I just recommended Breakfast Club (the band) to the black dude at CVS who complimented my Michael Jackson “Bad” tour shirt. And I really don’t know why, but diversity is something I really value, and nowhere is it manifest with greater meaning and vitality than in music.
At my current job, in Terre Haute Indiana at Charlie’s, my favorite times are when basically any black person puts on music, thereby releasing some classy, smooth, seen-it-all type vibes. Just last week I heard a personal favorite of mine, 2pac’s “How Do U Want it,” and then on the same night discovered that “Some Kind of Wonderful” is actually not a Grand Funk original (hence making the decision easier to name “I’m Your Captain” as said band’s best song), but rather the work of the Motown phenoms the Soul Brothers — equine young lads with vocal chords of veritable Detroit tungsten.
Just a couple more quick anecdotes that make me very much appreciate ethnic plurality are: getting a compliment from a black dude working the McDonald’s drive through in my hometown of South Bend one time of Suicide Machines – Destruction by Definition… I think it must have been “No Face” probably (Suicide Machines are actually from Detroit which I used to not know and also have the scintillating Beach-Boys-on-meth crooner of “No Sale” under their creative belts). The other thing I’d like to mention is that one time, at possibly the best place on Earth, Asheville Brewing Co. in downtown Asheville (where I enjoyed, yes, a jalapeno IPA by same brewery), this black dude and I got to talking about our favorite concerts of all time. I mentioned The Roots as mine, rock, rap, jazz and classical included, and he named the Beastie Boys (whom I’ve also seen live with Tenacious D in the ’08 Rock the Vote tour and who kicked a**), so we were like an exact yin and yang of each other.