It's hard to escape the potent magic of pop music. Some consumers never do, hovering forever in thrall to three-minute sermons of neurotic idiocy blasting from the commercially conjoined pulpits of R&B, rock and country. In transmutations both alienating and horrifying, advanced pop fans occasionally evolve into stultifying snobs. For instance, I had a friend who would have kissed Bruce Springsteen's theatrically thrashed boots before condescending to enjoy David Byrne's solo work, because he deemed Springsteen's hangdog mythos "real" and Byrne's loopy anthropology "unrelatable." Akin to the dysfunctional discophiles of Stephen... More >>>