I saw a Far Side cartoon once with a man in a listening booth with Top-40 hits piped in. The caption was "Charlie Parker in hell."

The worst part of being in prison, a mental hospital, or the military is having to listen to somebody else's shitty music, not being able to find a quiet place to read, and not being able to listen to your own music.

In the barracks I lived in after I was reclassified it was what I called the Hi-Fi Wars, between shitkicker music and urban ghetto music.

I didn't mind Hank Williams, Left Frizzell, or Jimmy Rodgers. Merle Haggard. But the music you had to listen to between one of their songs was horrible.

And I liked jazz, and blues, and rhythm-and-blues, but I didn't like doo-wop music, or the Supremes. Motown. Motown was Bobby Brown picking shit-BBs out of Whitney Houston's ass.

These were both playing in the barracks, simultaneously, at peak volume, all day and all night.

Plus, over in the dayroom was a sitcom on TV with a laff-track. The braying jackass laugh that puts one's teeth on edge.

These are like the dying rabbit screams the FBI played at the Branch Davidian compound to drive the people inside nuts.

It drove me nuts.

In the base cafeteria, where I went to drink beer, I had to listen to the Big Bopper sing "Chantilly Lace" or Ritchie Valens sing "La Bamba." Or Buddy Holly sing "Peggy Sue."

Over and over.

I guess that wasn't shitkicker music or urban ghetto music. That was pop music. White teenager popular music.

It was maudlin, obvious, over-produced, cloying. It was mind-numbingly simple, repetitious, unimaginative, clichéed.