Found a particular album last night whilst fumbling through the cd case on my way to the Cantab - I carry around an unreasonable number of albums for a man who lives in the modern age, has two laptops (3 if one does not require function for credit) and an ipod (albeit an itty-bitty one). Three cd books of different sizes, a sturdy cardboard winebox and whatever cases that failed to make it there or the back seat strewn about the footwell of the passenger seat as a shiny, strobe-rug.
Often play a game wherein, rather than trying to find any album in particular (because this is impossible), I flip a book open or grab at random from the box and stuff that cd into the dash and have at for as long as can be stood.
This game yielded Rocket by Primitive Radio Gods - which immediately led to 'Standing outside a broken phonebooth with money in my hand'. Which in turn caused an almost violent wash of nostalgia and memorial fugue. Those images in particular fade quick - even now, sitting in the shop, I cannot recall specifically what 'Phonebooth' brings up - this is how the very best dreams are ruined by needing to piss in the morning and the long, cold walk to the john.
But it got me thinking about the songs that do this best - really explode from nowhere and return me physically to the time I was listening to them; and this is the requirement, that it effects the body - the right song makes me smell things, feel differently, not just accelerating the heart and making me vaguely emo.
To whit - I think more internet savvy people call this sort of thing a meme, but I am not sure, because I am not one of them.
Top 10 Songs I Can Think Of What Make Me Move Through The Fabric Of My Life Come Before And Where It Is They Take Me. in no particular order.
1. Showerhead - Eve 6 - Eve 6 - In that somewhat lozenge-like haze of summers I spent at St. Joe's the 'Guys' spent a lot of time driving places and feeling very deep and important; of all the ridiculous things we discussed and argued about, fought over and took far too seriously, I still feel the discussions we had about albums were on target and that much of how I look at albums as a structured idea with value is still informed by them. More specifically, Zac, Brady and myself spent a good deal of time convinced that this song was epically important.
On the rare instances I manage to find that album or roll across some indie college rock station tuned to the back rightmost portion of my skull, I find myself in Brady's Camry going....somewhere...probably too fast. It's usually a complicated visual, as I spent much of the time in that backseat (the only one I was ever comfortable sitting in for any length of time) staring out the window thinking really hard about A. Sara and B. what I must look like looking out the window. Watching oneself watching oneself is a complicated, Jungian effort at the best of times and mostly forces me to refocus on the early nature of my presumptions on love. Showerhead is not a nice song, per say, and the almost desperate way we, as a group, sought to locate songs that fit very perfectly into our lives and situations made for some choices that seem...questionable at best. More on songs meaning something different in the moment than it would later be obvious that they did to come.
I know you know Eve 6 from elsewhere, so listen.
Here's to the Night can recieve only an honorable mention here because, first and foremost, my experiences in those summers informed and strengthened my inner music snob and there is nothing tackier in the whole world than sharing a special moment with strangers when a song comes on. It happens. But seriously - if you went school in the 90s or early 00s, you aren't allowed to claim that songs like Here's to the Night or Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) (Greenday - Nimrod) really bring you back or are totally significant to you - because they were significant to everyone. 'Wow, you know, as albums go, I think Revolver is really special to me.' No.
Worse, if you did not have the luxury of being as old as I am and thus in your formatives at that time, even if you stumble onto that song on the same radio while someone you love is leaving you or your sports team won or you just 'really, like, figured yourself out' you can't make a claim on those songs. They're used up. Move along.
2. Everlong - Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape - I started a different list once, about the songs I was in love to girls during, a song being so much more than the span of it's minutes and really, for those who work like me, rather more like tiny eras in the vast annals of one's life. It got kind of dodgy because love can be very dreamlike itself, once you wake up from it, it can be difficult to recall all the details and almost impossible to do so in any reasonable order - I found myself being vaguely aware of having really liked a few girls I went to highschool with and not really understanding why or for how long or what years were involved. I am pretty sure I was getting over Beth Sorce in Rob's basement playing Final Fantasy VII when this track came into my life. What is particularly confusing was that that era ended because of Beth Sorce. See? Convoluted.
It should be noted that the amount of time we spend thinking about things in the moment and immediately after has much to say about how long we remember having done or been something in the first place. I distinctly recall that FF7 period of my life (punctuated by a few savage drinking experiences, the soundtrack to 'Last Man Standing', Mrs. Bono deciding it was alright to hit me with spoons and the first burgeoning steps of my cool) lasting...years and years, far longer than even I spent in highschool. Which is saying something.
Everlong, more than anything, recalls the perilous hours I spent reading Stephen King's It - I listened to that album over and over for the vast length of that book, which, due entirely to how scared I was, took forever to read. I always get these flashes of the water tower and the sewer grate whenever any track from 'The Colour and the Shape' comes on, the wholly sepia-toned pall of terror just comes out of the speakers - due largely to inscribing myself into songs I think girls would like me more if I had written, Everlong always came as that late respite - though, again, I've no clear picture of who it was I was longing for while trying to ignore the inevitable clown lurking in my closet or at the foot of the bed.
Longer I go, I suppose, the less everything will be about someone I loved who isn't around me anymore. Here's hoping.
3. The Recluse - Cursive - The Ugly Organ - I really liked living in Waltham. As far as eras of questionable duration go, it's pretty much the best. Lost my virginity, cemented what I would come to think of as 'my cool', got in my first real relationship, ruined my first real relationship, fell in love, very hard, made out with a number of really pretty girls, began a fairly trecherous cycle of not just being okay with, but actually enjoying being a fallback boy and tried hard to see how many ultimately regrettable things I could do my poor, stupid heart.
I have not, exactly, recovered from that time - lying around on my big bed, alone or not, with the fan thrumming in the window, rain going hard outside, the particulars of that summers outrageous weather stay with me still and all these things informed a huge chapter of my writing - this reflexive longing for simple air forced into a room by a box fan, my as of yet unresolved over-appreciation for jersey sheets and all these mornings I woke up very comfortable with where I was. Everything was pretty alright - I was emotionally bankrupt and kind of a bastard and realize now that I have a long history of getting precisely what it was I wanted about 3 months before I knew and losing it trying to trade up on little internal monologues about 'only living once' and 'while im young' and other things I assume other people do when they are scared and dont understand how it is to give back.
Two things rush at me in the opening measure of this song - waking up Saturday mornings in Lauren's room, which I recall being blue or purple and being remarkably happy, cool or warm, content - it were always getting to her place that was my issue. Some nameless smell, a strong desire to have my Morphine cd back, and a stomach-twisting volume of guilt. The other were waiting on Kate to come around, that intense trepidation I can only label as a 'fat kid anxiety', which never really leaves you, no matter how skinny and cut one gets - that a good looking girl was a calling. Things were pretty good and there is an easiness that comes back I find myself longing for.
What's astonishing myself is the funny catalogue of other songs that I can hear again - that each of these periods owns a particular jukebox and these single songs are just quarters. Rolling around the back streets of Waltham listening remains 1976 - RJD2 off of 'Since We First Met', I listened to a ton of Howie Daywasnt that great, all said, the apartment cost too much and the neighborhood was a bit questionable, but I still think of myself there so very often.
4. Closing Time - Semisonic - Feeling Strangely Fine -This falls perilously close to a song that everyone remembers dancing to at some time in some teenaged amorousness, and I am sure that you did and I am sure it was really heartbreaking in an okay sort of way, which is sort of the benchmark of that new wave emo sound and why the song was so...good for things...like dancing to at some time. For me it highlighted one evening in my highly talked about but actually very short career as a DJ - whenever Declan used to close out Saturday nights, which was every Saturday night, I would come over after closing down the shop, set up my laptop while drinking a beer and, if the crowd was right, plug said laptop into the speakers and go at it.
I had a really solid mix, which I liked to refer to as 'NHS Halloween Dance' - a lot of songs no one will admit that they like in a non-ironic manner, but do, for the 'I grew up in the grey space bewteen the 80s and the internet' set of which there were 20 or so in a pretty excited, pleasant pack that evening, buying a lot of drinks and being generally fun.
Once it became fairly obvious that I was controlling the music, a chain of drunk people started coming up to me, requesting songs - a lot of Michael Jackson, a lot of odd, off-party tracks - but many of them were very attractive girls and so I eventually stopped playing my own mix and just started downloading tracks on the fly to put them on the speakers. Dec turned the lights down a bit, people started dancing (which is not common for the restaurant), it as pretty cool.
Dec and I were at one end of the bar, pretty much the only people not in the party in the room, talking about....role-playing games or something...when a handful of folk come up and thank us, fairly profusely, before telling us that they are all from across the country collecting in Boston to mourn the passing of their very young friend from college, and that I had been playing, by request, some of his favorite songs all night. They were throwing down in his honor and wanted us to know how good we'd made the night, with the songs and the stiff drinks.
We stayed open, I think, an hour longer than we were supposed to and it was probably the one night I 'spun' or what have you that I didnt finish with Closing Time, instead we capped it with I Want You Back by The Jackson 5, because the guy who passed was, apparently, the biggest MJ fan in the world. They streamed out into what was fast becoming morning all smiles and thank yous and Dec and I cleaned glasses and put tables back in relative quiet.
It was a good night and I never ever think about, save when that song comes on.
to be cont.
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