Love is all you need, but music helps
Love is blind. But nobody ever said it was deaf.
Unlike in high school, when people are thrown into awkward social groups that either miraculously survive or devolve into backstabbing and nasty gossip come senior year, college is a place for choice – friends, enemies and significant others alike.
For me, that’s meant picking friends with similar musical preferences. Take my roommates for this coming summer: I chose them almost entirely based on their tolerance for Ryan Adams and sad indie-folk, and because like me, they’re all music nuts with a hearty appreciation for R. Kelly’s “Trapped In The Closet.” That and I’m pretty sure we all have a soft spot for Kidz Bop.
Musical taste is a highly individual thing, so when you find someone willing to go with you to see the esoteric indie rock bands Campus Events manages to bring to UCLA once or twice a quarter, it’s like a gift from the music gods.
It’s with these bosom buddies that your musical Venn diagrams overlap past a few canonical staples and you can find something to talk about. After all, everyone except Mark Humphrey likes The Beatles. A shared love for something more out of the way – underground hip-hop maybe, or in my case anything relating to Rose Melberg and her former band The Softies – is often the spark for the start of a beautiful friendship.
Unless, that is, what you have on your hands is more than just being friends.
There are other things more important beside music, of course, but not for me – and if you and your concert buddy sat through Akron/Family’s 30-minute noise jam at the Cooperage this winter, not for you either. So much of the interaction between music fans and the outside world is filtered through headphones or ear buds, with the soundtrack inseparable from the scenes. All of which brings us to my girlfriend.
William Congreve once wrote, “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast.” He must not have been referring to “Charms Around Your Wrist” by The Softies – she hates that song. I’m not the biggest fan of her favorites either; I don’t mind U2, but I stopped listening to alternative rock radio last millennium.
Music is an essential part of every courtship, from the first kiss to the wedding dance, so it’s hard to ignore the importance of taste. Couples listen to music all the time, whether driving to a date or making out in a dorm room.
Songs can express emotions and create connections that people often can’t express by themselves. One of the most iconic images in American filmmaking is that of John Cusack’s character Lloyd Dobler, holding a boom box over his head in “Say Anything” in a desperate attempt to win back his girlfriend. Words alone won’t convince her, but Peter Gabriel just might.
Then again, it was Cusack whose record-store-owning character in “High Fidelity” wondered how his significant other could possibly reconcile liking both Marvin Gaye and Art Garfunkel. Toward the end of the movie, we find Cusack’s skeptical Rob Gordon making a mix tape – the musical equivalent of chocolate and a bouquet of roses – but it’s not for his girlfriend Laura. Gordon scraps the tape though, and sticks it out with Laura, who in turn helps him start a record label and get back into DJing.
Cusack, the ultimate sensitive man’s man, always makes the right decision. When you’re listening to Gaye (or in “High Fidelity,” Jack Black) sing about making love, it’s hard not to. Anyway, I one-upped old Rob, bought my girlfriend an iPod and loaded it with bands I think she’ll like. We may not ever reach Venn diagram status, but after all, The Beatles were right about one thing: love really is all you need.
Greenwald still makes his girlfriend romantic mix tapes. E-mail him yours at dgreenwald@media.ucla.edu.
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