music schizophrenia

once again, friday i didn't work (i slept for 11 hours, proof that i normally wake up at an ungodly hour) and moseyed to my coffee shop, coffee underground. i have mentioned before that i enjoy this place because it reminds me of the northwest, although clearly not in the expeditious fashion of bringing beverages to you. regardless, i also enjoy it because all the music is chosen my the baristas. unlike the same cd that plays in every starbucks you go into (which i'm surprised doesn't make the baristas want to put their head on a pike), the customers get a little taste of who the baristas are.

in moscow, the coffee shop where this practice was most prevalent was one world cafe. courtney would usually play some feminist rants (ala fiona apple), sarah would rock with usually some chill pink floyd or zeppelin, and evan (our favorite gay barista) would destroy all hopes of studying with a ridiculous dance-electronica nightmare. and yes, he made sure to play the britney spears album as soon as it came out.

this led andy and i to check out who was behind the counter before we decided to stake our studying claim at one of the tables. if it was evan, it was sisters' brew for us (which i've already discussed would play this weirdest elevator musak ever).

in this way it's exciting to go to coffee underground. friday, though, the music was frenetic at best.

i didn't manage to write down all the songs, but they would switch from 90s to oldies to 80s and back again, with zero regard for genre continuity. it went from "the heat is on" by glen frey (ugh) to a chuck berry song to "maniac" from the flashdance soundtrack (trivia: name the artist) and then to something by hootie. it was quite possibly the oddest string of songs put together in one half hour block...and yet i couldn't leave.

the music was so distracting, so mysterious, that i had to keep listening. i was done with my iced tea (which means i had been there for no less than two hours) and i had no other grad schools to peruse, but yet i was grouted to my chair. i have the same feeling when i see a large woman in tight leopard print clothing: you want to leave, yes, you want to run and hide...but you can't. maybe there will be disaster. maybe the woman might literally FALL OUT of her ensemble, and maybe the next song the barista plays will be german death-metal and the old southern women in the coffee shop will revolt.

now i understand fully why the ipod shuffle was invented.