I have dated the lead guitar player in a thrash metal band. The cute skateboarder from science class. The DJ who spins and scratches in dark, throbbing clubs. With each of these boyfriends, with each of these dates, music is our common ground — we lay out our cards on the table — “What is your favorite album? Top three? Four?” “Acid Bath changed my life.” “I’ll never forget when I first saw Dio live.” These small intimations — and they are intimations, the most soul-baring sort — are the way we connect. For every band we both like, we fall more in love. For every new band we pass each other’s way, we are more besotten, more charmed.
And yet. Has anyone else felt that it’s always about the boy giving his songs to the girl? Every boyfriend I have ever had has imparted his music onto me. And, being the ravenous consumer I am, I have cherished these bands, collected them, made them (in some way) my own. CKY, Acid Bath, Misfits, The Dwarves, Fair To Midland, Faith No More; these bands were passed onto me from men in my life. They are now integral; I can’t imagine not having them around. Even more cherished are the memories they bring to mind — I cannot listen, for example, to “Horse Pills” by the Dandy Warhols and not think of wine drunk from a grimy water bottle, sitting in a dark car outside some party with someone I was infatuated with years ago.
And yet. I never seem to impart my songs on a man. For there are bands, believe it or not, that I come across on my own. Organically, even. On the radio, sure, or blogs, or by buying a random CD from Best Buy and changing the way I see the world for $9.99 plus tax. Take, for example, the band I hold closest to my heart: Polkadot Cadaver. This is a band that I find particularly brilliant; they have a frenetic Mr. Bungle-esque quality to them that is irresistible. That, coupled with the fact that I discovered them all on my own, makes them my all-time favorite band. (Strong words, those).
However, when I play this band for men in my life, I get muted reactions. No one seems particularly interested in them, and while I don’t really give a shit what people think of my musical tastes, this leads me to think that I must really have bad taste, or, more likely, these guys just don’t care about what I like. They already have their beloved bands, their Neurosis and Megadeth and obscure strictly-underground punk bands.
I’d like to think that maybe I’m completely wrong. That if you lined up my past loves and lovers and questioned them on their musical tastes and memories they associate with songs and songs they associate with memories, they would list bands that I introduced them to, bands that remind them of me, songs and lyrics that bring to mind rainy days spent in bed with me or wild shows that we went to together. Perhaps this isn’t sexism, but merely my inability to know what other people absorb, what other people remember.
Case in point — an ex-boyfriend texted me the other day asking what “that morbid pirate rock band was that you were always listening to?” and then, after I neglected to answer, he replied, “Polkadot Cadaver?”
He was right, and I am glad to be wrong, just this once.
