Neighbours and music.
On Friday, Stewart was coming home late after having been out with some colleagues, and found our neighbours, Matt and Ciara, outside catching some air. They'd apparently been playing lots of music and dancing around, trying to find good danceable things to play at their party coming up. They were married last year, but they're having a big party in a castle in Italy (near where Ciara is from) for all of their relatives to celebrate. They're going to be playing music in roughly chronological order to cater for different age groups, playing lots of well-known stuff that everyone will like ... but they asked Stewart for some recommendations for danceable music to play at the end of the night, as apparently we know "good oontz oontz" (their words).
Fast forward to Saturday night, and they come over to ours. We play them some of our finest psytrance, ranging from the ambient and pretty through to some of the harder dance, and they really like it. We get chatting ... for several hours.
Apparently they can't really hear our music, only a soft "oontz oontz" sometimes when they don't have any background noise themselves - except in their bathroom. They related a tale from a party they'd had where one of their friends went to the loo, and came back a fair while later, dancing enthusiastically, and proclaiming that they should all come into the bathroom to have a listen. The fact that we play bouncy music sometimes at 8am (never loudly) seems to be a source of interest and amusement. The words "respect" and "I mean, that's serious" were mentioned.
By far the most interesting thing, however, was when we got talking politics, and economics. Both are fervent anti-capitalists, which we had no idea, and you couldn't guess. They both lecture at universities, Matt in politics, and Ciara in economics (and has done at Oxford), but both are acutely aware of the massive problems in the system. Matt mentioned something about inequality, and I mentioned the book The Spirit Level. As it turns out, not only are they extremely familiar with the book, they're actually friends with one of the authors, and have even lectured on the topic. So, we spent a very enjoyable evening talking about all of the Big Stuff, and attempting to put the world to rights. It seems they're much more like us than we thought!
Fast forward to Saturday night, and they come over to ours. We play them some of our finest psytrance, ranging from the ambient and pretty through to some of the harder dance, and they really like it. We get chatting ... for several hours.
Apparently they can't really hear our music, only a soft "oontz oontz" sometimes when they don't have any background noise themselves - except in their bathroom. They related a tale from a party they'd had where one of their friends went to the loo, and came back a fair while later, dancing enthusiastically, and proclaiming that they should all come into the bathroom to have a listen. The fact that we play bouncy music sometimes at 8am (never loudly) seems to be a source of interest and amusement. The words "respect" and "I mean, that's serious" were mentioned.
By far the most interesting thing, however, was when we got talking politics, and economics. Both are fervent anti-capitalists, which we had no idea, and you couldn't guess. They both lecture at universities, Matt in politics, and Ciara in economics (and has done at Oxford), but both are acutely aware of the massive problems in the system. Matt mentioned something about inequality, and I mentioned the book The Spirit Level. As it turns out, not only are they extremely familiar with the book, they're actually friends with one of the authors, and have even lectured on the topic. So, we spent a very enjoyable evening talking about all of the Big Stuff, and attempting to put the world to rights. It seems they're much more like us than we thought!