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"Meeting John Coltrane" or "Other Bad Roommates"
I've had other lousy roommate experiences.
When I was a student at Berklee College of Bad Fusion, I had two roommates:
Phil and Darrel. We shared a tiny infested room.
Phil was a real jackass. He thought he was a tough kid from the mean streets of Philadelphia who played jazz. He was a rich kid from Cherry Hill, NJ who used to listen to Rush.
Phil was a real schmuck. He believed experimental sax player John Zorn was a Jazz visionary. Zorn may have done some good stuff, but he's also done some total crap. One day, my friend Chad was playing Napalm Death on his stereo. Phil had the nerve to come into Chad's room just to tell him what he was listening to was crap. A month later, John Zorn was in a band called Pain Killer with the guys from Napalm Death. Phil was listened to Pain Killer, which sounded like Napalm Death with a Sax, claiming it was visionary genius. It's not.
I couldn't stand Phil. Therefore, to annoy him as much as possible, whenever he was in the room, I played show tunes. He hated them. He was also homophobic, which in a music college that is 90% male (50% of whom have long hair), is an especially bad thing. I still remember a wonderful moment. It sounded like an orchestral piece to him (there was an orchestra), so he started talking about some Charles Ives thing. Then he heard it, "The hills are alive with the sound of music." He left and didn't come back for several hours.
The other roommate, Darrel, was ok. We lived in the same room for about 4 months, but I barely noticed that he existed. He was from some place out in Pennsylvania. All he did was watch TV, listen to Extreme (remember them), and try to play Extreme on guitar. By the end of it all, I had "more than words" for him.
When we first moved in, there were signs up all over Berklee saying, "Come meet John Coltrane at the library," obviously meaning become acquainted with his work. When Darrel saw Phil's collection of John Coltrane CDs, he said, "Hey, you know, I saw signs up in the café. That Coltrane guy is coming to the library." (John Coltrane - 1926-1967)
(This reminds me of the time in high school when I had a Charles Mingus tape in my car. It was a copy that said "Mingus" on the label. One of my metal head friends gets in my car, sees the tape, and says, "Mingus, I think I've heard of them.")
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