I heard this new band last night, they were pretty good.

What did they play?

A mix of country and European funk, really.

And that was good?

Well it was interesting, and these days in the current musical climate – interesting is good.

I don’t know about that. Shouldn’t music be judged by itself and not by the climate or society it is born into?

Next you’ll say that we should judge art by its own merits.

Seriously though. What does it matter if, for example, the blues are played in a run down barn alongside a hard worked field or if they’re played in a posh, upscale night club? The music is the same.

Context is everything. Context is king. You know that, Sven! Come on, at your job doesn’t that determine all sorts of things?

Yes, you could say that. A toy, I was building toys last week for some Swiss, and they looked vaguely phallic. But in context it was fine.

What context makes that all right?

They were sex toys.

Ah so.

Just right. So to be sure, your argument has merit. But still music is music. It expresses itself if you only chose to listen.

To an extent. What about your own example. Can you really play the blues in a nice place? Doesn’t it become almost a parody of itself?

It would then depend on the player.

Sure. So corporate music whores aren’t going to give the same soul.

Sure.

Then I maintain interesting is good. Interesting is at least not bought and paid for by corporate masters on a shill.

But even they can produce interesting things. Would those interesting things be of less merit simply because they were well paid for and well researched?

Probably. I mean they would be … clean. Scrubbed clean and polished to a sheen.

And that, I maintain, would be interesting.

It is possible, I suppose.

But this… what was the band’s name?

Four Alarm Enema.

And right there they become interesting in exactly the wrong way.

Context. Again, context.

I do not wish to know the context in this case.

Regardless, they were interesting, if not also good.

That might be, but you went for a shirt, didn’t you?

It’s on under my sweatshirt.

Why do you collect these things?

They interest me, they’re like fragments of someone’s dream. A dream I can collect. A dream I can…

Show off to the ladies to seem very knowledgeable indeed about all music before it gets big, if it ever does?

Sometimes, maybe. What’s wrong with that?

Nothing, except perhaps in this case. Consider a woman who sees a shirt with the words FOUR ALARM ENEMA blazing across the chest and some kind of image, I assume?

Yeah it has… hold on I’ll show you!

Please do not. But let us continue this train. Such a woman. Who is intrigued by these words and this image, do you want to talk to her?

Why not?

Consider that the band has less than two hundred fans. So unless you are very lucky this theoretical woman is simply interested in those words and that image. Consider this carefully.

Oh. Well. Yeah. Huh.

And so then what?

I give the shirt to Jacob?

He will wear anything without thinking.

Yeah. So do you want to hear the band? I downloaded some songs from their website.

Only if I do not have to see the website itself.

Yeah I got them on my iPod.

Then bring on the Four Alarm Enema.

Not so loud, we’re in a bar.

Right.