When you work with a guy long enough, you can’t help but influence each others Musical Evolutions. Ken and I are very different in many musical ways. I’m told that he used to have a bazooka tube in a car that was too small for it. He liked to bump down the street beating the rust off his car from the inside out with rap music. Still he has landed some pretty cool music.
He brought some CD’s in at my request. I’m always looking to check new stuff out. I cringed when I saw the condition of the CD’s that obviously rode around in a CD wallet in his car as he drove to Kandahar and back in a dust storm. You know I like to keep my CD’s pristine on the shelf. Ken didn’t. Again, he had some really cool stuff that I was interested in checking out, just that most of them wouldn’t play anymore.
Like Grant and I, Ken and I share a pretty large overlapping segment of albums and musical styles. When he was in sales before I really knew him, he asked me to make him a mix CD for a business trip he was taking to a trade show. I think it was Las Vegas. I barely remember it but I guess I included a few things that interested him.
It has been several years since then and we have worked together in IT for over half a decade. In that time we have enjoyed music in our office. One of the really great things about what Ken brings to the Musical Evolution is that his interests are different enough that a lot of cool stuff that I wouldn’t want to sort through is managed by his Musical Evolution.
Bands like Muse, Daft Punk, Modest Mouse, The Bloodhound Gang, Chemical Brothers and Lionrock were made safely available for digestion. This works out great for me. I like a lot of this stuff but I’ve been exploring the edge of the galaxy for the obscure so long that I’ve lost contact with what is going on in more mainstream areas. Of course, Ken is no stranger to weird stuff too. That makes it work even better. He doesn’t like Agony….yet.
Ken was the first check out the soundtracks for The Social Network, Tron Legacy and Hanna. They all ended up being good additions. Ken also likes Dave Matthews. I’ve never been into Dave Matthews. At first it was just because his music didn’t connect to me in any way. It goes back to the question of what makes us like what we like? All I know is that I had no interest in Dave Matthews. The problem developed into more but not because of Dave Matthews but because of his fans. To me Dave Matthews is kind of like Apple. Some of their users, fans, zealots are so aggressive that I have no choice but to shun the product even more for fear of being included with those kinds of people. I actually had a girl say to me “You don’t like Dave Matthews? What is wrong with you?” I wonder what she’d think of Agony?
Just for clarification, Ken was never like that about Apple or Dave Matthews. Here are a few cool tracks that I have to thank Ken for bringing to the table. Eeeehhh!
Lionrock – Snapshot On Pollard Street – What a cool groove this is for driving or fishing.
Chemical Brothers – The Devil Is In The Details
Daft Punk – Daftendirekt
Mr. Oizo – Analog Worms
Muse – Uprising
The Bloodhound Gang – Take The Long Way Home
There are many more but that will get us started!