Playlist Week 6: So Then I Got This Idea About Driving A Cheesecake Truck

I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

I have been playing the game Collapse on my iPod while listening to the shuffle on my commute. Perhaps it’s cheating, because it allows me extra entertainment during songs I would ordinarily skip, but I have grown attached to playing it, particularly in ‘Quest’ mode. I finished the entire quest this week. I was unreasonably depressed by this. I will miss Collapse Quest.

Choosing a post title was a tough call this week. I would have selected “Let Me Tell You ‘Bout The Fucking Bitch,” but the best You Tube link was of Ween playing the song (‘Common Bitch’) live and Gene doesn’t say this beginning line. Bummer. But here’s the video anyway, I like how they are celebrating Women’s Day, so sweet of them to remember.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKSogHPm7xQ

The title this week is from King Missile’s ‘Cheesecake Truck.’ Maybe I should get a job driving a cupcake delivery truck?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enrAFstJ8CI

Here is the weekly summary:

* Songs listened to this week:  178
* Completed:  31%
* Number of double shots:  9 (The Police, Genesis * 2, The Beatles * 3, The Innocence Mission, Simon & Garfunkel, Sting)
* Number of quadruple (!) shots:  1 (The Police, including two live ‘Message in a Bottles’ (‘Messages in a Bottle???’)

* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running:  45% (not bad, but there was another Enya song, I wish that would stop!)

* Number of new to me songs:  1 (Mew ‘Hawaii Dream’)

* Weirdest coincidence:  Phil Collins ‘Long Long Way To Go’

As the essentially useless Dr. Baker once said on Little House on the Prairie, “the mind is a complicated instrument.” Just last week, I tried to recount how Genesis came to be one of my favorite bands and I actually had a little trouble. This Phil Collins song came up this week and I’d kind of forgotten about it. You see, Sting sings on it. I was obsessed with all things Police-related and at this time, there was no new Police music to be had. Phil’s ‘No Jacket Required’ album came out in January of 1985, prior to ‘Invisible Touch.’ Sting and Phil Collins played ‘Long Long Way To Go’ together at Live Aid in July 1985. I watched Live Aid. Now I’m wondering if that is the Genesis connection. I had ‘No Jacket Required,’ and I probably had it because Sting sang on this song. Maybe then I was more receptive to Phil’s 1986 work with Genesis? My memory is like swiss cheese, so who knows?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWR_1XtBosA

* Best guilty pleasure double shot of cheese:  Frozen Ghost ‘Echo a Miracle’ followed by Genesis ‘One Eyed Hound’

Even though it is super dated, I can’t help but still like the cheesily anthemic ‘Echo a Miracle.’ “We’re all refugees, seeking sanctuary, from each others’ point of view…” Don’t I know!

‘One Eyed Hound’ is from Genesis’ first album. Phil wasn’t even the drummer yet. They were still school boys. Even though their producer was trying to make them sound like the Bee Gees, for some reason I think this is their most charming Peter Gabriel-era album. I think Tony is singing backing vocals on this song, and that charms me to no end. At the Genesis concert Dave and I went to on their last reunion tour, I called out for them to play ‘One Eyed Hound,’ but unfortunately they didn’t listen to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WgHF3d7EqE

* Song I could’ve sworn I’d heard already:  The Beatles ‘Across the Universe’ (yep, this was the one from Past Masters, and I heard the Let It Be version earlier in the shuffle)

* Song that is entirely too long:  Led Zeppelin ‘The Lemon Song’

Let’s face it, I really only have this song because of the squeeze my lemon part, and it takes way too long to get there and now that I’m an adult, it’s just not that titillating anymore.

* Song that the internet ruined for me:  The Beatles ‘Paperback Writer’

Recently I came across something on the internet saying that the backing vocal harmonies on this song were “Frère Jacques.” I hadn’t ever noticed this before, but now that it’s been pointed out to me, it is all I can hear.

* Some random memories:

Kitchens of Distinction ‘Drive That Fast’

The first outing I ever went on with Dave, before we were dating, was to see Kitchens of Distinction at the Horizontal Boogie Bar in Rochester on September 22, 1992. Dave arranged it and four of us went. I already liked Dave but I had no idea what, if anything, was going on between Dave and this other girl who came with us. Before the show started, she got all pissed that he walked off somewhere (think to the bar) without telling her and was venting to me about how rude he was. I acted appropriately sympathetic, but was smiling on the inside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JXk_oV4nbo

James ‘Five-O’

I got the James ‘Laid’ CD right around the time I left for my college study abroad semester in Brussels. Much of the CD was appropriately brooding given how sad I was about being away from Dave for four months. Also appropriate for the burning anger I was experiencing over Dave telling me he needed space right before I left. Man, I guess a person REALLY needs space if they feel the need to tell you that right before you are about to give them four months worth of across the ocean-size space, eh? Or perhaps I was so suffocating that he was concerned 3600 miles would be an insufficient amount of space? I can hold a grudge a long time. Hi Sweetie!!!

Anyway, this song is particularly brooding and brings me back to that time when I was preparing to leave and feeling sick to my stomach about it. “If it lasts forever, hope I’m the first to die.” This period was one of the last times I worried about the lasting forever part. Now I just worry about the dying part.

Sting ‘Fragile’

A special song, in that I have two poignant memories this song brings to mind–one at a very low point, and one happy.

When my Mom finally got up the nerve to leave my Dad, we tried to keep it a secret until our moving day for fear of what he might do if he found out. But somehow he found out the day before the move. He did not react well, and while he had ranted and raved and threatened us in drunken stupors for years, this particular situation did not feel safe. We packed some emergency things and fled to my grandmother’s. I remember being so upset, I kept trying to pack more and more of my things, because I was convinced that Dad would destroy anything I left behind. I was always listening to my walkman during this period to try to drown out what was going on around me. On the car ride over to Gram’s, I still had my music on and ‘Fragile’ was the song that was playing. Unfortunately, I will always associate that song with the fear and sadness of that night.

Shortly after arriving at Rochester for my freshman year of college, I learned that Sting would be playing a concert nearby. It took me awhile to warm up to people and to feel like I belonged at school, but a bunch of people were going to the show and I went too. We were way in back on the lawn and we could hardly hear anything, so towards the end of the concert, some of us tried to sneak closer to the stage. Sting closed with ‘Fragile,’ and my new friend Ron danced with me. I remember feeling the pain of the old memory of the song melting away. Now when I hear the song I am reminded of the negative memory first, and then I remember dancing at the concert. Then I smile.

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