Let's ring in the new year with some embarrassments, shall we? Some people enumerate "guilty pleasures" but I prefer to steer clear of the term, figuring if the guilt is in any way genuine, the pleasure is probably not. My embarrassment, on the other hand, is personally manageable and legitimate content for public amusement. So the next few posts will trot out a few items I am embarrassed to admit I enjoy.
Item number one is an album I downloaded earlier this year. eMusic took note of my penchant for Bill Evans and dispatched an automatic e-mail suggesting I "might also enjoy" Jimmy McGriff. Beats me how McGriff's funky organ-grinding can be considered in the same virtual breath as Evans' ethereal piano harmonics, but eMusic's search engine located a winner: McGriff has been a pleasure to play on my little mp3 player as well as on the larger home stereo.
Do I hear you asking where, in all this, is the embarrassment factor? Well ... McGriff received my aural attention because he arrested my visual attention first and foremost. Yes, I'm no different from anyone else: I can be appealed to by the most direct marketing ploy in the history of man(sic)-kind. Here is the album cover that caught and held my eye. Groove Grease makes for pleasant listening, but in this house where the women outnumber the men, the title combined with the album cover is prurient enough to actually cause me (*cough*) a little embarrassment.
Were I discovered to have such a cover in possession by any of the women in my family — that's a mom, a little sister (21 & waiting, the world is strictly black & white), or either of two sister-in-laws bringing up my little nephews — hooo!, there'd be a lot more than embarrassment to pay. But McGriff (if I were in a position to buy), judging by radio exposure on the couple of stations that play that kind of thing around here, might be worth risk of a little hell. Would I feel sufficient guilt about that cover on my own account to get rid of it? Well, ... yeah, prob'ly.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year to you & family, Darrell. Thanks for another year of very fine blogging. : )
Back atcha, PB. McGriff's music doesn't seem to be having any difficulty proving itself in the longevity department, does it? How many other 36 ... wups! ... 37-year-old jazz albums are being sampled by the kids on the scene today? It's tempting to consider the album cover superfluous, but I have to wonder if McGriff's music would be as well known if he'd gone with a more innocuous image: a little country church, say.
ReplyDeleteEmbarrassing pleasures....
ReplyDeleteTrashy novels by
I hide 'em under the bed...
oops, left out "Rosemary Rogers", but the link works....
ReplyDeleteToo kewl! And I can't help but notice how Ms. Rogers' publishers delight in heralding The New York Times at every opportunity: "NYT Bestselling Author" "'The Queen of Historical Romance'" - NYTBR. I'm thinking, of course, of Michael Blowhard's impatience with the NYTBR's snootiness. The bestseller status is a begrudging public service, and the coronation was probably followed with something snarky, but good on her publishers for turning lemons into lemonade.
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