This is mostly a ramble, but there's a bit of rant too. Since I know that at least some of us are heavily influenced by music, I hope this will not be too...stupid, or silly or whatever.

So I had this great line pop into my head that felt like something Ryan O'Reilly would say and it ended with "except for that time I saw ___ in concert". [Gosh, does that sound like a question on Match Game or what?? LOL] And after a couple of minutes of trying to fill in the blank, I realized that I absolutely couldn't do it and hope to be accurate because Tom-Fontana-the-creator-in-his-infinite-wisdom (hereafter known simply as "Tom") has never given us any indication of what Ryan's musical preferences may be. Well, you might say, "He appears to be from New York so it's a good bet that he doesn't listen to country music." Yes, but that doesn't rule it out because there are country fans in major cities all over the world. "Well, he grew up poor so he's probably not a fan of Classical." True, but I couldn't prove it, one way or the other--maybe they made him listen to it in school and it grew on him? Rap, rock and roll, punk, Sinatra, The Chieftains, Celine Dion? Who knows? I can't begin to guess. Tom hasn't given us much to go on with other characters either, and I understand that prison is about isolation and they don't have boomboxes and stereo systems in their pods. But Adebisi and Kenny have/had music on their Walkmans (Walkmen??), and I've forgotten what exact phrase Kenny used to describe the
tape his cousin sent him, but it was some variety of rap/hiphop/urban music (and IIRC, he used to have a JayZ poster in his cell, that was probably in B block though, not that matters all that much...) Ummm...where was I?

My point? Well, this is a more widespread problem than just Oz. I have never been able to settle on a musical preference for Fox Mulder or Alex Krycek that's based on anything passing for Canon. Poor Alex comes and goes and gives us so little of himself, that most of the time he's just trying to survive (or push the plot along in some mysterious way) with no time for leisure pursuits or personal preferences beyond clothes and weapons. And Mulder...I just don't know about him. There may have been hints, but with him anything could be a joke.

And then there are those lovely instances where characters come right out and say "I like this" or we see/hear them listening to a particular song or type of music. We know that Jim Ellison likes Santana and Blair likes earth music (whatever that is and frankly, those could be fanon since TS seems to have more of it than any other fandom I've run up against. I don't know the Canon personally.).

On Once a Thief, Victor said straight out "if it wasn't written by an old blind guy from Mississippi, it ain't music" or something to that effect.  So we know he likes the Blues, delta blues in particular, although he also listens to the more homegrown variety of Big Sugar in the
pilot movie (a choice I heartily approve of ;-). In "Rave On", Mac seemed completely unfamiliar with the different types of music in the clubs that they were investigating (Techno or something similar, I'm not up on all the specific terminologies).  Yet in "Drive She Said", he seems to be a big fan of that same kind of music, although the bands that Victor read off the CD's sounded made up to me. [I won't even go into OaT's rather odd idea of "continuity"]

Highlander is another one that has come right out and showed the characters listening to or talking about or *playing* music, so that gives a good starting point. Similarly, the characters on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer are practically surrounded by music--in the Bronze, at parties, on the
soundtrack--so some inferences could be drawn from there. And if all else fails, a writer could believably have a character humming the newest song by Dingoes Ate My Baby. <g>  [Or they *could* have...dammit, Joss, bring Oz back!]

And I could go on, but I won't. So of the writers who actually use lyrics or lots of references to music (yes, I'm one of them ;-), what do we do? Go with something that *we* like and what we think *fits* the character(s). Is there something wrong with that? Not that I can see (since I do that too), except when there's a certain trend that develops.

Like Sarah MacLachlan (SP?) has become the slash writer's choice performer [although this may be a horribly dated observation now]. Now whether this is because her lyrics are particularly given to slashy interpretation or just because the writers themselves really dig her music, I'm not sure. I think it's usually some combination of the two. I have no problem with using lyrics as a addendum, an introduction, or to separate sections, and that's where slashy or character interpretation works best, I think.[although it can be overdone, and I have] But when the character is *listening* to music I think some care should be made to not let personal preference take precedence over the character's tastes. And I've actually heard this excuse/argument/what have you, "Well, *I* love Sarah so of *course* RayK, Krycek, Victor, Mulder, Fraser, Blair,
fill-in-the-blank loves Sarah..." I'm not ragging on Sarah or her fans--she was just an easy example that crosses all fandom barriers (or seems to, anyway). [I personally have no opinion of Sarah M., one way or the other. She doesn't turn my crank, but I don't dislike her either. Yep, this is one comfy fence.]

Hmmm, I seem to have forgotten where this ramble was going... I do know this: I STILL don't know what kind of concert Ryan O'Reilly might have gone to in his life. <g> [Although, I have, since I originally wrote this, gotten some excellent, thoughtful, and hysterically funny suggestions.]

I'm also rethinking my own lyric-usage. I had one story pulled from my website (that needed a major rewrite *anyway* to fix lots of suckiness both big & small) to take out the lyrics and I'm thinking about doing it to a couple more where the lyrics really don't add to anything but the word count. But I'm just thinking about it at this point. Inertia and my own basic laziness will probably win out in the end and they'll stay right where they are. Besides there's probably not much use in fooling with stuff that is in archives and webpages all over the net anyway...right? [Webmistress has threatened me with all kinds of horrible stuff--like learning HTML, myself--if I actually do what I suggested above.]

And I'm not going to even touch having a character sing. Velvet Goldmine and Hard Core Logo could get away with it because they are *about* singers--Joe Dawson on Highlander can sing *anytime* he wants to--but not much else works for actual performance-type singing.  Singing in the shower, while wearing headphones, along with the car radio are acceptable on a case by case basis--especially if it's *intentionally* funny.

If it's intentionally funny, I'll go with just about *anything*--except males who get pregnant.  That's just not a kink I'm ever going to get, and I'm quite happy with that.