Robert Peters:

>Pablo Massa wrote, in response to me:
>
>>(Sorry for the delay.  I spent a vacation week at the beach, diving in a
>>tank full of sharks (I'm not joking).  ...
>
>Now this sounds terribly interesting.  Can't you send the whole story
>together with the music you thought of in this moment so that it would
>be totally on-topic. ...

A bad choice for that moment would be John Williams.  A good choice would
be Mahler's "Mutter, ach Mutter", with the following change at the lyrics:

Shark: "Mutter, ach Mutter, es hungert mich"

Pablo: "Let me go, or sterbe Ich!!!"

I Ieft RM for the hypothetical part in which sharks forces the submarine
cage and makes a Big Mac of me.

>>Besides, there's an additional problem: millions of people likes Ricky
>>Martin.  Yes, this is a problem, because they will *force* you to hear RM
>>at every time (at the bus, at a party, at the streets, etc) no matter if
>>you like or not, if you are in the mood or not.  You may call this "musical
>>pollution", and there should be laws against it.
>
>Now this sounds too North Corean for my Western ear.  A musical
>dictatorship - Pablo, you must be joking.

Not completely.  Tyranny's essence is the disrespect for laws (I got a
bit Johnsonian here).  At least that has been the essence of Latin American
dictatorships.  However, I want to be clear.  For "musical pollution" I
don't mean the existence of music that I don't like.  By this I mean the
indiscriminated spread of *any* music at high volumes, no matter if that
can bother some people or not.  A weird shaking the walls with Bruckner
at 4:00 in the morning is also a musical pollutor, obviously.

>What about buying a discman and listening to classical music instead? Or
>using a car to come from A to B?

Heh, heh...  here's the trap:  precisely at the prices of cars and
discmans....  Nowadays in Argentina you must be a sort of millionaire
(or a Trapist monk) in order to buy some silence.

>Well, if complaining brings about change, it is certainly worth the
>effort. But I can't see that your ranting against poor crooning Ricky
>Martin changes anything.

Poor?.  What about me?.  However, I must confess that I would gladly change
my place for his.  The amount and quality of the girls you meet being a pop
singer is the determinant factor of this speculation.

>Now this is cruel, Pablo.  If you really want to torture a bus driver with
>classical music, take Wagner.  It is a tough punishment, too, but the guy
>has a chance to recover (slowly).

Can you imagine an Argentine bus driver trying to invade Poland at the
wheel of his Scania?...  brrr!!!...  What a nightmare...

>>After that, I'll ask to the poor guy: "got my
>>point, partner?".  Some people will say that I'm a sort of monster, but
>>I'll just be giving back what I receive everyday.
>
>Now I understand the state Argentina is in...  ;-)

You wrote it as a joke, but you don't imagine how right are you.  We have
a long, long date moral crisis, and the economical bankrupt is just a
consequence of it, among many others.  That sounds a bit naive, but even
economists have begun to think this way.  However, wouldn't like to extend
my message out of topic.

>What about asking the bus driver to play Piazzolla? After all Argentina
>is the country of tango.

Well, modern bus drivers don't know even who's Piazzolla (au contraire, I'm
"obliged" to know who is RM).  Older bus (and taxi) drivers used to be the
traditional experts on tango, but most of them were very old fashioned.
They used to say that "Piazzolla's music is anything, except tango".

Pablo Massa
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