Eclectic Company: Music Is Where You Find It

Used to be you had to go to a store that specialized in music to buy albums, singles and tapes. I loved those esoteric shops, showcasing the owners’ obsessions, like that great one in “High Fidelity,” starring John Cusack and Jack Black as music nerds on a mission. I was lucky to grow up in New York, where personal obsessions were the meat and drink of at least a dozen favorite shops. Most of those places are gone, because these days, we get a lot of our music in downloadable format, but also, they’ve disappeared, not only in the advent of the bog box stores, but because when we want something tangible in hand, we can get it from just about everywhere. I’ve been on the road so much since August that I think I’ve actually seen everywhere — and wherever I was, I picked up a few CDs for the drive.

Starbucks is a good place to pick up music; not just a coffeehouse, the ‘Bucks likes to brand itself as a lifestyle service company, and music is an important signifier of lifestyle. They want you to know who they are by gut feelings. For example, you know what you mean when you say of a particular slacker friend from college that he’s a signifying monkey — the kind of trickster who smokes your last doobie, cheats at hacky sack, and travels in the wake of the Grateful Dead so he can get it on with your mama, all the while ventriloquisting the blame on some innocent by-walker. Well Starbucks wants you to know them as intimately and instinctively as that, by their signifiers, but in a good way: They want to be associated with socially conscious but not didactic, understatedly hip guys and gals from 18 to 64 (now that 64 is the new 44, still listening to their favorite bands on CD, even if not going out to live concerts too much anymore), who want a place to hang, but don’t necessarily need to talk about Sartre or deconstruction while downing their mocha-chocolatte ya-yas to feel cool.

So what kind of music spells out that je ne sais quoi? Recently, I picked up two compilations packaged by Starbucks that fit tight in the Starbucks lifestyle pocket. The first is a 15-track set of tunes from the Bluesville Records archives. “Town and Country Blues” features artists who were mostly obscure until the folk revival of the 1960s brought them out to perform for audiences eager to experience and celebrate the authentic African-American originators of the Blues, as well as the (often) Caucasian revivalists who’d learned from them. Joining Roosevelt Sykes (“She Ain’t For Nobody”), Reverend Gary Davis (“Death Don’t Have No Mercy”), and Furry Lewis (“Goin’ To Kansas City”), among others, to represent the old-timers, with Dave Van Ronk (“Come Back Baby”), Danny Kalb (“Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out”), and Tom Rush (“Baby Please Don’t Go”) to represent the great white hopes, turns out to be an inspirational project. And Steven Stolder’s lovely liner notes will tell you why. Stolder is also the writer for Starbucks’ “Creedence Clearwater Revival” project, which makes absolutely clear why the band hit so many resonant chords with baby boomers like me. Driving to New Orleans a few nights ago, it was the perfect road music for the time and place; rolling out from the carport to “Born On The Bayou” made me feel like I was setting off on my own “Easy Rider” adventure.

A couple of months ago I had two minor surgeries at M.D. Anderson, and made half a dozen trips to Houston for tests, pre-op tests, and more tests, before the actual procedures. Each time I went, there was some kind of crafty garage sale going on in the lobby, and one of those times, they were selling discounted unopened CDs alongside the crocheted lap robes. I never did figure out which charitable organization was doing this, but I picked up Time Life’s double CD “Treasury of Bluegrass” for twelve bucks, just to cheer myself up. As befits the father of the form, the compilation is heavy on Bill Monroe, as a performer (“Blue Moon of Kentucky”, “Footprints In The Snow”), as a songwriter (“Uncle Pen”), and as a former employer (Mac Wiseman, Jimmy Martin, Del McCoury and Ricky Skaggs all passed through Monroe’s band and are on these discs). Bluegrass innovators Flatt & Scruggs (“Ballad Of Jed Clampett”), Ralph Stanley (“Little Maggie”), and the Osborne Brothers (“Rocky Top”) are featured, as are newer comers, Alison Krauss and Union Station (“Two Highways”) and The Johnson Mountain Boys (“Orange Blossom Special”). This two-disc set really covers the waterfront. I have never before bought a Time Life compilation, but I’ve watched their late night infomercials often enough, because the music is their message, and they are, despite their sappy and platitudinous onscreen patter, boxing the best of the genres and times their projects cover. I might have to pick up one of those sets, now that I’ve enjoyed their “Bluegrass.”

Whole Foods has been in the lifestyle business since its inception. Not only do they want to feed your body, they want to feed your head, er, soul. I love to browse their herbs and vitamins, shampoos and soaps, and nutrition library, and always walk away with a sense of well-being, even if I haven’t indulged in uplifting my chakras, or cleansing my whatevers with their products. Along with ethnic clothing chain Putumayo’s colorfully-covered compilation CDs of World Music from many places and cultures, signifying their embrace of global brotherhood, Whole Foods sells the works of old and well-worn individual artists. This week, besides getting my seeduction bread fix, I picked up the reissued “Revolver,” although I could have chosen “Help!” or “Rubber Soul” instead, to revive my love affair with the Beatles. “Revolver” has a lot of quirky songs that don’t necessarily hang together as a record, and I’ve always felt that it was made up of leftovers from earlier sessions, augmented by experiments portending the mind-blowing work yet to come. But I bought it for two songs that I’ve always loved: “Taxman,” which reminds me pleasantly of an object of affection, and “Here, There And Everywhere,” which in my folk girl past I always loved to cover. If I’d known I’d wanted to buy it, I could have gotten that record anywhere — from Amazon, from Sams Club, from Sam Goody’s in the Mall. But Whole Foods put it at the checkout line, and I had a three-hour drive back to Lake Charles coming up, so they hooked me. Signifying my lifestyle — impulsive and nostalgic. Bingo.