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 really enjoyed the memoir writing exercise that yielded my last post (which might be obvious as a big chunk of these playlist posts are about the memories certain songs can stir up), and I plan to keep checking out the TRDC’s weekly memoir challenge and will almost certainly write more. However, I might need a break from these misty watercolor memories. Between these memoir post challenges and the 7 or so straight hours I worked on my photo digitization project last Sunday (I plan to write more about this task later), I’m kind of memory-ed out.
I’ve been told that I have an excellent memory, and maybe I do, but I think it’s also frustratingly fickle. While I can (and did!) recount my first kiss encounter from twenty years ago in close to real time with fairly accurate quoted dialogue, a lot of the last 15 years of my life are a blur. I kept a diary off and on through college and wrote pretty religiously during the first couple years of college. I think writing things down helped to crystallize those memories so that I remember them so vividly today. So I keep writing here partially for that reason.
Writing of memories, the title of this post comes from The La’s ‘Looking Glass.’ This was one of the first CDs I ever bought, during my freshman year of college in 1991. Some artists like to quit at their peak, and The La’s certainly did just that, they only produced this one album. I have never tired of it and I think it’s sad they never released anything else. Their front man, Lee Mavers, apparently didn’t handle the attention that came with success well and he apparently also wasn’t happy with this album. The video I’m linking to had one “dislike” and one of the commenters said it must have come from Lee Mavers, which made me laugh out loud.
Before I went to Brussels for my study abroad semester, Dave asked me to tape this CD for him. ‘Looking Glass’ is the last song on the CD and it’s about 7 minutes long. I left the room while it was taping and when I came back, I found that the CD was skipping on the very last part of this song. Since the song was almost over I just stopped the recording and taped a little apology for the skipping at the end. Dave later told me that he would listen to that while I was away so he could hear my voice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4rt0nJhrWs
Here is the weekly summary:
* Songs listened to this week: 126
* Completed: 39%
* Number of double shots: 5 (The Beatles * 2, The Police * 2, Genesis)
* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running: 57%, plus the set of songs I heard were all double shots, including two particularly slow and unhelpful Genesis songs (‘Silver Rainbow’ and ‘You Might Recall’) and a live version of The Police’s ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’ from the reunion tour that was so slow I thought I’d fall asleep in mid-run. They slowed a lot of the songs down for the reunion tour, and they might have been even a touch slower on this night, since it was their dress rehearsal show for a few thousand lucky fan club members the night before the tour officially kicked off in Vancouver. I was so happy to finally get the chance to see them that I just was able to enjoy this show live (especially given the front row seats I had scored!), but it’s hard to listen to the bootlegs now, especially from this rehearsal night.
So this was probably the first time I re-heard this version. I didn’t know it was possible to play music so slowly without losing momentum and having to stop. Since I was running at the time, it reminded me of how to deal with hills. If you slow down to take a hill, it’s easy to lose steam and just come to a stand still half way up. You can take shorter strides, but you have to keep up the same cadence or you won’t make it to the top. So fine, change the key, but Jesus this song wasn’t all that fast to begin with, just play it at normal tempo. Bitch/moan, repeat…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gVxzAyZRQE
* Fun song that everyone should know about: Colorblind James Experience ‘Considering A Move To Memphis’ (“it worked for Elvis Presley, why can’t it work for me?”)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PmwFwcMxTU
* Noticeably underplayed artist thus far: Interpol
I was on a pretty big Interpol kick after seeing them in November and although I’m 39% through this shuffle, I’ve only heard 22% of the Interpol songs on my iPod. I should have calculated that last week because the discrepancy would have been more impressive. Two Interpol songs came up this week, which was the first time that’s happened. One was ‘Slow Hands,’ which is one of Dave’s favorite songs of theirs. He really likes Interpol and introduced me to them. He suggested this song to me as he thought it was happier than their usual angst. I listened to it and could tell what he meant (“You make me want to pick up a guitar, and celebrate the myriad ways that I love you”) but it still didn’t seem so happy to me. Apparently he hadn’t really noticed the line “Can’t you see what you’ve done to my heart, and soul…this is a wasteland now.” So sweet!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTKtlM9vvQ
* Songs I most wanted to skip: Ween ‘Mourning Glory’ It’s basically five whole minutes of feedback and noise. Thanks guys, brilliant!
* Best Dave mix song: Panurge ‘Mixed Cavalry‘
* Guilty pleasure: Aldo Nova ‘Fantasy’ Sweet Jesus I am old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GylirgHFqeQ
* Random thoughts:
Peter Gabriel ‘Blood of Eden’
The ‘Us’ album came out right around the time Dave and I got together and this song is the one that continues to stick with me. It’s just stunning, music and lyrics.
“At my request, you take me in
In that tenderness, I am floating away
No certainty, nothing to rely on
Holding still for a moment
What a moment this is
Oh for a moment of forgetting, a moment of bliss”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA_lmSTqet0
