Waking Ear

Oasis/"Wonderwall" -- I leave you guys alone for one day and you're yelling at each other. Very funny comments yesterday, but now this stupid song's in my head.

I have never liked Oasis and I never will. I don't think they've had an original thought in their lives, although those Gallagher boys are pretty funny in interviews. They're like the male equivalent of the Spice Girls -- manufactured and utterly exhausting. I never got caught up in "Wonderwall," but I heard it enough passively to learn the lyrics, and I'm not against singing along to it with a bunch of drunken friends. But that's as far as I go.

I was out of town yesterday, incidentally, on business. I didn't bring a CD player on the plane, because it was just a one-day trip and I was packing really light. But it contributed heavily to my argument to myself that I should just go even more massively into debt and buy an iPod. God damn you, iPod! You are so lovable. Anyway, I spent an entire 24 hours without direct access to music, and it was weird. The background music in the airport, the boom box blaring bluegrass in a parking attendant's both, and -- in an especially Bjork-y moment -- the sound of construction machines clanking in what sounded like an eerie African polyrhythm all leapt out at me in a way they usually don't. I started hearing things again. It was a nice way to cleanse the palate. And when I got into my car at the airport, turned the keys and heard The Last Broadcast again, it felt really powerful and moving.