23: If your partner doesn’t like your genre of music is the relationship doomed?

This chapter is proof I DO write about things beyond the multitudes of traumatic episodes of my life. Heck, some people might consider this to be light reading.

Tiger Woods after a horrible round of golf during the 2008 Arnold Palmer Invitational. I have no idea if he was thinking about conflicting musical tastes or not. Photographers aren’t supposed to ask questions.

Think about it: is the relationship doomed if the person you are dating does not appreciate your genre(s) of music?

I openly admit that until very recently, my interest in music ended when Nirvana started singing about teenage deodorant. For those out there who have no idea what that means, I prefer 80s club mixes, not what was called “grunge” or “angst” music.

Until very recently I hadn’t listened to many songs by Coldplay, nor did I know how deeply committed they are to several causes, my eyes were opened a bit more. I blame American radio behemoths for what I listened to back “in the day”.

Sorry, I strayed from what I set out to type about.

Seriously, we all have our guilty pleasure songs, two of mine are Dead or Alive’s “Brand New Lover” and Depeche Mode’s “Strangelove”.

My last partner (because there comes a time in life that the term girlfriend just seems too high schoolish) was from Boston and somehow she was full on into country. Raised on Italian standards via albums, but she preferred country for many decades. I would ask and she would just say something about how she just preferred it. What is funny is that we actually may have bumped into each other when she and her girlfriends were partying at 701 South in Daytona during Spring Break in the late 80s She knew exactly who I was once she figured out I was the house photographer, ok, the ONLY photographer in the house. She asked what I did during Spring Break and 701 was one of my clients and my preferred Daytona haunt. In exchange for free drinks and a bit of quasi-clout, I was their photographer and that was how I talked Mtv into paying me to be their Spring Break photographer. I lived Spring Break in Daytona from January through a couple of weeks past the official end, Easter Sunday.

I know what you are thinking, “Mark, what the hell is quasi-clout?” Well, I knew the owner of the Texan Motel (where 701 South was located) and a few of my friends were quite vocal about a radio commercial that compared the long-running infamous “Sunday Bloody Sunday” alternative music night “like Halloween every Sunday”. It ran a couple of times and I told Al Cohen, the owner of the Texan Motel that many of his regulars outright hated the new commercial. He asked me what I would do and told him to kill it immediately. He picked up the phone and called the one radio station that played that particular ad and told them to kill the current ad and replace it with the generic “Sunday Bloody Sunday” ad.

Within an hour or so that ad ran and I got goosebumps because I sorta had a hand in making that happen. Al didn’t need to listen to me, he pretty much printed cash nightly, regardless of the day of the week it was via that club. But he respected the club kids who were very loyal to him every Sunday. 

I also love 80s club music and she had no desire to go to a Depeche Mode concert, but I gifted her tickets to a Garth Brooks show when he was in Orlando. The irony is that the one song I wanted to sing with her, she was away from our seats.

All of the radio buttons in her car were set for the local country stations, yes, dear readers, the area around Daytona Beach hosts multiple country stations. I would change one to the NPR station and she was like “dude, I can’t with you, just stop” as she changed it back.

Mark, DUDE! What do you have against red-blooded country music!! Nothing. I grew up in an era where Lawrence Welk was on before Hee Haw and then a couple of decades later I was hired by the producers of the TV show “Live from the Cheyenne” to shoot production and PR photos of their shows, it seemed like a month or two long gig, but I honestly think it was maybe three/four weeks of tapings. 

I shot the season that the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after being launched. I wasn’t at that launch because though I had credentials, I was too tired to drive over there. We had a rare day off that day and I gave my creds to someone else who had never seen a shuttle launch. 

My last roommate was into late 80s hair bands and was friends with several of the