Music Where You Least Expect It

The gym I go to, the Jewish Community Center here in my neighborhood of Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, has prompted some surprising music-related thoughts. They play a very small and bizarre selection of music videos on the big television in the weight room, which is mounted right above one of the leg machines. One of the videos they play fairly often is "Soldier" by Destiny's Child (with T.I. and Lil Wayne), which prompted a 70-year old Jewish woman to remark to her trainer, a 30-year old African American guy, that she had seen Lil Wayne on the boardwalk in Florida and had gotten her picture taken with him, to send to her grandkids! How am I supposed to deal with that at 9:30 in the morning? The head spins.



(This is one of the more interesting dynamics at the gym, by the way. The clientele, at least when I show up on weekday mid-mornings, skews quite old and Jewish. But of the 6 trainers I've seen around, 4 of them are black guys around 30, who invariably end up training fairly old white men and women. Everyone seems to get along great, though, and for a bleeding heart liberal like myself, it's always nice to see a bit of interracial interacting and friendship.)

Anyway, back to music. Two other videos that they play fairly often are "That's Not My Name" by The Ting Tings and "Who's Got Your Money" by Tina Parol.






I've decided that these two songs sound a lot alike to my ears. (Also, "That's Not My Name" reminds me a hell of a lot of "Mickey" by Toni Basil--have others remarked on this? The faux marching band percussion, the layered vocals, it seems so obvious to me.)



Anyway, I've decided on an aesthetic judgement of "That's Not My Name" and "Who's Got Your Money." They're both absolute crap.