Things here were quiet today. Not too quiet, a movie trope which doesn’t really occur in really life. It was just the right amount of quiet. If, that is, spending an hour and 45 minutes on the phone is your idea of the right amount of quiet.
The first call was one hour. And it was a long hour. Also, it was barely productive. But, I did get my email added to an account. This took an hour.
Also the poor woman who had to deal with me had her mind go blank when she was trying to suggest I look something up on “that search index.”
What is it called? Oh yeah, Google. Or that other one, oh, she said, which one is it, I forget. But you can, she said, in her proper Texan drawl, look, oh, yeah, you can look it up on YouTube.
Because I was calling 1996, apparently.
No, I said into my Nokia candy bar phone, I prefer AltaVista.
On my second call, I found myself talking to a guy from Massachusetts. He wasn’t even with the company I needed, but he assured me he is passionate about this work, and he gave me a 45 minute education on something I knew nothing about.
This makes me wonder about the extent of customer service and phone calls as reputation devices. Let’s be fair. That first woman, she might have just been having an off afternoon. Perhaps she was new. Maybe she was multitasking. It is very possible that the things I was asking her about isn’t something she does a lot, or maybe she wasn’t even well trained in that particular area. Any of these are possible, and it’s just one person and one call, but the experience leaves you with a feeling, doesn’t it? The second person I talked to, he was on top of his game, explained things in conceptual and operational ways. Patiently let me distill his knowledge and his explanation into loosely applicable analogies. Corrected me a lot. Repeated himself as necessary. It was great.
I told that guy to have a great weekend, and that, when the time came, I was going to do business with his company. He’s just the work-from-home customer rep. He’s not even in the state I’m talking about. It could be an entire one-off. But Tyler made the lasting impression today.
Weird how these things work, and how we justify and rationalize things based on them.
So a quiet day.
Also, I watched the second half of this video today.
That could be subtitled “the things you don’t read about in books.”
But if that’s too grim, this is nonsensical and fun. It is amusing to see a real pro like John Oliver get upstaged, lose his bearing and be a fan.
I never noticed, though, how Cookie Monster has no shoulders. That’s a wardrobe problem.
I wrote recently about Sean Demery in the Re-Listening project, and this one gets back to him, too. He’ll probably pop up once or twice more as we continue on, but he played this breakthrough single a lot in Atlanta, and that’s where I found it.
I’ve also mentioned how I load these in the CD player without looking at the discs. So while I can sometimes remember what’s next in the old CD books, a lot of times the disc change is an exciting little mystery. The first track on this record is the big single, and from the initial A it’s immediately, distinctively recognizable.
Those guys got signed in high school, they were 20 when that song accidentally blew up. The single topped the Modern Rock charts and took over Billboard’s Heatseekers new artists chart. The record went platinum. They pushed out four more singles, but most of them didn’t resonate with me.
But this one, it’s got a catchy little hook, and it’ll stick with you all day, and into tomorrow, if you aren’t careful.
Also, look how impossibly young those guys are.
They released two more records before splitting up in 2004. While the first went platinum, the second was certified gold. But the third disappointed, commercially. A few years later they got back on the road. There was an EP in 2021, and a full album in 2022. I listened to a little of it. Still noisy. Not really my type of noise anymore, though. I saw them on the summer festival circuit in their big boomlet. But they’re not touring right now.
Also, their website is written by ChatGPT, maybe.
eve6 isn’t a very good band. they got lucky and had like a hit and a half like twenty years ago and sold some records but who cares. they’ve had all the terminally predictable ups and downs of every other band thats been chewed up and spit out by the machine … eve6 thinks music industry people are the worst people in the world and this includes label people, lawyers, publicists, managers, radio program directors, music supervisors etc. thanks for taking the time away from your fake slack job to read this.
Counter-counterculture, I guess.
There’ll be a lot of music here in the coming days, and some of it will be in the form of the Re-Listening project. The next installment here is from a soundtrack. And it’ll probably be brief. You’re welcome for that.
Be it noisy or loud, have a great weekend, at the decibel level of your choice!
