I recently stumbled across the “Musically Oblivious Eighth-Grader” meme. The top picture on that entry in Know Your Meme is this:
This pleaseth me mightily. Listening for the line “I listen to everything except country and rap” has always been my favorite way to weed out potential dating material, because as far as I can tell, it translates to this:
Unfortunately, the rest of the contributions on Know Your Meme are pretty weak sauce, rightly eliciting calls from the voters to deadpool the meme. The format is usually “[name of band you like]? [misinterpretation of name of that band].” Not particularly compelling. Who cares about your favorite band? Why should we assume everyone’s heard of them?
There’s much bigger game to hunt with this meme, much as there was with Privilege Denying Dude (privilege denying cat?). Because really, music is so often a stand-in for so many other things. I think the meme deserves a new life, which of course I am going to give it, because I don’t have other things to do like preparing for job talks, or not blogging so said-potential-employers don’t have blog posts on potentially sensitive subjects to turn me down for (O HAI PANOPTICON). Voila:
And then I couldn’t resist making one which was a “what, you haven’t heard of my favorite band?” one, because of course anyone who has will get that voice in their heads on reading this:
In conclusion: I am an insufferable music snob who only likes music with accordions in it. 
I put my elderly iPod on shuffle while I made these, and here is what it played:
DMX/Jay Z – Money, Cash, Hoes
Tom Ze – Politicar
Sylvia Woods – The Harper’s Vision
Paza – Teen Hipster
Patsy Cline – I Fall To Pieces
Nelly Furtado – I’m Like A Bird
some instrumental cover of the Internationale or something by Utah Phillips and Ani diFranco
something by a friend of mine who works with Negativland
Anonymous 4 – De Supernis Sedibus (Rondellus)
Beck: Epro
Shuggie Otis
Shirley Bassey: Where Do I Begin (Away Team Mix)
Bjork: In The Musicals
Henry Purcell: Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Etude 5 – Andantino
Frankie Ruiz: La Rueda
tracks from the video game Jet Grind Radio
Siftan Desh Diyan (artist unknown)
Seriously. Now get off my lawn.
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