Are You Still Judging Your Friends' Music Tastes?

Sometimes I like to piss off my friends by telling them I won't date anyone who doesn't like Pavement. I don't even think my last boyfriend liked Pavement, and this one time I took him to see Paul Westerberg he scanned the crowd of pasty young teachers and health care administrators drinking like people who have sitters on the clock back in Jersey and asked, "What does it say about you if you like this band?" That you're a regular?, I think I said, because he was singing "Here Comes A Regular," though the irony is that "regular" or "reg" became our semi-ironic shorthand for people (marketers and lawyers, mostly) who wouldn't have any clue what I am talking about because their idea of music is Maroon 5.

The point is, there is this thing we'll call Late Onset Rocksnobbery, the shingles to the chicken pox of an "alternative" youth, and I was reminded of it when a friend made a MuxTape, only to be greeted with a dis regarding his inclusion of Mazzy Star, to which he took grave offense.

The whole affair made me grateful to be a girl, because basically, although I still refuse to date "regs"; the only time in the past year I have ever seriously judged a friend's music taste was when Jessica told me she just figured everyone liked Nickelback, which obviously makes no sense.

Once I went out drinking with an old friend from high school and her "cohort" of business school classmates during Wharton first year orientation. "Let's go around the table, what's your favorite band?" asked one guy. Stones, Stones, Zeppelin Pearl Jam, Earth, Wind and Fire (?)… anyway it came to my friend. In school she'd liked the Cure and P.J. Harvey. I think I'd have to say Dave Matthews, she said. BUT WHY???????? I screamed from within. Because she makes money and I do not and really my memories of shows and car rides and that feeling when you are standing next to a jukebox with someone and there are maybe three minutes before you get to start making out are really ALL I HAVE.

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