Cool as Ice...

Now here's another memory from my earlier childhood. It was around Second Grade. At 7 years old I had only heard about CD's, but did not know anyone who had a CD player. I was spending the night at my friends house. I remember I was on the top bunk of the bunkbed when his brother walked in. He had something that I had never seen before. It was a yellow portable tape deck. He called it a walkman, and he gave me the headphones. As I put them on, he handed me the case for the tape. On the cover was a rapper named Vanilla Ice. He was wearing shiny clothes, he had slicked back hair that I thought was cut like Vaughn from "Major League". The single that was playing was "Ice Ice Baby". It was the first time I had ever enjoyed music on that level. I loved it. It was one of the first times I had heard a music that I considered to be my own, and not someone else's. When I saw the video later, I was even more intrigued. He could dance, he looked cool and all my friends liked him. He got a great deal of exposure, even being mocked on a popular sletch comedy show In Living Color by a young Jim Carrey. After a while, the hype went away, and the song went away as well. After a few years, Ice's style, and that of other contemporary artists like MC Hammer, had become a joke. To this day, still have a neon colored Vanilla Ice shirt that I got from a thrift store. I wear it as a joke, and every time I wear it, I get plenty of comments and people often try to buy it from me.

Probably about 1998, about 8years after the song came out, I heard the song again. You know, that moment that defines that songs place your musical mind for perhaps the rest of your life. Until this point, I had fond memories about the song, even though I still considered him a joke. The song was horrible. The beat, the rapping, the DJ all turned me off. Since that day, I have negative feelings about the song altogether, except as a joke.

The relavence I find in this experience and the one from yesterday, is that that these are my enterpretations of these songs and artists. The context that I heard these songs in defines my perception of the music. That perception can and will change over time. These experiences can be, and probably are different from everyone else's perception of the song. Maybe it is also very similar to others experience and relationship with that music. I find profound relavence to the current music market as well as future markets in how the context that we hear music in defines our perception of that music. I will leave you with that.

later,
-S