Rico Suave...

Though I'm an avid technologist, some days the USB link in my car makes me consider driving a buggy to work and attaching toggles to all my shirts. 

Today it worked to my advantage. I was forced against my not very strong will to listen to the radio. I don't listen to the radio unless I'm in my wife's truck and then it's whatever is on and usually for 10 minutes tops. If there is a chance I'll be in there longer, I plug in my phone and put on a playlist. 

I was driving south and the link for the USB wouldn't turn on so I snapped on the radio and started to do the scan through the local stations in LA. I haven't done much radio listening int the last 10 years because ITunes and Shazam have made it so easy to find out what you are listening to without much effort. It reminded me of a time when finding a song in the music store or on the radio was a quest for glory and riches. 

There were two phases in this process. The first was hearing this song/album/artist in a local grocery store, shopping mall or school dance. You would ask around to the sage's who may know what or who sang it and get 2-4 educated opinions. 

You would then hook into the local radio and hope for the pure luck that was a replay. Most likely the song was replayed 100 times between 8:15 am and 2:40 pm while school was in session. The few times you tried to listen during school hours equaled you getting your Walkman taken away. You eventually quit going down this path. 

If you caught it on the radio, you would find space on the one cassette you owned and hope for a perfect shot to record without the DJ going on about some truck show at the Salt Palace this weekend. 

Once that failed, you returned to the mall and the music store to wander the aisles looking for tapes or CD's of the guesses your local school sage had opinions on and you started spending hard earned allowance, or later job money on albums you didn't need and weren't sure contained what you wanted. Desperation had set in and it created dangerous purchasing behavior. You bought and if you were lucky, you found it within 4 albums. The problem with this working is you continued using it as a template for 10 years after the average album purchase was closer to 8, not 4. You spent thousands of dollars you really shouldn't have in the quest. 

Now I've read over this process and the general tone of this blog so far would communicate that I hated this process. It is completely opposite.  I have found so much good music from this search that I sometimes forgot what I was looking for. Obviously the process is much more simple now but I miss the days of the quest. I still spend as much random money on music but now my purchases don't have much value because it was just so easy. The lack of the mission to find the song has cheapens the experience so I'm always looking for something to make it rich again. That in itself has given me back some of the thrill of the hunt. 

And damn...my music library looks fine!

PS...I never did buy the Gerardo album that contained Rico Suave that I heard in 7th grade. 

Musical Blanket

I've found that as I get older I am surprised in what things interest me. I think it is that as I get older I realize that the things of the past that I was so enamored and passionate for are not going to give me a place in the pantheon of humanity. I get frustrated that I do not have the drive to discover new music or new things. This recipe for frustration drives me back to the arms of the comfortable music I grew up with as a child, a teen and a young man trying to define what made me.

This is a list of five songs that I listen to in order to remind me what I am made of and what made me have feelings. I'd call this the list of what makes me serious but still drain the frustration out of my mind and heart during the thickest times of anxiety. Most of them are sad. Some are new discoveries that slammed their way into the list due to an immediate recognition of feeling of something that should have been with me sooner.

1. Last Flowers to the Hospital/Radiohead: I know what this song is about and that is not what it means to me. Inside of this song are a set of words that bring me solace every time I hear them. Still. After five years of listening to this song over and over again I still get chills and relief for hours after one play. The emotion it defines is a ache after a heavy day of interpersonal torture. The exhaustion just sets in and you know you can rest.

2.  Stratford-on-Guy/Liz Phair: This is the second to last song on an album I still to this day think is Phair's best work. She was still experimenting with what her voice and a brash guitar could bring to the listener. It was exciting and fearless with no pretense. Her honest vocalizing in a non-diva way was what really sold this song for me. She was singing for no one but herself and we were all just lucky to be around to hear it. It's the epitome of youthful concern and I miss that emotion sometimes. This song reminds me.

3.  Indifference/Pearl Jam: Apathy. There is nothing else so infuriating and freeing as just not giving a shit. I listened to this song 500 times over the last 19 years. It really only made sense to me 18 months ago after a horrible day of self doubt and self loathing. Vedder's voice scratched over the speakers as I ground my way up the 405 to home. All of sudden like a light going off I just gave up giving a shit. I realized that whatever had plagued me that day and the 6 months previous was the worthless sniveling of a man who thought someone should care. The freedom of letting things go is refreshing and not one I often find most days. When I do, this song usually accompanies it.

4. Possession/Sarah McLachlan: The version of the song I am referencing is the vocal and piano version following Fumbling Toward Ecstasy. I found this in high school when I fancied myself a lover of female artists. This is strictly nostalgia. It's one of the few songs that I hear by her these days that don't make me want to go adopt a battered pet.

5. Maggie May/ Rod Stewart: The song just makes me happy. It reminds me of the days when I first met Katie. I'm a broody asshole but when I am happy it is because of her. This song reminds me that all musicians are not tortured artists and pure honest emotion can come from happiness not just tragedy.