Saturday, Feb. 26, 2005 - 6:11 p.m.
What's Not To Like?
I'd been thinking for a while about starting a What's Not To Like feature. There are quite a few things in life that I see as impossible to not like, for anyone. Like - sitting in the upstairs front two seats of the bus. I believe the pleasure derived from that activity transcends all boundaries of gender, age, ethnicity and background.But more interesting to me just now are the things that can't fall into that category. Example - the other day I was walking through Liverpool St tube station and heard three women talking Spanish Spanish at the fruit and veg stall. It was that perfect lazy Spanish that's lovely to listen to, and I thought, oh it is brilliant living in London and hearing people from places with different languages speaking their languages, everywhere you go, and what's not to like? Then I thought, well some anxious people might not like it because if they didn't understand what other people were saying it might confuse and befuddle them.
And last night at the social club, there were two musical acts. The first was a girl singing in that Irish stylee, with all the warbling stuff. She was OK in my opinion - not a very strong voice at first but even La Newsom seems shit scared when she comes out and sings her first song a cappella to a thronging crowd. When this girl last night did this her voice took a moment before it was strong. I didn't have a very strong opinion on her, but my companion described her as 'crap, awful'.
The same companion thought the next band were brilliant. And I thought, there's just predicting even your closest friends' taste, is there? Incidentally, I thought this band were great in a way, and completely bonkers - they were becaped pilgrim fathers playing medieval sacbuts in a prog rock stylee - very much Look Around You's view of 'future music'. I can't say I've ever been a fan of prog rock though, so my liking for them will always be limited.
This is partly why I so often seem to sit on the fence or reserve judgement - most things in the world are OK. I get riled by things that are obviously just plain wrong (oh, bad politicians; The Da1ly Mail) and excited about things that are fantastic (common land, bakeries, chirruping birds), but most of the world can't fall into the What's Not To Like category.
So yes, What's Not To Like: what's not to like about the concept of it? I'im going to try to remember to list some more things I think come into this category.