Rainer Maria? I'll take the rain.

My wife has been in two plays for the past month. It's been really nice for her, because she gets to act. It's been even better for me, because I get to spend a lot of time at home without my wife, which means I get to do all the things I want to do without her judging me. Most guys would take advantage of this by drinking milk straight from the carton or watching a lot of weird porn. I don't really like milk, and I can always make time for weird porn, so I've been using this as an opportunity to listen to a lot of the albums that I love and my wife hates.

My wife has (generally) good taste. I, of course, have (generally) impeccable taste. I feel like the quote that best sums up my wife's reaction to most of the music I like is “Boy, this is nice but I'm kinda looking for something that has a melody.” Uhhhhhh can't you figure out where the melody is in this song? The drummer is playing in 9/8, the violin is playing in waltz time and the guitarist is belching into his pickups. What are you, some kind of idiot? Her next most frequent complaint is “I hate her fucking voice.” We'll examine that a little later.

Tonight I plan to examine the three best albums that my wife absolutely hates. I might even make her listen to one of them later. She'll love that!



The Velvet Underground & Nico

The disc that launched a thousand nerds. My first encounter with this album was my freshman year of college, when I decided to do a causal dissertation on the history of rock music. I figured this album would be the best place to start, so I had to actually sit down and listen to it. This was really my first exposure to truly dissonant music, particularly European Son and The Black Angel's Death Song. It's a lot of screeching and freeeeee-owwwww-claaaaang! I grew to appreciate the horrible screeching. Now I love it. Musical Stockholm Syndrome? Perhaps. Lou Reed broke my ankles with a sledgehammer, but at least I learned to love it.

Why does my wife hate this album? Horrible screeching, below average singing, pretentiousness.

Why do I like this album? Horrible screeching, pretentiousness. We're one hell of a match!



Rainer Maria – Long Knives Drawn

I was first exposed to this album right around the time I first heard VU & Nico. My friend Rin and I would skip class and drive around the eastern portion of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, listening to this album. It reminds me of warm spring days, chain-smoking in Rin's Oldsmobile. The songs are catchy and well-put together, musically speaking. The lyrics are more than a little on the emo side of things – songs about walking around with your boyfriend's hand in your back pocket and sunrises being “two gazes long.” While the lyrics are bad, the real problem here is that the vocalist, Caithlin De Marrais, isn't exactly the world's greatest singer. I feel that her voice fits the music, my wife feels that her voice is like an ice pick to the forehead.

Why does my wife hate this album? Bad singing!

Why do I like this album? Catchy songs, transports me to a better place.



Jefferson Airplane – Volunteers

I have all the sensibilities of a 1960's counterculturist, but with a crippling fear of hallucinogens. I make up for this by really, really liking psychedelia, in all of its forms. Oh, except those stupid posters with the cartoon drawings of mushrooms. Black light posters are the worst kind of white trash. (It says a lot about me that my opinion of President Obama went way up when I heard about his possible association with Weatherman Bill Ayers.) Anyhow, the album that really exemplifies the whole psychedelic countercultural movement of the San Francisco hippy freak out dens of the 60's is, of course, Volunteers. The first song contains the lyrics “Up against the wall, motherfuckers,” the rallying cry of both the Black Panthers and, of course, the Motherfuckers. There are songs about man's cruelty to nature, living on a communal farm, subjugating societal norms by strong-arming the government, and of course, Vietnam. This might be the single greatest example of the culture of the 1960's.

Then there's Grace Slick. I love Grace Slick. I love her, I love her voice, I love everything about her. Now, take all those things I just said, replace the word “love” with “hate,” and now you know how my wife feels about Grace Slick.

Why does my wife hate this album? Horrible screeching, pretentiousness, bad singing. (Hat trick!)

Why do I like this album? Horrible screeching, pretentiousness, oh, and I'm not a square, man. Your Great Society has no bearing on me, man.

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My wife got home a little while ago, and I told her about this essay. She wanted to know which albums I picked, and she made a face. “Ick. You're right, I do hate all of those albums. I'm unhappy just thinking about them.” I'm offering her a chance to write a rebuttal. Hopefully it's loud and incoherent – that way I'll understand her.