Even Vegans Eat Crow

I have an admission to make: I am a jerk. More specifically, I'm a jerk because of my musical elitism when it came to a certain band. See, not so very long ago, I used to make fun of my friend Brant for his rather emo choices in music. Sure, I'd heard some of the bands that he liked and was not too happy about them. Teasing him usually involved amalgamating the names of all of the bands he listened to in one, with my favorite being, "Oh, is this Godspeed You Black Cloud Cult Mogwai Emperor?" or some such variation. It always pissed him off, and he would retort with some scandalous comment about how much ska music sucks, an utter blasphemy for which he shall certainly burn in the pits of hell and have to listen to the Voodoo Glow Skulls for eternity.

Anyway, over the summer there was a certain song that played on our beloved college radio station, KURE . It was so melodic and sweet, and had a little storyline contained within. The guitar and vocals were just wonderful. It played on their automated system a lot, and I tried to email them to figure out what it was, but with no luck. Then, a friend of mine played it on her actual live KURE show, and I called to find out the name of the band. Can you guess who it was? It was Cloud Cult, with their song "Transistor Radio". I was stunned, and I called Brant to grovel immediately after learning this. I considered this enough at the time, but things have become more complicated. See, I have listened to one of their CDs at least 10 times in the last 3 days, and another about 4. It's all I've listened to this week, really, over and over and over again because it is some of the best music I've listened to in a very, very long time.

I hereby make this public admission of my stupidity in not giving Brant's music a chance. Otherwise, he's got swell taste in almost everything, so why I would fail to realize his excellent musical tastes is beyond me. Maybe I just needed to make fun of him for something, and this happened to be it. In any case, Brant, you are my musical god. Not a god, The God.

Whenever we have prejudice, whether it be for music or for people, it can come back and bite us in the ass. I think by nature, in the sense that prejudice is an a priori judgement, it will always end up being wrong. Give everything a chance, else you find yourself publicly apologizing for being an elitist prick. And listen to Cloud Cult, 'cuz it will change your life, I swear.