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2002-02-11 | 12:15 a.m.

In a review of Carl Hiaasen's latest book, Basket Case, Salon critic Charles Taylor writes:

Maybe it's fitting that 47-year-old Jack's pop-cultural touchstones would be a little dated, but Hiaasen needs to be hipper. "Basket Case" shares a problem with Elmore Leonard's "Be Cool" in that the rock references are so insistently mainstream that they seem more like the product of cramming than firsthand knowledge. It would be OK if rock 'n' roll stopped with Aerosmith for Jack Tagger if you also didn't get the feeling that it stopped there for Hiaasen, too.

When Jack says, "I switch to FM and doze off serenely to Bonnie Raitt," you think, what the hell else can you do to Bonnie Raitt? (Couldn't somebody have slipped Hiaasen some Sleater-Kinney, some Outkast, some White Stripes, some Aaliyah?)

This is a cheap shot, and reveals that Taylor hasn't spent much time in Florida, where the FM dial is chockablock with more or less the same soft rock that was playing when I left in 1981. Local favorites like Tom Petty, Jimmy Buffett, Eric Clapton and, yes, Aerosmith are way overplayed down there. (A comparison can be made to the way Chris Isaak and, to a lesser degree, Huey Lewis and the News are overplayed in the Bay Area.) There may----may----be a college station in Miami that plays Sleater-Kinney, but if it exists, I doubt the protagonist of Hiaasen's novel would be listening to it.

Neither does it escape me that my own pop-cultural references are woefully out of date. If pressed, I could name a song by Bonnie Raitt, but nothing by Sleater-Kinney, Outkast, White Stripes, or even Aaliyah (who was described to me, upon her death, as really famous). When I hear White Stripes, I think of a chewing gum brand with a zebra on the wrapper, and that's about it. Knowing that Sleater-Kinney is/are held in high regard around Diaryland, I downloaded some of their stuff and gave it a listen. It didn't help that Duff (who seems to hate it when I want to listen to something new, which I really don't understand) was making horrible faces at me, but even I thought it was totally derivative and boring; not fun at all. Of course, I was just listening to random songs, so maybe I missed their masterpi. Still, I don't see it. I am standing about three tree rings outside that particular zeitgeist.

It's true though that I don't hear any new music. I enjoy music but not like the audiophiles do. For years my friend Rory pretty much dictated my habits because he had strong opinions and seemed to buy every album that came out. But now Rory and I are estranged and Duff is the only person who ever brings new music into my life, and that only rarely. So it remains for the Web, Diaryland, and the odd television commercial to lead me in search of new things. If there's a song in the world I have to hear, please mention it in the guestbook, and I promise to listen.

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