You never know what you’ll leave with when you go into the grocery store.
QFC had its glory days long ago in 1970s Lake Hills and I still go there a lot although I wish it hadn’t disappointed me those times I couldn’t even get a can of cream of potato soup.
I too worked for companies that were sold to bigger companies that cared only about short-term profit, not the past, or the people, or the present, so I can’t blame the store for no longer being what it used to be.
I went to the Northgate QFC one day and heard REM’s “Man On The Moon” on their stereo. I, a guy who was no longer the guy I once was, listening to a song by a band who was no longer who they once were, in a store that was no longer what it once was, in a neighborhood that never was much of anything and probably never would be– saddest song in the world– not weepy sad, pathetic sad.
I would have gone somewhere else if I’d known that sad, sad thing was going to happen.
I’m always under time constraints when I go into the 3rd and Union Bartells, so I don’t anticipate that I’m walking into a muzak environment, but I’m often amused by the sometimes-familiar, sometime-not pop music they play. The variety of people in that Bartell’s, it’s pleasantly corny to think that management somewhere has decided, “Our customers will like this middle-of-the-road pop music.” Except that we’re all at Bartell’s, it creates a bond anyone would be embarrassed to admit and that only exists in my imagination. And maybe 3 or 4 people at any given time.
That’s different from QFC, as the city is different from the suburbs, and there is no QFC in the city.
In the suburbs live all of us who often feel we’re silly living out in the suburbs among people who disdain any hint of big-city danger, which includes the youth culture of rebellious music, be it so-called or not.
So surprised I was at 7:00 that recent Sunday morning in the local QFC, so quiet an hour that from a ceiling speaker an aisle away there was no mistaking Television’s “See No Evil.” I remembered “Man On The Moon” and thought maybe I could reach my heart before it fell and got all trampled, but it stayed, and would have soared if it still could, listening to that song that wouldn’t be tarnished by the incompatible surroundings. “It’s so early that somebody in back probably has that on before they have to play the regular stuff,” I rationalized.
But this morning, 11:30 on a Monday, “London” was “Calling.”
Maybe you saw years ago when the Grammys did some sort of Clash tribute and all these heavyweights played that, sweating, grimacing, chopping away at a song that is actually rather subdued, enough so that I’m grateful the Clash never did “MTV Unplugged” (did they?)
Now, the Clash, in my mind, “punk” though they were, were musical and idiosyncratic enough that to say they were punk is to give them short shrift.
People back then dismissed them and countless others on the basis of that one word, without any consideration for their merits as an individual group of musicians. Many of us thought it ridiculous that a group would be dismissed on that superficial basis, but we also liked being different from people who lacked our sophistication and sense of rebellion and adventure.
The Clash is long gone, and so many things that once seemed far-fetched have come to pass.
Youth of today, listening to the so-called wild music of yesteryear, thinking the music you listen to will never play in a supermarket….
Life is long.