Peter Mavrik's Clubbin' Tip #21: Maintain, maintain, maintain. I can't tell you how many times I've seen some foolio think they were coolio because they fell off the bar stoolio. Space out your drinking with water or a soda. However, if you get too tipsy in the club and they ask you to leave, be gracious about it and leave quietly. Nobody likes an evil drunk.
I've just returned from a three week stay in Japan and the jetlag hasn't worn off yet. Forgive me if my thoughts are more incoherent than usual.
It was my first visit to Japan, so I armed myself with a laptop full of music to keep me company. Traveling from one end of the country to the other, I went in search of rest, relaxation, and music.
Along the way, moving at nearly 300kph ( 186.4mph ) aboard various bullet trains, I noticed how absorbed most people have become with their personal music technology. There are far more mp3 players and cell-phone music gizmos in Japan than we will ever claim to have.
Row after row of passengers on the trains were plugged into their various devices, wrapping themselves in their own world of music. Young and old alike, so many people had headphones on it looked like a UN conference.
It made me think about what all these people were actually listening to. It wasn't until the end of my journey, while wandering the streets in Tokyo, that I actually began to bother people and ask them what was playing.
And guess what. People were not only excited to share what they were listening to, most of them wouldn't stop flipping from one song to the next for me. 'Wait, listen to this one too!' they kept saying.
Maybe it was because I was a foreigner. Or maybe, just maybe, a lot of people have a secret desire to fill the world with their music. Why else would you tune the world out and replace it with your favorite music?
So what were they listening to? In a word, everything. I heard Classical, Pop, R&B, Hippity Hop ( I love The Ladykillers remake ) , Enka ( traditional Japanese ballads ) , meditation music, and even House. Most people had a really diverse collection with them, all packed up in one tiny little gizmo that held gigabytes of music.
I guess that's the best thing about carrying around one of those things. You can load it with a little bit of everything, and you end up creating the soundtrack to your own life.
With you in 4/4,
Peter Mavrik
peter@windycitymediagroup.com