I’ve got to admit, as a university student living in downtown Toronto, I often feel pretty alone. I’m not single-I have a great boyfriend. I’m not friendless, either-I have some fantastic pals. What I don’t have is ‘edge.’ My name is Amy, and I am a mainstream radio listener.
It is a curiosity how a girl so surrounded by (what I hear is) a great indie music scene could appreciate it so little. Small clubs and independent venues abound in this city, but my laziness kicks away the poor, tiny music lover in me every time. It says, why search through the inevitable junk to find new and undiscovered talent? Next week will only make my find obsolete with the arrival of a newer, hipper band on the scene. The radio and popular culture make mainstream music easy to find in a life already overextended enough.
To their credit, both of my dear roommates have tried to inject new music into my life. One even jokingly competes with her very trendy sister over ‘scene points,’ attempting to find emerging talent or a new venue first. They both work at Metalworks, a local recording studio, which only fuels their love for all things musical-a passion they already had in the first place. I suppose being constantly immersed in budding talent could be fun, and the celebrity sightings would be great, but I just can’t lie to all you dear readers and suggest that I am able to sit down and listen to a record from some band I’ve never heard of without a lot of multitasking.
Music is wonderful-I enjoy it thoroughly-but to me it’s great because it’s a secondary addition to another experience. The radio keeps me away from the horn when I fight traffic in the city. Mozart and friends help work me into a speed-writing frenzy in the wee hours of the morning before an essay is due. Gwen and Kelly (yes, Clarkson-all you indie kids not entirely sold on the hipster cred of “Since U Been Gone” can commence cringing now) are in my corner after that essay has been smacked down on the desk and it’s time to prep for a night on the town. But even that night on the town will likely feature popular, one-hit-wonder-style sing-along music, and I like it that way.
Concerts and I just don’t get along. I rarely attend, because I tend to like single tracks far more than one band’s entire collection of musical compositions. However, for my roommate’s birthday a few months back, I agreed to tag along to a Sublime tribute concert, as she is a die-hard fan. I have never been so bored and out of place while surrounded by such a happy group in my life. The night dragged on in what seemed like a single endless song, while I leaned on a blessed handrail and waited for the single I could hum the chorus to.
Upon exiting the hall, I vowed never to seek out new talent in a tiny concert hall again. Give me the CD first, and even then, good luck getting me through more than about 30 seconds of each song before I skip on to the next.
I pondered the possibility that maybe I have too short an attention span-pop culture research tells us that music videos have left us with but a fraction of our former ability to sit still and focus. But I can sit down and have conversations that last hours. I can pop in a film with a completely open mind, and flop on the couch until it’s done. And if I can make it through some of my most lifeless lectures without passing out, then I must still have a decent ability to concentrate.
Perhaps at the end of the day I am just not wired to be on the cutting edge. The popular and generic is enough for me in a life where a song is just a soundtrack. Background music accents the more important things quite nicely, thanks.
