Music plays a large part of the daily flow of life in the Abbey, longtime readers will note that I’m always making comments about what we are listening to when we work. Pretty much from the moment we open the gates in the pre-dawn till far, far after everyone else in the building has fled, there is something playing. The Abbey crew are now made up of a pretty diverse cross section of musical tastes and I normally try to embrace the wide mixture of music we listen to over the course of the work day, I do draw the line at some things…. John Denver, for example, should only be enjoyed while watching re-runs of The Muppet Show, preferably while stoned.

We don’t always agree on music or even on what one defines as a particular genre. Take for example the often mocked, yet secretly adored genre of “Cock Rock” vs. “Butt Rock”

Yesterday found us in deep disagreement over what constituted “Butt Rock” and how it could possibly be different from “Cock Rock” or if there was a difference.

See, in my mind there is a difference. The music of the 1980’s that I would call “Butt Rock” is the kind of tunes that I could see a guy, sporting a wicked mullet and driving his still in primer late 70’s Firebird (complete with fuzzy dice) rocking out too while at the stoplight in front of the local mall. He may not be the best built of men, but his beer gut is well hidden by his Journey ¾ sleeve shirt and jean jacket. While “Cock Rockers” are those guys who would have hung out in front of the Whiskey a Go-Go in ultra tight “pleather” pants with hair that has had so much aqua-net applied to it that Greenpeace will be naming a hole in the ozone layer after him. Rail thin from a diet of too much coke and possibly even sporting eye liner. This, this is a cock rocker.

Explaining this theory to Tambo over breakfast this morning, she poised the question, “So what does that make stripper music?”
“Oh that is easy; it is all good stripper music as boobies are the universal musical currency.”