I feel stupid and contagious

So a YouTube link to a Sesame Street video put a song into my head which won't get out again. Not the Sesame Street song, though: I glanced at the title and I thought that it was a riff on ``Smell Like Teen Spirit'', which made me think, huh, Sesame Street finally got around to making their own amusing riff on that? Granted they could have made one anytime in the past twenty years and I wouldn't have known since I don't have kids and don't need to watch Sesame Street, but, still. They hadn't, for the record, or at least I haven't seen it.

I can think of several friends who would slap me over the Internet for this, if they weren't more inclined to simply sigh and admit that while disappointed they kind of expected this of me, but I must confess: I didn't really notice ``Smells Like Teen Spirit'' or much of Nirvana when it came out. This was even though I was an undergraduate during the time that they were, apparently, shaking up music in the last great wave of shaking up music there will ever be until the next one. All I knew was there were a couple tunes which showed up on every single mix tape brought in to the student newspaper where I spent my undergraduate career, except for the one of Sesame Street songs.

It was nice, sure, catchy enough, I suppose I liked it although I don't think I'd say my emotional attachment was deep enough for that word. Nirvana showed up a little more frequently than They Might Be Giants, if you can imagine, and comfortably ahead of Billy Bragg and U2, but for the most part the enthusiastic ravings of those around me were this slightly alien enthusiasm that I didn't mind, except when they played the same tape for the fifth time that night already, but viewed about the same way I'd have viewed enthusiasm for the football team if anyone were enthusiastic about the football team. Still, with a bit of hindsight, I can start to understand just how I missed the most exciting moment in my generation's non-filesharing-based contribution to music.

But to explain it I'll have to delve deeper into my relationship with music and why I don't have one.

Trivia: ``Father of Vaudeville'', Master of Ceremonies, and popular singer Antonio ``Tony'' Pastor, who began performing at a music hall at 444 Broadway in New York City in 1861, claimed to have a repertoire of 1500 songs, including favorites ``The Irish Volunteers'', ``The Monitor and the Merrimac'', ``Down In A Coal Mine'', and ``The Great Atlantic Cable''. Source: No Applause - Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, Trav S D (D Travis Stewart) and don't tell me you're not wondering what kind of 1860s song was composed about The Great Atlantic Cable.

Currently Reading: The King's Best Highway: The Lost History Of The Boston Post Road, The Route That Made America, Eric Jaffe.