God Bring Me Deaf

Ok. So I've joined the workforce and I'm lucky enough to work in a place that likes to blast the tunes all day long. Music is motivation. I love all the 80's mixes and the Tom Petty and Beatles (early Beatles mind you). I don't even mind the better Aerosmith stuff, but from there it gets ugly. Horrible "modern rock" and painfully cliché country muck doesn't even scratch the surface. The scourge of decent music everywhere, Nickelback galore makes no apologies, nor does the Backstreet/N'Sync ballads, the old school Metallica, and a country pop remake of Mockingbird that is the audio equivalent of letting loose in a room full of beagle puppies with an M60. Is nothing sacred?

I expressed my concerns to my fellow employee who seems deemed to pick and choose the potentially deadly playlist. I call her DJ Mixmaster Melissa. She said she would love some recommendations. So we sat down on a 15 and went thru a few things. It did not go well, and maybe I started off too far down the road from what was comfortable for her, but extreme times....

I played a favorite tune from Battles, Tij, since she expressed enjoyment in drum tracks, I thought this may be a safe bet. She countered with this...



It took every ounce of my being to not stab myself in the ears with the plastic forks. I took it down a notch and knowing she was a fan of sappy ballads I played her some of the gentle brilliance of the Grizzly Bear.

She replied with...

"I have Johnny B. Goode!"

Game over.