In the past little while, several factors have conspired to confront me to the fact that there’s a gaping hole in my musical culture. Actually, that’s not exactly true: I have no musical culture. A near-autistic knowledge of 80s pop hits has to be proof of that, right?

With the physical training, I’ve recently had a lot of iPod time, making me keenly aware that I’ve been listening to the same 200 songs for years. My guitar teacher wants me to provide songs for us to work on, and my suggestions are uninspired and narrowminded. Franz Ferdinand is part of my existence simply because he’s (they’re?) in a videogame.

It’s all the more embarrassing because I have good friends who make me compilation CDs, are gifted podcasters, take me to concerts, and make a quasi-profession out of following the concert scene. My horizons really shouldn’t be so narrow. And now, I’m hungry for new tunes. But where do you start when you don’t even know what you like, and there is such a mass of stuff out there?

Today was one of those rainy days you use to attend to life maintenance. And instead of tightening the screws on the front door, or migrating the blog over to WordPress, I decided to really try and start plugging the gap. Determined, I sat in front of iTunes and started listening and discovering. Using the new “if you like that, you like this” feature of iTunes 6.0.4, and more suggestions from Amazon, I followed recommendations and sampled hundreds of songs and artists, finally getting an idea of where my tastes lie.

Wow. A few hours later, I’ve only scratched the surface of a new universe, feel like even more of a musical idiot than before, but can tell Groove Armada from Modest Mouse. I’ve even found myself a few new loves.

I can’t say I’m looking forward to the next rainy day, but I might actually know what section to visit when I (definitely) stop at Archambault this week.