Okay, the train was kind of a bust on the way home last weekend: we had some mechanical problems, were stuck in Philly for 90 minutes, and ended up having to transfer to another train for the rest of the trip. It was kind of comical actually: on the first train I was in the quiet car and had no seat neighbor, which was brilliant, while on the second train I was on a crowded noisy car. Oh well, them’s the breaks.
I discovered on last weekend’s trip that Amor de Dias is the most perfect train music ever. It’s Lupe from Pipas (a band I lovelovelove) and Alasdair from The Clientele (a band I’m kind of meh about). They are poptastic: quiet and dreamy and just perfect for watching the scenery slip by and relaxing your brain and feeling a little sad about Baltimore but also a little happy about the little bit of snow and the waning afternoon light. Go to their website and listen to Late Mornings right now! (Esp. the ‘oooohs’ that start around 0:57 — so dreamy.)
Today is the first day of the semester. It’s been a long month full of deadlines and much, much busier than a January *should* be, I think. Of course there are always deadlines but I think the busiest bit is past, which seems funny to say on the first day of the semester. But I’m optimistic, and thinking of that train ride makes me evermoreso.
The Breeders’ song “When I Was A Painter” has been in and out of my head for a while now, and so this morning I finally fired up Pod on my computer as I worked, only to end up listening to the entire record on repeat all day. It was a quiet day at the library today — despite the fact that today was New Year’s Day (Observed), the college was open, perhaps because the winter session begins tomorrow? Whatever the reason, the library was all but deserted, as was the college, neighborhood, and subway. A low-key way to start the year and ease back into the swing of things.
The summer that record was released Jonathan was living with a college friend of ours and the college friend’s high school friend in DC. I spent part of that summer at field school in northern Spain and part at home in Delaware. It was hot, and my old car would overheat if I ran the a/c so I drove from Delaware to DC with the windows open. It was even hotter in DC and I don’t remember there being any a/c in the house where they were all staying, either.
I remember trying to convince our college friend to give the Breeders a listen. He was a big Pixies fan but kept saying, “no, I can’t listen to that, I don’t like Throwing Muses.” (I know, how unpossible is that?!) I eventually forgave him for not liking Throwing Muses, and I think he eventually listened to the Breeders, but maybe not until their next record.
I’m trying not to make many resolutions this year. They are always the same, anyway (read, write, exercise, meditate), and I always have mixed success in keeping them. So this year I will just make one: I’m going to try to get enough sleep so I can wear my contact lenses regularly again. Modest, right? Perhaps deceptively so. But it’s a goal, and a good one.
I am utterly behind on the New Yorker, as usual, but yesterday I flipped through this week’s issue. Only to see that I am missing the reunited partial Chameleons, now touring as Chameleons Vox, playing a couple of times over the next few days in NYC + environs.
I loved loved loved the Chameleons in high school and college. Loved them. Not sure how I even learned about them in the first place — they’re British and were far less popular here than some of the other guitary mopey bands in the early-to-mid-80s. I still listen to them on occasion and they’ve held up well. Lots of layery guitars and, it occurs to me now, sort of pre-shoegazey. They’d work well on a mixtape with Lush, for sure.
They broke up in 1987 and I never saw them play live. I remember there was a farewell tour that came through Philadelphia (we lived in Delaware at the time). They were set to play at Revival, a club on South St. I was 16 and looked far too underage to even attempt to go to the show. But I pleaded with my dad ’til he agreed to chaperone me. And then I called Revival and OF COURSE they couldn’t make an exception for an underage nerd with her dad, why would you think that?
Grrrr…even as an old lady I still think 21+ shows suck.
But not quite. In the meantime, I’ve written + revised 1578 words of self evaluation in the past two days, so I think I can play a pass card again tonight.
What’s good for working *and* a guaranteed mood-booster? Why the Pixies, of course!
No time for anything tonight, not even to detail the millions of things I have to do. I’m tired, though, and need music to work by. Maybe music by people who don’t need as much sleep as I do will help? Let’s try it:
Extra bonus tie-in to yesterday’s post: watch for Kristin Hersh’s cute crazy dancing kid w/no front teeth, so excellent.
A quick search shows that I’ve blagged about daylight savings time in the past. I’m generally a fan of falling back, though since becoming a parent it’s less of the extra-sleep-fest than it once was. My kid still doesn’t get the sleeping in thing, but at least he’s old enough now that he lets us sleep even though he wakes up at the usual schoolday time.
I spent the whole day today thinking about the “Time Travel” episode of Pete & Pete, most of all about one of the songs in the episode. Of course I don’t know the name of the band or the song. I could probably just go out to the living room and fire up our DVD player and see, but I prefer to sit here typing and believe that it’s a Drop Nineteens song.
Alternatively (who’s been writing a scholarly paper!), you could watch it for me and let me know whether that’s the song I’m thinking of. Here you go:
This fall is a big anniversary of many events. We’ve been in NYC for 20 years now, which means we were here on 9/11. I don’t really know what to feel about the 10th anniversary. I’ve been thinking that I should have something to write about it, but even the things that I start writing in my head don’t get anywhere. Then I feel guilty that I don’t have more to say. But we were here and we were lucky and I am still grateful for that: I was 6 months pregnant, everyone we know was safe + sound (if scared). I was proud to be a resident of NYC* and to experience how well the city pulled together.
On a much much much lighter note, this fall is also the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album. I know it’s reductive to pin all of the changes in music since then to one record, but it’s always seemed like that to me. Before that record it was “college rock” — played on college radio, mostly on independent labels, small venues + shows. And after, after it was “alternative” — on all of the radio stations, big shows, etc.
For us it coincided with leaving college and coming to grad school (version 1.0), which I’m sure is at least part of the reason it feels like lots of big changes. I had a show on my college radio station with a pal; when we got to grad school, the station was much more professional and didn’t have time for us. I know it’s trite to complain about bands getting big — “I liked their first record,” said in self-mocking tones, was something we said often. But there’s a practical side to a smallish music scene, too. Big shows are more expensive for tickets + drinks. Big shows are harder for shorties like me to navigate; I’ve spent innumerable shows jumping up and down, not because I love to pogo but because otherwise I couldn’t *see* anything.
Of course music is completely different now in our internet world, some things better, and some things worse. It seems almost quaint to think back to a time when radio mattered that much, and when the freaky kids suddenly got popular.
This morning I woke up feeling crabby and crappy thanks to various small entities interrupting my sleep last night: a child, cats, unsettling dreams. File under damned if you do, because I actually went to bed early last night fell asleep reading the New Yorker, which of course makes me feel even more crabby and crappy.
As I started my walk to work my internal soundtrack was a weird mashup of Nirvana’s songs “Negative Creep” and “Breed” where the beginning of the first song morphs into the chorus of the second song. (This fall is the 20th anniversary of the release of Nevermind, but that’s a post for another day). It’s a mashup that’s a common earworm for me, but this morning it just felt too gritty and mean to start my tired day like that.
So I spent the walk to work trying to dislodge that and cram another earworm into my brain. All of my c’mon-get-happy usuals weren’t working, not Spice Girls nor Gaga. After cycling through Public Enemy and Joy Division (for real, brain?), I finally got to Janelle Monae: “Sincerely, Jane” from the Metropolis EP. Phew.
I haven’t been walking to work much recently. It’s been hot and rainy and I’ve been tired and tired. But this morning’s walk reminded me why I should push past the whinybrain and get moving. Because I may be too tired to ride my bike or scooter, but once you start walking it just gets easier, and by the time I get to work my head is clearer even if I am still tired. And it’s downhill all the way, too.
It struck me tonight, as I listened to the album “Gentlemen Take Polaroids” by Japan while doing the dishes, that Air is very similar to Japan in many ways, despite being many decades apart in time. Both are synthy, ethereal, sort of quiet (except when they’re not). I listen to a lot of Air while I’m working, both in-my-office-at-the-library sorts of work as well as writing work at home or in the library. I’d listen to more Japan than I do, but their other records are caught in the amber of old media, some on cassette and the rest on vinyl.
I’ve complained many times about the labor of digitizing old music. Even with the USB turntable the process is, frankly, a pain in the ass and takes forever, so I haven’t digitized much. Really that task has over the past couple of years transformed from “something I’ll chip away at on the weekends and in my spare time” into “something to do if I’m ever on bed rest for some reason.”* What I really need is a clever monkey or gnome to do it for me. It has crossed my mind to pay Gus to do it, too.
*(Along with putting the actual photos in actual albums with little adhesive corners. When I told a friend that I’d bought those photo albums with adhesive corners–about 8 years ago now–he was like “just get rid of them now, you will never use them, it’s too much work!” And he was so, so right.)
But it’s a shame, because I miss their other records. I’ve got a pile of stuff to do tomorrow on the holiday, but maybe I should take some time out for digitizing. Just to prove those naysayers (including myself) wrong.
On the drive down to our annual beach trip we left early to avoid the traffic and ended up hitting the worst snarl we’ve ever experienced on that route. We stopped at a McDonald’s to meet my mom for lunch because it was too early to check in and everyone was starving. Afterward Jonathan and I went to the grocery store to get started on the shopping while my mom took Gus to get the key and open the house. I tried to drive through as many strip mall parking lots as I could to get to the food store, but eventually I had to go back out to the main road and inch along like everyone else.
At some point while we inched we realized that music could make things better, so I started pawing through the more easily-accessible cassettes and picked my very old (20 years?) yet still perfectly functional Aladdin Sane/Scary Monsters tape. Despite all of the hullaballoo about the impermanence of tapes I still have a pile from as far back as high school that work perfectly well, thankyouverymuch.
The tracklisting was written in my long-ago handwriting, so very legible compared to the scrawls of today. Aladdin Sane in red marker, Scary Monsters in blue. Jonathan had just been telling me a few days ago about an article he’d read about Scary Monsters so that was the logical choice. It is a weird record, partly because of the time (which was what the article was about) – 1980 was in-between for so much music, and for Bowie especially given what he’d done before then. I’d written the dates on the tracklisting, too, because I’m a nerd and like to know those things (Aladdin Sane came out in 1973).
I do like the record, despite its weirdness, and especially the A side. Halfway through I realized that I must have listened to the A side much more than the B, because I was far less familiar with the B side songs. The occasional static and pop from the vinyl (which I still own) is well-preserved on the tape. Now that I’m an old lady I’m instantly nostalgic when I hear those imperfections, despite my own clear preference for digital media: when’s the last time I broke out the turntable? And it was such a pain to have to flip the record over. I’m sure that’s why the A side songs are so much easier for me to remember.
