There’s this guy I work with, a big, roly-poly good ol’ boy (that’s the good kind of redneck). Full of Southern pride, middle-aged, somewhat conservative, a truck driver. At a glance, you’d think his musical taste ran from Johnny Cash and Hank Williams to maybe the Allman Brothers Band and Black Oak Arkansas.
I was leaving work one morning not too long ago, when I caught myself and realized I needed to run back into the warehouse for something. I left my car running with the door open and music playing, in this case, the Chemical Brothers’ “One Too Many Mornings“. When I came back out, he was dancing (I guess you could call it that) next to it. Just happily shaking his moneymaker and gyrating all over the place. As I stared in amazement, he finally turned himself around, saw me and exclaimed, “Man! This is great! What is this?’ I told him. “Aw, man! I love this! I tell you what, I could listen to this kind of thing all night! But I just don’t know where to find this kind of stuff! Who plays this?” I filled him in a little bit on the genre, told him a couple radio stations to check out and promised to make him some mix CDs of similar music, which he loved. In fact, someone just complained to the landlord of the warehouse complex because he was coming in blasting it too loudly every day.
So there’s at least one good ol’ boy driving around Virginia, grooving to electronica, big beat and other types of dance music. Who woulda thunk it? It’s cool when people surprise you like that, transcending categories, defying stereotypes.