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music: THE PENULTIMATE judge

Remembering that education is what separates us from the rest of nature's creatures, I like to keep current with news and trends reported by the best. A cup of designer Chi' never far from my grasp, I rarely stray far from periodicals like People or programs like The View. That and Married With Children re-runs (for tips on the benefits of home schooling) are must see TV anywhere I can find an outlet. Hard work, perhaps, but it pays off. Here's what my inquiring mind learned this week alone:

Those guys doling out Oscars at LA's Ambassador Hotel in back in 1929 were infomercial founding fathers; the Hamilton, Jefferson, and Franklin of pop recognition. A quick look at any local magazine stand today confirms the award and superlative cult they spawned. I looked into it.

One week in January featured both The American Music Awards and a People magazine cover heralding "Rock's New Pop Divas." You had your Celine Dion, your Jewel, your Whitney Houston, your Mariah Carey. Squeezing onto the cover's NEW crowd was Madonna, doing her best Elvira impression. Let's see. A 40-year-old mother who broke on the big scene in 1983 and has changed her hair color 473 times since. I guess she's NEW. A heck of a lot of the American Music awardees coincided with names featured in the People report. I'm not one for conspiracies, (except for the curious truth that John Wilkes Booth and Elvis were never seen together, and that Booth would have made his getaway in a pink Cadillac, if it had been invented yet) but I sniff a rat. Might newer, more exciting, music artists exist? Ones we've not met?

We know that Hollywood editors and award givers have their own definition of NEW and EXCITING -- anything that explodes. But what else? In a precious moment between his latte break and sea kelp colonic, I posed this question to a big shot Hollywood entertainment type. "Well," he mused perusing Bill Clinton's sophistry play-book while stroking his carefully cultivated TDGG, (three-day-growth-goatee) "that depends on how new, NEW is?"

Together, we conspired to edit a new Webster's - Hollywood edition ...

New: adj. - any face that has sold millions and promises to sell millions more before plastic surgery threatens to morph the artist into a Michael Jackson look-alike.

Syn: Most Fascinating and/ or Sexiest Man/ Woman Alive awardee.

More telling, though, than the awards or the superlatives are the people who buy or reject them. New or old, music taste is the second fastest way I know to learn all I need to know about a stranger. The Musical-World-Order-According-To-Me is a simple one of likes, dislikes, and hatreds; of heaven, hell, purgatory, and any other ring of Dante's inferno I can find in my high school Cliff Notes.

So as a personal paean to the avaricious side of our popular culture, I've cobbled together my own awards and lack-there-of list, for the sole purpose of judging people and coldly appraising the content of their characters. Hollywood has its standards. I have mine.

· Woodstock '99: The Soundtrack - When did you first discover pyromania as your sexual preference?

· You like Beck - I honor you.

· You like Lenny Kravitz - I forgive you (I like him too, shhhh).

· You like Courtney Love - I understand you, but you must now be arrested for devil worship.

· You like Eddie Vedder - Good for you, standing up to all those revisionist bastard naysayers.

· You like Oasis - Me too. But Noel and Liam ... idiots or what

· You like Ani DiFranco - I'm more interested in her than in her music.

· Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls are your game - It's my legal duty to inform you that you are 13.

· Buddy Holly's death marked the day music died. Jim Morrison's death marked the day music died. John Lennon's death marked the day music died - Hey buddy. They died. The music lives. Elvis? He doesn't count, since he's still alive (living in my attic, with my mom).

· Except for a few artists like Dylan, Young, Hendrix, you say 60s music is overblown, - I hear ya'.

· You think music has gone to the dogs ever since - Get away from me.

· K-Tel is the soundtrack of your life - Get 911.

· Ray Charles, BB King, Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters, Billie Holiday are all greats in your book - Given international legislation, more frequently enforced than Law of the Seas, bans any dislike of these artists, it yields few true truths about you. Talk to me about Howlin' Wolf.

· Gwen Stefani rocks - OK.

· Tom Petty is cool - We're getting somewhere.

· Dick Dale deserves more credit - Talk to me.

· Sinatra ruled - Whatever.

· You like Celine Dion - You're sentenced to life wrapped in dacron-polyester.

· You like Juliana Hatfield - We're dating, regardless of your gender.

· You like Alanis and Sheryl Crow - Really, or do you just listen to radio a lot?

· You like Jewel - Her once pixyish charm has grown tiresome.

· You like Michael Bolton - You must die.

· You like Yanni - You must suffer the wretched death of yodeling by Jewel.

· You like Hootie and The Blowfish - Get out.

· You forgot the Charlatans - Get out, really.

· Forgot the Pixies - What kind of idiot are you?

· You remember School of Fish - Let's dance.

· You like Reggae - So do my friends but secretly I find it monotonous.

· You like rap ...

· You like rap - I believe woman have a right to live.

· You like Prince - I can not help you with this.

· You like the Tragically Hip - Then you must be. But that's good.

· You say the NBA will never be the same without Michael Jordan - How did that get in there?

· "The-Voice-of-a-Generation" - Am I on Candid Camera?

· McGwire is good for baseball - Stop.

· You think the 70s were a cartoonish blight on western civilization with a few exceptions like the Pretenders, B-52s, Sex Pistols, Dire Straits. OK, throw in Elvis Costello and some stuff like Lead Zeppelin from the early years - We can do business.

· You always liked Kurt - We're trite, but we're in love.

· Smashing Pumpkins is a great band - True.

· Post-war Western politics and culture can be traced through Rock's meandering 50-year path - You frighten me, but I want to touch you.

· You hoard Wayne Newton records - A colostomy for you.

· You support the Abba revival - A lobotomy for you, if not already suffered too many.

· You agree that Ace of Base and The Cardigans must be stopped - Put it there pal.

· You support legislation pending in the U.N. Security Council barring Sweden from all and any further rock music - You rank with Moses.

· You say you really like the Stones - Bold.

· You like Sarah McLachhlan and Lilith Fair - Me too, even though I'm not gay (I'd like it a lot more if the audience would occasionally stand, spit and mosh like real rockers, or at least pelt performers with running shoes and water bottles)

· You have a strange affection for vinyl records - I don't get it. But I can be taught.

· Never heard of The Pure - They were brief but great. Trust me.

· My music tastes are plebeian and I don't know what the hell I'm talking about - You must leave now. Now. I'm having a migraine.

Yours truly,
Xandor

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