EASY LISTENING

I stopped in the local music store not really sure of what I wanted and I started in the slur aisle of country and blues, in which were scattered albums of jazz and folk and I saw a few titles that interested me. But I kept wandering and soon I was in the classical section and world and meditation. I fingered through some of those. I turned around, though, and started actually picking up CD’s by George Winston and Jim Brickman and David Benoit. There were other artists too that I liked, a whole row of them, and I thought, wow, this is really my section, and I looked up to see what category I was in: EASY LISTENING. EASY LISTENING! I’m not even forty yet! When I think of easy listening I think of elevator music and Kenny G and Yani—yeeesh! Sure enough, they were in that row too. Then I began to contemplate the music coming out of the speakers in the store, music based on heavy percussion and seconded by deep bass with cat-strangled lyrics running over the top, music that could knock loose change out of your head. Surely, I thought, if what I like is “easy listening,” then this is hard listening.

I suspect that book categories are just as ridiculous.