GOOD AND BAD, I DEFINE THESE TERMS QUITE CLEAR…
—BOB DYLAN
In Gramophone Dream #79, I described how my mother started me on a path where I am compelled to look and touch and listen and read my way to “good taste in everything.” “Books and manners,” she called it. She viewed these social proficiencies as something people put on like clothes.
But for me, taste has a deeper significance. I see it as regulated by an internalized moral and socio-spiritual code that forces me to recognize how little I I prefer one artist, style, or genre to another. This why-oriented introspection is important because when I take this type of inventory, it is easy to see how much a lifetime of experiences—drugs, deejays, hot rods, unruly girls, and my cohort of white suburban buddy-pals—have influenced my taste in everything, especially cars and music.
