So I’m pretty used to the idea that I, and the music-crazed types on the various music-related lists I’m on, are way more passionate about music than most people my age—hell, most people, period—are. And by “most people,” I mean not only those folks for whom music is, at best, a pleasant background at work or in public places, but also people who still buy a few CDs now and then and listen to their old records fairly regularly. The people who make up the majority of my world are in a whole different universe of music fandom.
I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing; it just is. Sometimes I wonder vaguely about whether my continued involvement in the music world, as a fan and as a Twangfest organizer, is a symptom or maybe even a cause of my not being a real grownup, but mostly I just accept it: this is how I am, and it’s how the people on the e-mail lists are. We’re not music fans, we’re music weirdos.
This morning, I experienced a classic example of my music weirdo status. I’ve been listening to the iPod on the way to and from work all week, because NPR is pledge-driving (my commute isn’t really long enough for me to fuss with hooking up the iPod, so ordinarily, I just listen to NPR, but I can’t hack the pledge drives), and when I got to the parking lot at work, the live version of “Maggie May” from the indescribably great Faces boxed set, “Five Guys Walk Into a Bar,” was just starting up. It was just past 8:30, which is when I’m due at work (though it’s never a big deal if I’m a little late), and I should have just turned the car off and walked the block to the office, and of course, I’ve heard “Maggie May” more times in my life than I could possibly begin to count. But this was the live version, which had never come up on the iPod before, and I had to hear it, all five+ minutes of it, because it sounded so perfect and I couldn’t miss it. So I sat there in the car and waited for the song to finish. I couldn’t do otherwise.
And as I turned off the iPod and got out of the car, I thought, yup. Music weirdo.