I live in the Evergreen State; the last thing we need is a bunch of stoners driving around with a joint in one hand, their mp3 player in the other, and nary an eye for the freeway around them. (And, yeah, I can easily imagine that one; it's an inevitability.)
A half century of anecdotal evidence, plus the occasional candid off-the-record observations of various front-line law officers, tells us that stoned drivers are much safer than drunk drivers. The reason is (duh!) the drug's legendary tendency to instill a sense of paranoia, which works very well in situations like this where the risk is not imaginary. They're the ones going 5mph under the speed limit in the right lane, constantly checking the mirrors.
When Montana passed its medical marijuana initiative, the elders insisted that it was a terrible idea. The state with the third lowest population density (with 7 people per square mile, it beats only Wyoming and Alaska) simply doesn't have the resources to keep "medical" supplies from ending up in the hands of "recreational" users.
The results, however, were not what the authorities expected, although many of us saw it coming. Alcohol sales plummeted as people switched to their drug of choice. And there was a phenomenal
decrease in highway fatalities!
My mother has a thing for "smooth jazz" that I just don't understand. Smooth jazz is like a bunch of really talented and knowledgeable musicians crippled with fluoxetine, or maybe chlorpromazine.
As a professional musician (not my full-time career but people do pay me to play), I take music as seriously as anyone. Yet even I occasionally enjoy some "background music" that settles my mood without distracting my attention. Back in the 70s that was the "space music" of Tangerine Dream, Shadowfax and Kitaro. When they discovered they could increase their popularity and income by switching to New Age ditties for the crystal-healie audience, I switched to the "fuzak" of Jean-Luc Ponty and a score of other frustrated jazz musicians. Today that music is called "smooth jazz," but it's still a fusion of soft rock and polite jazz.
At any rate ... in truth, the saxophone is a wonderful instrument, and it's one thing I've missed about the last couple decades of pop music.
Yes it is, but the reason my background music doesn't stay on "soft jazz" for more than an hour or so is
too much of a good thing. I would very much like to hear more variety. How about letting the guitar or keyboard take the lead once in a while? How about including (gasp!) a trumpet, clarinet or flute in the lineup? I suppose it's hopeless to suggest something really offbeat like an oboe or English horn.
(Engellisches Horn actually translates from German as "angelic horn" but we got it wrong.) Much less a violin or a cello!
Rock and roll, for all the outcry over its original debut on the airwaves, has always been a rather conservative genre of music. Except for a brief flurry of creativity and experimentation in the late 1960s and early 1970s (remember King Crimson, Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, ELP, etc.?), new styles are slow to be accepted, it has lost the harmonic dynamics of the pop music that preceded it, and it often descends into formulaic ditties that would barely have raised an eyebrow in the 1950s. But jazz was never like this. So why is it so conservative now?
Oh yeah: money.
So... back to me. When I lose my patience with "smooth jazz," I flip the Verizon channel to "Pop Tropical." It covers a much wider range of sounds, and I understand enough Spanish to not feel like a tourist. I heard Jesse & Joy on that channel and went to see them in concert in Silver Spring a few months ago. They are the best new band I've discovered in a long time. And with an American mom, they represent the new generation of Mexicans. Their big hit
¿Con Quién Se Queda el Perro? ("Who Gets the Dog?") about a middle-class couple fumbling their way though a divorce, fighting over the sweet little puppy they picked up from the pound, who is now geriatric, is not the frantic Mexican music I grew up with in the 1950s.
