anarkee

Very early on in our relationship, my future spouse asked me to move to California with him.   This presented only two issues at the time.  The first was my future mom-in-laws contention that we were going to be “living in sin”.  Actually, this didn’t bother us as much as it tested her Catholic sensibilities. (We always laughed about that turn of phrase btw, since it made doing those mundane household chores together sound much sexier and morally dangerous than they actually were.) 

The larger issue, however, was the large amount of records we were now forced to figure out how to get from Coast A to B.  Both of us were and still are massive music freaks.  When the coast migration was planned we had between us over 2,000 albums.  So after a bit of discussion, we decided to take the leap of faith that we would not be breaking up anytime in this lifetime, and go through the collections and eliminate any duplicates.  Then we would have the gang over and give away the extra albums to new homes.  

The result of this experiment?  We had exactly 155 duplicate albums.  While we shared a love of New York Punk, Devo,  David Bowie, classic Rock and Elvis Costello—the rest of the pile were all destined to be shipped to sunny California.   He loves Zappa and prog rock; I’m a huge English punk fan and have a healthy collection of Electronic and Goth.  He loves Springsteen and Dylan; I love Ska and Sonic Youth.  You get the picture.

Over the years, we have found more common ground musically.  I have learned to love Zappa and Captain Beefheart; he recently started to listen to Stiff Little Fingers.   But we still diverge enough that when concert season rolls around,  there is the on going dilemma of…

 
How far out of my life partners comfort zone am I willing to push them and suggest that we spend the mutual cash towards a concert experience that they could reminisce as having been the most horrendous two plus hours of their lives?

 
The rule we decided on was this.  If the person felt passionately about the artist, the other person had to see this said artist live at least once.  If after that experience, they felt that would rather spend time getting say, a root canal, then they could pass on any future concerts by said “artist”.

 
Over the years three logical categories have emerged:

The “Oh dammit, I’m sorry  honey, I have a date with the Dentist!”

 
These are few and far between, but they do exist.  I refuse to go see Bruce Springsteen again.  If you love “the Boss”, then the extended versions and the multiple encores are nirvana.  For me, it was four hours of hell. I have a similar loathing of Neil Young, whose bass players even bore me to tears.  I refuse to see Robert Fripp again on principle.  We saw Fripp in the early 90’s when he decided that he would face away from the audience for the entire concert.  I found it to be pretentious and swore that I would henceforth save the 40 USD and just listen to the records at home.  For the spouse, he will forever pass on any reggae or Ska concert, unless it’s the Selector, and even that’s a bit of a reach.  Ditto for any reunion of Love and Rockets.  He hated that concert so much I almost had to see Springsteen again to make up for miserable time he had.  He says he suspects that going to see Earth the next time they play locally may add to his “once in a lifetime” list.

The “They’re OK, but I can enjoy myself enough to accompany you again”

For me, Tom Petty falls into this category along with Hot Tuna.  I like Hot Tuna’s recorded output, but their concerts get a bit jammy at times.  The same holds for the Black Crowes.  For the better half, Tower of Power is fun merely for the fact he gets to get his yearly fill of “bad white people dancing”.  And he’s promised to go with me to the next Les Claypool / Primus New Year’s thing, because in his words “Les’ playing makes up for his voice” (though I strongly suspect Les/Primus is making it slowly into the next category, see below). This year he  also decided yes, he could stand another round of Robyn Hitchcock as well.

I have learned to love Adrian Belew and Billy Cobham to a point that I will buy the tickets even before the spouse notices they’re playing locally.   I felt the same way about the late Warren Zevon, who we saw twice in a smallish club in Santa Cruz. I will go see Dweezil Zappa again in a heartbeat, even though I must admit it felt a bit odd being one of about 12 females in the audience. For his part, the spouse will gladly accompany his lovely bride to see Stanley Clarke, Stuart Hamm or the Violent Femmes.  I also suspect that it’s a matter of time before he starts screaming “Primus Sucks!” with the rest of the gang, but it’s still a bit too soon to tell. 

Guide to maritial happiness?  Know the limitations of your spouse’s musical tastes, but be willing to at least give a band and your spouse, the benefit of the doubt.  Well, at least for one concert.