Re: [Harp-L] is your partner in the crowd?

[martin oldsberg <martinoldsberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

To put a slightly off topic spin the above question I think it would be interesting to know what kind of tolerance you find in friends and such for what may be called "harmonica music". (Harmonica music, loosely defined as music with a prominent, center stage, harmonica in it.)
  
  The harmonica geek (an illness of which I have a tempered affliction) has an enormous openminded-ness towards things harmonical (sometimes almost literally so: you can practically see the hole in the head) and thinks that another version of whatever burned out old chestnut you can rake out of the scrapheap is just fine as long as it features a ... -- you guess.
  
  To reintroduce spouses: My wife screams -- and not with delight -- when I, once a year or so, play any of my Charlie Mccoy records, no matter that I point to the sometimes palpably apparent harmonica qualities in the work.
  Being the tender loving caring hubby that I am I of course immediatly reach out for the volume knob, and turn it ... up, to drown out the screams. But some resentment lingers.
 
  I shall not even mention what happened when I once put on a find from the bargain bin, by a theretofore to me unknown supergroup by the name of "The Hotcha Trio". (This record will, by the way, be donated to anyone who cares to make a visit to my home.)
  On the other hand, when I played one of JJ Milteau´s albums that has a slight elevator music touch to it, a friend who was visiting spontaneously commented: "Hey, great stuff!", and he has never played a harmonica, nor expressed any particular kind of interest in harmonica music.
 
  So the question is: what can your friends with an ear for music stand in terms of harmonica? "Candlelight, wine and Charlie"? "Peg of my heart" for the umpteenth time? Or does it have to be blues -- where the harmonica seems to have a sort of natural habitat -- for it to go down? 
  How disturbed are we?
 
Cheers,
Martin