Skye Friday: Primal/Primate Dinner Scene Edition (The Quiet Wino)

1. WOW these videos are great. Won't review the album until I have a full working copy to listen to in headphones.

NANANANANA I GOT A BULLDOZER



Er, anyway.

2. I wanted to discuss further an interesting post over at Zoilus on all things dinner music. Or at least that's the part that I homed in on. Hopefully I won't start commentbombtrolling there all the time by keeping some of my thoughts HERE. (Eh, 50/50 shot.)

I wanted to flesh out the PRIMAL DINNER SCENE. There's a distinction, I think, between "dinner music" as we might use it for our personal meals (I'd say my favorite dinner albums are Kish Kash by Basement Jaxx and The Incredible Jazz Guitar by Wes Montgomery and the Getz/Gilberto collaboration [EDIT: Gah, I wrote this too fast -- my dad's rec is the Getz/Byrd Jazz Samba collaboration, but both work for dinner music]. Latter two are inherited from my dad. I might use the second two at a dinner party, too, but probably wouldn't use the first one, and wouldn't put it on a list of "dinner music" (not the same as my "My Dinner Music" iTunes playlist, which doesn't exist). My point is, when we use "dinner music," we're usually talking about other people's dinner music, the kind of music we imagine other people might listen to. So the next question I have is, who are these people listening to this dinner music?

One of my favorite Robert Xgau lines, from his Kid A review: "It's dinner music. More claret?"

As I said over at the comments section, interesting to note that this might work with a different type of wine, but it wouldn't work with, say, diet soda. ("More Fanta Fresca?" [dammit, Fresca is funnier, too]).

So there's RULE #1 of the PRIMAL DINNER SCENE: Red wine.

I suppose you could have white wine, too. But definitely wine. No beer, no hard alcohol, no mixed drinks. (Hm, "another mojito?" might work OK.)

RULE #2 of the PRIMAL DINNER SCENE: No one's allowed to shout. "D'ya want s'more wine" is unacceptable. A mild Thurston Howell accent preferable.

RULE #3 of the PRIMAL DINNER SCENE: Soft lighting. Maybe candles, or dimmed lights, or a lovely paper lantern. Mellow. No fluorescents.

So here's the scene, two to six people, drinking red wine, having casual conversation in a softly lit room, listening to _________.

Lends itself to what you might call "just-there" music -- Getz/Gilberto, say. But try a different setting.

Fifteen people at a large wooden picnic table, sun setting, everyone's eating popcorn chicken from a fried chicken place. Drinking diet soda. Listening to _______.

Or: Two people sitting on the rug distractedly watching a DVD compilation of Winsor McCay short animations with the sound off, drinking cheap beer and eating freezer-bagged edamame. Listening to _______.

Sure, there are clear musical cues in there (needs to be soft, not too obtrusive, etc.), but there are social ones, too. And I think if we figure out which ones fit "dinner music," we get a better idea of who it is we're avoiding when we use the phrase in its ambiguously pejorative sense. (I.e., "it's dinner music -- more claret?"; used in a positive review with dismissive connotations.)

We are avoiding WINE DRINKERS. We are avoiding QUIET TALKERS, or perhaps THURSTON HOWELLISH TALKERS. We're avoiding SOFT LIGHTING. Comfort, a sense of conventional refinement -- the "Finer Things Club" from last night's episode of "The Office." "Good Taste" from Frank's column last week. Whose good taste? Quiet winos!

So New College Rock is in a somewhat tricky place between College-type Boxed Wino and the Quiet Wino, the Good Taste Wino. Maybe the middle ground is the Starbucks Wino. Unfortunately this doesn't really follow in a clean syllogsim:

Quiet winos could play this during their dinner.
I do not wish to associate with the quiet winos.
Therefore, I should not associate with this music.

Well, for one thing, if indie's audience is predominantly middle class (still not sure about this, or at least not sure about where/how "middle class" fits into an audience equation) they're most likely to be quiet winos, right? I mean, I'm sort of one, except I drink diet soda. I enjoy quiet dinners, quiet dinner ambiance. Only difference is that I consider Basement Jaxx to be as conducive to quiet dinner ambiance as, uh, Kind of Blue. If the quiet winos are us then everything we listen to becomes dinner music. (And the question might not be, "what's wrong with dinner music," but "what's wrong with being a quiet wino"? Answers: because it's too fucking quiet, because I don't want to be associated with wine, I want to be associated with chocolate milk, because soft lights are irritating and besides these bulbs are like energy efficient even though they're really bright and kind of make my brain hurt, and they last like fifty years! Maybe "soft lighting" is on its way out of the rulebook.)