Oxford MS - Music Snobbery, Peanut Butter

I ate my lunch in Tupelo at PB Loco, where all they serve are grilled Peanut Butter sandwiches! There was an Unwrapped episode that had a similar restaurant, but this one was quite refined. You can eat in a living room setup with huge comfy couches and a TV. I settled on the Cinny Vanilly, with Sumatran Cinammon, raisins, granny smith apples and caramel. (!!!) Along with the standard stuff - bananas, marshmallow fluff, etc. - you can get:

• Special PB: Curry, Tomato, Chocolate
• Vegetables: Lettuce, Tomato, Pickles (just like Dad used to make!)
• Meat: Bacon, Bologna
• Stuff Your Mother Would Never Let You Eat on a Sandwich: M & M's
  

Oxford MS, the home of Ole Miss, feels a bit abandoned - it's Spring Break after all. But it's very peaceful, and I have just had the best sleep of my entire trip. Over to the right, you can see the view from my 2nd floor balcony. Nice!

Ole Miss is best known for denying James Meridith admission in 1962. Not something you want to be known for. But they have come to some terms with it. I viewed some interesting letters to James Meredith on display:

• An African American woman: "stay with your own kind!"
• A white senator: "what you are doing is more important than Sputnik."
• A lawyer: "Why go where people don't want you? Stay and use your talents to further the proud Negro race." (It doesn't say, but you can probably guess this person's white.)

I was amazed at how many people countered Civil Rights organizations with "They're backed by the Communists." My guess is many believed it, but if there were incontrovertible proof to the contrary, it would've made no difference.

At the Ole Miss bookstore, I found myself published in the latest Rolling Stone. Yippee! OK, it's not much. But now millions of people from all over the world will read my letter and say:

"That Craig Reek is a music snob."

Yeah well. You should've seen the two sentences they cut! "You remember when you gave Nirvana's Nevermind three stars? This is right up there with that." OK, maybe after 15 years, I should let that one go.

But such is the life of music snobs. They live to handicap the horse race of popular music. The one thing, the only thing, that matters in music is to give people transcendent moments. You know what I mean if you and your partner have "a song". People react to these moments in different ways - some dance, some look up for a moment and nod their head. Music snobs respond by proselytizing. To do that, and find those transcendent moments still there 10 or 15 years later, is validation of their existence.

I bought 5 copies. The clerk rang them up. The person next to me said, "Wow, 5 copies!"

"For my mother," I replied. *

The guy next to me laughed, the clerk didn't. We snobs must stick together, you know.


* The joke is from Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show's immortal "Cover of the Rolling Stone.": "(Rolling Stone) Gonna see my picture on the cover (Stone) Gonna buy five copies for my mother (Stone) Gonna see my smiling face ... On the cover of the Rolling Stone!" Interestingly, I heard the Nashville variant "Cover of the Music City News" first in my childhood, and thought Dr. Hook was ripping it off.