On the Subject of High Fidelity
On the subject of High Fidelity (and we were on the subject, you might just not have been hanging out with the right people) I bought the novel in Borders a few years ago. I have a little game I play where I just walk down the fiction isle and randomly pull books off the shelf. I want to prove someone wrong about that because I think it's simply not true; I have found several of my all-time favorite books judging them by their covers: Enrico Brizzi's fantastic Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band, as well as High Fidelity.
But Ruby and I were talking about this last night -- one of my biggest pet peeves ever is when a new version of a novel comes out following the movie release and the covers of the books have, say, John Cusak's face on them. And the title of the book is done in the Miramax Film font. Few things get under my skin as thoroughly as that situation.
Although there is one more situation that might even be worse, and I stumbled across the unfortunate setup a while ago when replacing the Nick Drake CD I lost in a break-up. I could not find Nick Drake in the folk section, nor the rock section, nor anywhere else that made sense. So I asked for help, and the guy said, "Oh yeah -- we have it. It's over here." And led me to the TELEVISION section. Huh? And he flips through and pulls out "Pink Moon," the album in question, and across the front of the beautiful, dead face of Nick Drake is a white sticker that says: "Featuring 'Pink Moon,' as heard in the VW Cabrio commercial."
So that, I believe, is worse than Winona Ryder looking shocked and vacant on the cover of "Girl, Interrupted" with deliberately smudgy eyeliner.
However, back to High Fidelity. The issue here is one of Mix Tapes, or as times are moving quite quickly these days, Compilation CDs, or just plain Mixes (especially when traded in MP3 format -- scandal!). I don't know if our technotools have rendered things less sensual or meaningful, but I do know that Mixes seem to have lost their validity -- their immediacy and importance. I remember spending hours on the floor in my bedroom surrounded by all my CDs, with a little calculator to make the songs fit on the tape, and having to listen to each song all the way through, thinking about the person I was making The Mix for listening to that song, and hand cutting photos and such for the tape cover. And on. It was an involved process and not to be taken lightly. When I handed that tape to someone, they damn well knew it was from the heart.
Here is the best quote from High Fidelity:
"A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to hold the attention. Then you have to take it up a notch, but not blow your wad, so maybe cool it off a notch, and you can't put the same artist twice on the tape, except if some subtle point or lesson or theme involved, and even then not the two of them in a row, and you can't woo somebody with Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" and then bash their head off with something like GBH's "City Baby Attacked by Rats," and... oh, there are a lot of rules."
Part of the reason I was so enthralled by the book the first time I read it was because he understands the Mix Tape. A subtle art lost among the turning tides of technology and FTP servers. *sigh*
Also related in a similar fashion to High Fidelity is the fact that I went to see the Beta Band last Friday with Jared, and it was a thoroughly enjoyable show. The sound girl, however, was too busy dancing to realize that the treble was through the roof and I couldn't hear a word the guy was singing. Maybe she thought she was on lights that night. At the end of the show: "Oh shit, yo! I'm on sound?" If you haven't heard the Beta Band, I highly recommend checking them out. Their live show was insane in the "I wish I still did lots of drugs" way with manic lights and multimedia presentations and happy songs about sunshine and rain. Reason for the High Fidelity allusion is because in one of the scenes, Jack Black says he will now sell 5 copies of the Beta Band's new album, and he puts it on in the store and everyone buys it. It's pretty much like that.
Anyway, this is largely a directionless entry, but I'm feeling directionless, and very upset by the cover of the Harry Potter book I saw earlier today, with that little dork's screen shot, and I think the proliferation of magic as a theme in children's media is warping the minds of our youth and encouraging wicca and devil-worship to seep between the ears of otherwise trustworthy catholics, soiling our future generations.
Knock it off.
