I’ve been a bit inactive in The Hall recently because I’ve started a new job. At the start of August, I began working in a Silicon Valley school district. I’ve been spending long days learning new procedures, protocols, and acronyms; I’ve been spending eternally-seeming hours sitting in the car on the commute home. (Guy in Trader Joe’s: “Where did you get that tan?” Me: “From sticking my arm out the window on the drive home.”)
AND I’ve been meeting lots of new people. I would really, really, really like to shorten this establishment phase and just cut to whether I’m going to like/get along with you or not. Sure, there are indicators such as temperament, vocation, mood, interest inventories and personality scales. But music has typically served as the quickest and most reliable indicator of whether a colleague and I will be compatible.
But how can I subtly find out about my co-workers’ musical tastes? I don’t know them well enough to start nosing around their offices and looking for their music collections. I’m not going to start wearing my band t-shirts to work just yet (even if everyone rides their bikes to work around here). We haven’t started to have those lunchroom chats quite yet, and work happy hour get-togethers are probably a few weeks away.
Today, though, I was offered a first glimpse into one colleague’s musical psyche. He gave me a lift to the District Office, as my car was in the shop. His young children had been playing with his CDs and had left them scattered all over the front seat. As I sat down, I scooped them up and casually flipped through them. Here are a few of what I saw:
- The Beatles – Rubber Soul
- Michael Jackson – One
- The Darkness – Hot Cakes
- No Doubt – Icon
- The Clash – Singles Collection
- Tim Armstrong – A Poet’s Life
- Mad Caddies – Duck and Cover
What does this assortment of music tell you about my colleague? Do you think he and I will be able to work well together? Do you foresee issues, and if so, about what?
And lastly, How do you go about finding out about the musical tastes of your coworkers?
It tells me that unless he’s playing Rubber Soul or the Clash Singles Collection, I’d wear sound cancelling headphones or stick my head out the window and work on my tan. Or that you might want to practice this phrase: “Nah, I’m good with walking, but thanks!”
On the plus side, this brought to my attention three acts–The Darkness, Mad Caddies, Tim Armstrong–that I don’t think I’d heard before. Thanks to the Spotify I was able to check them out (though I couldn’t locate Duck and Cover so I opted for Just
One More). The first one I listened to was The Darkness, and though it took me only about 30 seconds to really dislike them, I think, now, that they are probably the best of that lot. This is not meant as a compliment.
On the other hand, maybe only Rubber Soul and the Clash–and, ok, let’s be generous, the Jacko cd–are his and the rest are his kids’. Or his wife’s, who has terrible taste in music. Maybe he’s just a victim of his family’s appalling listening habits.
But, then again, maybe they’re all his, and maybe he only has Rubber Soul so he can listen to “Michelle” over and over and maybe the only Clash song he actually likes is “Rock the Casbah.”
As Jonathan Richman once said, “Stop this car, I’m getting out!”
Finding out about coworkers’ tastes in music is tricky, especially new coworkers. If they’re also friends you can call bullshit on instances of bad tastes. I’ve worked with some of the same people for 20 years and consider them friends, for instance, so I am comfortable telling them how much I hate their beloved Journey or Billy Joel. On the other hand, I manage people and have to make sure that when I say “I can’t stand The Smiths” that they know I’m only talking about MY take on the band, not their love for them or their performance as an employee.
A lot of us choose to eat lunch together, and we have our share of after-work outings. Music comes up much less frequently than movies and other cultural events. People know I play music, so I’m occasionally quizzed on things. People also know I’ve got big opinions on stupid things, so my comments on big music things, like Super Bowl and GRAMMYS performances, are welcomed. Usually, though, once I give my variation on the standard answer to the question, “What kind of music to you listen to?” there’s not much more to be said. I keep my answer broad and popular enough to make sense, but few people I work with hear that I love Elvis Costello & the Attractions and want to dig into the finer points of Get Happy!!
The best ways to learn what coworkers listen to are when they happen accidentally. Once a younger guy I didn’t know too well stopped into my office while I had that third-rate Ziggy Stardust artist playing – I’m blanking on his name, it was a single name that began with a J, if memory serves. My coworker suddenly stopped talking about whatever he was talking about and said, “Is that Bowie?” I learned that day that he is a huge Bowie fan and a fan of many other cool bands, both new and old. Previously we’d only talked about movies and sports.
The guy I’ve worked under for most of the last 20 years and consider a close friend revealed himself to be a huge Bowie fan early on during our first stint working together. He used to put out “Get to Know Your Coworker” matching games, in which he secretly collected our answer to a “Favorite” movie or book or musician type of question. He’s then construct a set of parallel lists for us to match: staff on the left, faves scrambled on the right. NO ONE in our company expected our old-school, bow tie-wearing, John Cleese-lookalike of a boss to be a Bowie head. EVERYONE figured that our graphic artist, a guy with bleached, spiked hair, was the match for Bowie. EVERYONE was wrong! (The Bowie-looking artist had the Beatles down as his choice, one of two people in the company who listed that band.)
So there’s the answer. Ladymiss should instigate a “Get to Know Your Coworker” contest so she can get to know everyone and become the Alpha Dog of the Entertainment committee at the School District.
Hey, at least he has a coupleof cd’s in the car that aren’t awful, but I don’t know if he’d be a compatible music snob for me. In fact, it would appear he’s not a snob at all. I have a friend that loves everything Tim Armstrong does and we usually like a lot of the same stuff. I’d play the nerd card carefully and talk to him about Revolver. Ask him if he had the US version or the UK version, and then ask if he still has records. I’m the only one at my work with records anymore (well, that I play anyway) and the one guy that actually went to some shows with me left the company. I took a copy of the new Alice In Chains album when people were passing it around the other day, but I’ll delete it without ever playing it, I’m sure. It just seemed impolite to not accept the offer!
This is a tough call to make. It could be that he has “some” average music tastes at best. Most everyone has some basic classic rock within their collection. (although a clash singles album is one of the only ones missing from my Clash collection, who needs that except to complete a collection, but why would you ever play it?) (Hey there’s a new possible thread-in an artists collection, what one (ones) can you truly do with out and still claim you own the catalog?) (or something like that)
Now the other rule of thought is driving in my truck is the only true time I have anymore to truly “listen” to music. Yes I lack the true fidelity with the inferior mp3 but I get the freedom and the volume. It is where I can listen to favorites, dig up some oldies but goodies, cycle thru my vast collection in general. It is also where I can try out stuff people have recommended or past on to me to check out. It doesn’t usually make it more than a few songs in before trying something else and can sometimes hang out in the truck for a while where I may or may not ever get back to it.
These are excellent observations and suggestions, thanks! While I doubt this co-worker and I are destined to find much common musical ground, I used the disc-spilling incident as an opportunity to discuss why he likes The Darkness (blech!) and try “If you like that, perhaps you might like this…” That stupid 3rd wave ska album yielded that we both liked 2nd wave ska and ghat he had been a drummer in a local ska band. Comments about Rubber Soul led to finding out that his father grew up with Paul and George. So I’m not going to jump out of the car just yet.
I also like the mix it up social committee game: I’ll first have to nominate myself for the committee!
I think I might try to find some tasteful music posters or band items (if these exist) to scatter around my office to elicit conversation from staff, the kids or their parents.
We’ll see…I’ll update you with news. I certainly would feel more settled in if I could find a decent music-loving co-worker.
Great point about getting the necessary time and privacy (and control) to truly listen to music while driving. I’m often in the same boat. I actually like driving, and I like it even better because I can tune into the music.
As an offshoot topic, it’s been many years since I’ve had a coworker whose tastes in music are close enough to mine (or with whom I’m close enough to know this stuff) that we could trade mixtapes and whatnot. My boss, the Bowie fan, is the guy I can most easily trade music with. We go to concerts together once or twice a year and listen to Fripp and Eno albums while talking business. Us being middle-aged, there’s only so much time for such stuff.
When I was about 20, I worked in a bookstore with a group of people who became keys to my entry in the local music world and beyond. We were music freaks with very little else going on in our lives. We build lasting music-nerd friendships. Some of us branched out into playing in bands together. This period of my life is remembered for tremendous music-loving coworkers.
When I was about 25, I started working in publishing. We got paid more than bookstore employees, but still not much. There were always a couple of music freaks to sidle up to and trade tapes. The older indexer guy who turned me onto Be Bop Deluxe and super-obscuro stuff was one such guy. Years later I would learn he was my eventual stepfather’s brother’s childhood friend, I also met a shit-hot guitarist, who still plays with some cool artists in San Francisco these days, who turned me onto some of the only country music I ever liked, courtesy of a C-60 of “Bakersfield Sound” tunes. There were other people in publishing who weren’t exactly my musical mates, but they knew more than enough so that we could talk bands, see each other at shows, etc.
It’s probably no coincidence that my bookstore and publishing jobs were located in Center City Philadelphia. After I moved to agency work in various suburban locations, it’s been harder to make music buddies at the office. I’ve made plenty of GREAT friends in my current business, but probably even in publishing companies and bookstores in the city, it’s not that easy to find middle-aged people who still have cool, active tastes in music. This is one of the reasons I’m glad we’ve got Rock Town Hall.
I too do most of my music listening in the car. So maybe I should be thankful that this longer evening commute gives me more time to listen to music. Naaah. I still am hating the commute.
Working for a school district, I come across many people on a weekly basis; I’ve usually found 1-2 co-workers per site with whom I swap music or go to shows. Right now it’s a crap shoot but I’m keeping my eyes out for signifiers.
My boss is young enough to be my son. That’s how you know you’re coming to the end of your career, when the big boss might be your age but all the middle managers are much younger than you. I was actually glad when my boss was promoted, because we generally agree about work-related issues. I’m not sure when we started talking about music. I think it was just an outgrowth of our long conversations about work stuff. He’s a fairly typical 90s college rock guy, loves the Pixies and Nine Inch Nails. He keeps up with music somewhat, so there are some current bands we both like. The National, Vampire Weekend, Explosions in the Sky, people like that. He’s got 7 and 10 year old boys, so he’s also dealing with the fact that their favorite bands are the Killers and Muse. We might talk a lot about music, but I can’t imagine we would ever go to a show together.
To me the weird thing is that he thinks of himself as being knowledgeable about music, but he knows/cares almost nothing about anything before the late 80s. To him REM and U2 are just old people who never made music of any interest. As far as I can tell this is because his music fandom is totally wrapped up the college experience and his nostalgia for that era, which also happens to be the tail end of the golden age of ‘college rock.’ I think music is becoming less important as that time gets farther away and the demands of career and fatherhood weigh more heavily. He’s passing on the Nine Inch Nails reunion tour. The fact that someone 20 years younger than me is already bored with reunion tours by the bands of his era doesn’t make me feel like the ancient mariner at all.
I also discovered that a woman we hired recently grew up in the Omaha area and knew several of the people who went on to be big names in the Saddle Creek/emo scene. I found this out because I sat next to her at lunch at our annual work retreat last Friday. In general this was a completely worthless day, but it was interesting to hear her talk about how these guys were just dorks, and she was shocked to discover when she was in grad school at NYU that they had managed to make names for themselves outside of what she thought of as her small local scene. Having been in Conor Oberst’s confirmation class is the kind of thing that you don’t tell just anybody, because most of the people who work here would have no idea who she was talking about. I think maybe she had heard I was a music nerd, but I was the one that asked her what kind of music she liked, and that led to the backstory. I also found out she used to play sax in a ska band. I’ve heard this “I play/used to play in a ska band” before, and I wonder if it’s somehow characteristic of people who become academics or librarians. How many ska bands can there possibly be?
This is random, but for whatever it’s worth, as someone who really likes the Pixies, Vampire Weekend, and to a lesser extent the National, I don’t see what’s so wrong with liking Muse. I also don’t entirely understand how someone can like bands like the Pixies (as you said, ’90s college rock), and not really good (in my opinion) ’80s college rock, like REM. So I guess I’m saying your boss’s music taste confuses me.
I’m in school, so I don’t run into this exact situation, but finding other people with similar taste in music to mine is kind of a challenge – mostly because I don’t know how to go about asking, but also because my musical opinions are not the most popular.
I know. I think maybe he just didn’t pay much attention to music before he went to college, and he never felt the need to go back and explore even 80s music, to say nothing of the 60s and 70s.
“my musical opinions are not the most popular”
At the risk of sounding like the rock snob that I pretend not to be, that’s a plus in my book. It’s the difference between going that extra mile to eat at an off the beaten path noodle bowl shop, and just eating at TGI Fridays because it’s convenient.
Welcome aboard, MrHuman! As I read BigSteve’s part about his boss not liking pre-’90s music I was trying to imagine something similar among music fans of my generation. I could not imagine someone liking Elvis Costello and The Clash (bands that started when my generation was in high school) and not liking Bowie or the Stones or whomever. I could not imagine fans of the Beatles and Motown, in the 1960s, not liking ’50s artists. I would think you would need to go back to the 1950s, when rock ‘n roll was starting, to find people who didn’t like music from 10 or 20 years earlier. Among music fans, that is, not just any old person who may occasionally listen to music.
LMK, I would hazard a guess that your co-worker has something for the whole family in the car. If not, a wide net for music is always better than a narrow view. And The Darkness is evidence of a sense of humor. I hope nobody takes that stuff straight.
My co-worker offered me a ride home recently and had a Paul Weller solo CD in his car. He’s an English guy, naturalized US citizen and about the same age as me. He seemed a bit surprised that I knew about Weller and Blur and some of the Britpop stuff that was pretty mainstream over there but never made much of a mark (Oasis aside) over here. We’ll have to continue this conversation sometime.
I’m guessing, k., that you are correct. From what I know of this co-worker, the principal at one of my schools, he is pretty much a “I can get along with most people” sort of guy, but saves his more “tail end of the curve” private views/rants/preferences/choices for a select few. Given that he initially said that his kids were playing with the cds in his car indicates to me that these were not the prized cds in his collection. I forgot to add that it also included:
– Mumford And Sons
– Muse
So I guess the guy is trying to stay pretty current. I brought in a cd that I enjoy, Earl Greyhounds first cd, and he wrote me a note saying that he enjoyed it and that it reminded him of The Black Crows, who is one of his favorite bands to see live.
Like BigSteve said, I doubt this is a guy Mr. Royale and I would go to a concert with (his wife likes The Bare Naked Ladies), but there does seem to be some musical pluses: interest in music, decent knowledge of a strata of music, performer in bands when younger. I’ll start there.
But I’m going to keep trawling for someone who may have musical taste more similar to mine…
Well said!