how they have changed and grown as new artists from the next generation fill the places of the old masters. History becomes more alive, and evolution in Ideas, life, art becomes spiritually compelling.
It's as simple as this. The more true culture you are exposed to, the more your potential as a human being develops. Plants need sunlight to grow, humans need legitimate social interaction. The more culture you absorb the more you will demand it. The more you demand it, the more starving artists will find audiences, rather than the great deals at Booze-Mart.
Attractive young women shape their communities by the choices they make. I wouldn't be the man I am if it were not for dozens of great, cultured women. Don't throw away your power.
Sincerely,
Mr. Summit & Sideburns
P.S.
I hope this don't make things awkward when I stop in tomorrow to buy another case of Summit.
Labels: Open Letters, pseudo-inspirational
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think of the pictures of nymphettes hidden in the ice cubes of drinks in glossy magazine ads or the phallic images discretely inserted into the beads of suggestive moisture sliding down the glasses of ice cold ale.
the booze hucksters have a multitude of tricks up their sleeves.
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the booze hucksters have a multitude of tricks up their sleeves.
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