Instances where your impeccable taste in music was mistaken for ignorance, soullessness, philistinism, etc.

I took a sculpture class when I was studying abroad in Paris. The instructor, a sensual half-French, half-Mexican woman who was forced to sculpt with one hand due to chronic muscle strain, asked if anyone in the class happened to have any music with them. I couldn't remember exactly what I had in my backpack, but I suspected most of it wasn't suitable for the environment, so I didn't say anything. Class continued and the instructor insisted that someone had music with them, and that they should put it on. (I think it was the first day we were working with a nude model, and everyone in the studio, including the model, was noticeably reserved.) Finally, I mentioned that I had some music with me, and everyone encouraged me to put it on. I went to my backpack, and the most genial album I had with me was The Feelies' Crazy Rhythms. I started the album, turned the volume down, and went back to work. The next ten minutes were unbearable. No one said a word. I felt like I was performing my own music for a roomful of eager critics, and I couldn't help but interpret glances between the other students as tacit agreements that the music sucked. Finally, after the fourth track or so, the instructor, evidently reaching some kind of understated boiling point, said, "I'm sorry, but does anyone else have music with them?" There were a few murmurs of assent. Not even the kid with the Lode records shirt came to my defense. "Something with some melody or," despite the album's title, "rhythm? This is not conducive to the artistic process." Shamed, I turned the music off. Then some awful, unnourished, douche bag hippie put on the Beatles... After class, a girl from Southern California who happened to be an obsessive music message board reader said she liked it and felt bad for me, and we ended up hooking up a few weeks later.

Also in Paris, I woke up in bed with a Swedish girl I had met the night before who had come to my house with some of her friends for an impromptu party. Nothing all that serious had happened-- she had just been too drunk to go home (or realize that I was three inches her minor)-- so things weren't too awkward, but I don't think she remembered my name. She refused my offer of cereal, but did help me clean the apartment. She was looking at some CDs on my bookshelf and saw a copy of ABBA's Arrival. "Hey, ABBA! That is an awesome record," I told her. She was horrified. "They are, like, the worst band ever." I saw how, being Swedish, she probably grew up thinking of them the way I think of, say, David Hasselhoff, an entity apparently adored by other countries but ridiculed and maligned in its own. I explained that, really, I know that ABBA seemed corny, but they were actually one of the greatest bands ever, and that album was one of my personal favorites. She couldn't accept it. "I know that some things that aren't cool," she said, "people pretend to like them because they think that it will make them cool. ABBA isn't one of those things. They are not cool." I let it go, and we discussed the greatness of The Knife before she left... One of my friends started dating her best friend, so I saw her a few more times, but now I just semi-cyber-stalk her on MySpace. The current song on her profile is Orange Juice's "Falling and Laughing."