{"id":17200,"date":"2013-01-21T11:43:01","date_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=17200"},"modified":"2013-01-21T12:49:42","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T17:49:42","slug":"listen-but-dont-look-kat-edmonson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/listen-but-dont-look-kat-edmonson\/","title":{"rendered":"Listen But Don&#8217;t Look: Kat Edmonson and the Potential Hazards of Listening With One&#8217;s Groin"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/X0ez1A98RCY?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>Last night while flipping channels I stopped for a few minutes on an <em>Austin City Limits<\/em> performance by someone named <strong>Kat Edmonson<\/strong>. I&#8217;d never heard of this woman before, and I was primed to dislike her. The guide description referred to her as a &#8220;jazz singer.&#8221; She had an upturned pixie nose, which is usually a slight turnoff for my deservedly high standards (because lord knows I&#8217;ve got God&#8217;s ideal nose and deserve only the best noses). She wore a cute red dress and stood, cutely, at the mic stand in front of a large band of musicians playing quietly and tastefully. She had a cute squeaky voice. Her music wasn&#8217;t bad, though, even for <em>that<\/em> kind of music. And she was cute in a pixie cute way, a bit of a cross between <strong>Naomi Watts<\/strong> and <strong>Kirsten Dunst<\/strong> in a pixie &#8216;do. Her songs were kind of cute, too, but stopped short of cloying.<\/p>\n<p>The more I watched the more I actually appreciated her music\u2014as much as I can appreciate that stuff\u2014<em>and<\/em> just how cute I found her, in an attainable musician way. Isn&#8217;t that the point of rock &#8216;n roll (or related genres), according to my close personal friend <strong>E. Pluribus Gergely<\/strong>, to project youthful beauty while carrying a good tune? I was confused. I thought of my man <strong>BigSteve<\/strong>&#8216;s <a title=\"Listen But Don't Look Principle\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-listen-but-don-t-look-principle\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Listen But Don&#8217;t Look Principle<\/em><\/a>, which cautions against making musical judgments based on an artist&#8217;s visual presentation. I was caught in a possible reverse-Listen But Don&#8217;t Look conundrum: I may have been lured into liking this woman&#8217;s music because I dug how girly her overall vibe was. Yeah, that&#8217;s right: I dig girly girl stuff now and then!<\/p>\n<p>I value my exquisite taste in music above almost all other qualities. Rarely do I find my powers of observation and cool-headed analysis swayed by something so primitive as a stirring in my loins, but last night I had to wonder if I was experiencing one of those <em>only human<\/em> moments I&#8217;ve tried to counsel many of you through.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I would not have had quite this hang-up if my first exposure to Edmonson had been this &#8220;official&#8221; video for her song &#8220;I Don&#8217;t Know,&#8221; a song I liked a lot when she performed it on <em>Austin City Limits<\/em>, minus the tongue-in-cheek (I think) bad Meg Ryan movie-style dancing.<\/p>\n<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MXl_BRC1-5s?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>This video falls squarely into our understanding of the Listen But Don&#8217;t Look Principle. Watching it is a severe detriment to enjoying the music, I guess unless you&#8217;re some kind of 20-year-old aspiring suburban drama queen. But what about performances featuring <a title=\"Drop-the-Cat Moment\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/drop-the-cat-video\" target=\"_blank\">drop-the-cat moments<\/a>, in which some smokin&#8217; imagery may trick us into liking the music more than we normally would? For instance, would I have liked the music of Kat Edmonson if confronted by the visage of <strong>Pink<\/strong> or <strong>Courtney Love<\/strong>? Highly doubtful. They may top my list of <em>Women I&#8217;d Choose Men Over<\/em>, and if I were flipping channels late on a Sunday night and found them singing some kind of &#8220;pixie jazz&#8221; music I&#8217;d keep flipping as fast as my thumb would take me. (For the record, actor <strong><a title=\"Paul Dano\" href=\"http:\/\/img.poptower.com\/pic-27984\/paul-dano.jpg?d=1024\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Dano<\/a><\/strong> tops my list of <em>Guys I&#8217;d Choose Pink and Maybe Even Courtney Love Over<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the deal: after a good night&#8217;s sleep I&#8217;m still thinking I actually liked the music of Kat Edmonson. I&#8217;m going to buy one of her records. Is that wrong? Is that consistent with the high musical standards I&#8217;ve displayed in public through the years? Is this going to bring the same hammer down on me that my wife gave me when I declared that Naomi Watts was &#8220;great&#8221; in <em>We Don&#8217;t Live Here Anymore<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s easy for you to say,&#8221; she said, &#8220;considering she was nude through half the movie!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Have you ever felt conflicted about liking an artist whose music is outside your comfort zone at the possibility that you were listening with your groin?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night while flipping channels I stopped for a few minutes on an Austin City Limits performance by someone named Kat Edmonson. I&#8217;d never heard of this woman before, and I was primed to dislike her. The guide description referred to her as a &#8220;jazz singer.&#8221; She had an upturned pixie nose, which is usually <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/listen-but-dont-look-kat-edmonson\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[772],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}