I Know You Can't Control Yourself Any Longer

I love lists. Listmaker loves lists. Most people love lists, especially music nerds. One list that often comes up as a topic with us music geeks is guilty pleasures. These are the kind of joys that would only bring shame and derision were they to see the cold light of day. Music snobs love to talk about this subject because there are serious cool points to lose depending on what circles you traffic in and how deeply affected your musical friends are. Hardcore punks are as rigid and fundamentalist as the worst of the religious right.

Over the years, I've softened on my uppityness and have embraced, or at least tried to, the entire world of music. Few things turn me off on principle alone and I try to give most anything a chance. Years ago, I realised how much I truly loved Journey and everything changed. Not "loved" in any ironic, so-bad-they're-good kind of sense but true joy. "Any Way You Want It" moves me as much as my favorite White Stripes songs and thanks to Rock Band 2 I now know how truly awesome it is to belt out that melody at the top of my lungs. After Steve Perry, the deluge. I stopped caring what was hot and what was not and started embracing all the cheesy artists I remembered from my youth and the walls came tumbling down.

I was talking about this the other day with Flapdoodle and Flapman and found myself at a loss for words. "What are your guilty pleasures?" they asked and I had a hard time thinking of any. There's very little I'm embarrassed to admit I like these days, as evidenced by my loud and proud crowing about Rush. I offered the new Kanye West album as something that's not really a guilty pleasure but more a surprise to some people who know me. They offered up Billy Joel and Hall & Oates, neither of which is really something to be ostracized for. I have selfmade best of cds in my collection for the music of Dave Matthews and Enya, both who are pretty embarrassing but I can't apologize for my enjoyment of some of their songs. Yes, there's little cool about either musician but something about them touch me in ways the 18 year old Gamera would retch at. So, there we were, at a loss for a true guilty pleasure until Flapdoodle came up with one that I dare anyone to trump - Miami Sound Machine. I don't even know their music very well but I'm sure if I liked them it would be a hard thing to admit openly. It kind of makes me want to investigate their back catalog.

Dr. Beat - Miami Sound Machine