music

If my high school buddy Stephanie still reads this blog she should put down her coffee so she doesn't spill it while she laughs at me. We always had really, really different taste in music.

For Hanukah I got a couple of itunes cards. Thirty dollars buys twenty-eight songs when sales tax is six cents on the dollar. So, I took a bit of time and thought and bought myself twenty-eight songs. Quite a few of them were very contemporary songs, released in 2006. I bought songs from Keane, Snow Patrol, Placebo, KT Tunsdall, etc.

But. I also bought some stuff that was much, much older. No Stephanie, no Lionel Ritchie. ;)

I bought some stuff from the early 00's and late 90's that I never really got out of my head, even after my favorite radio station had long stopped playing them, songs like Self Esteem by The Offspring and Roll to Me by Del Amitri.

I bought some amazing covers of great original songs, like Placebo covering Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill, or the powerful and astonishing cover Johnny Cash did of Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nail's song, Hurt.

And I bought a song I had last heard when I was in high school. I’m lucky U2 even bothered to release it, frankly, but it might be the most memorable U2 song I’ve ever heard. It's called Trash, Trampoline and the Party Girl, and I only knew it existed because of this radio show I used to stay up far too late listening to.

Stephanie, do you remember KEGL? Stephanie and I went to high school in Texas, where the radio stations use call letters that start with "K" and "Q" instead of "W." I can't remember the show's name, or the DJs name, but he played the most alternative of new wave stuff late on Sunday nights, and I adored that radio show. He introduced me to a lot of artists I still love, and some I will never, ever be able to find anywhere again but in my memories.

I am almost completely certain the show was local to the Dallas area, as he played tapes from local bands fairly often. I still remember loving an electronic-style song from a band in Denton, Texas. Hey, it was the mid-eighties.

I also bought some songs that can only be called “old” by rock and roll reckoning. My parents, who only like music by dead people, would laugh at calling something released in my lifetime “old,” but rock is a little different than Mozart.

Superstition by Stevie Wonder is a pretty old song. 20th Century Boy by Placebo is pretending to be an old song, though of course, it isn’t really. But the oldest songs I chose were released by a man who is now dead. I wonder if that would make the songs more appealing to my parents?

One of These Things First and Cello Song by Nick Drake are lovely, lovely things, written by a man who died the year my little brother was born. If you haven’t heard his music, I strongly suggest you look him up. If you like folk music, rock music, what is often called “singer-songwriter” music, and/or guitar music, then you should give him a listen. I used to have his entire catalog, as I bought the box set. I haven’t been able to find it since my last move, which is making me a little crazy. I don’t usually spend money on the same thing twice, but I had to hear Drake sing again.

Really though, I think the point I started with in my mind when I started this post, was that it makes me feel a bit old to still love songs that were written and released so long ago. It’s that U2 song that really does it to me. It’s one thing to love an artist you discovered a decade or two after his death, but to love a song when it was new, and still love it more than twenty years later, reminds one that those twenty years have, indeed, passed one by.

Shake it off, baby. Life is great and you’re still young.

And for those who are still curious, here's the entire list. :)

This Is Us by Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris
Boom, Like That by Mark Knopfler
My Own Two Hands by Ben Harper & Jack Johnson
Loser by Beck
Girl by Beck
Trash, Trampoline and the Party Girl by U2
Self Esteem by The Offspring
Steady As She Goes by The Raconteurs
One of These Things First by Nick Drake
Cello Song by Nick Drake
Is It Any Wonder? by Keane
Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol
Superstition by Stevie Wonder
Chocolate by Snow Patrol
20th Century Boy by Placebo
Running Up That Hill by Placebo
Roll to Me by Del Amitri
Hands Open by Snow Patrol
Colorful by Rocco DeLuca & The Burden
Suddenly I See by KT Tunstall
Nothing In My Way by Keane
Everybody's Changing
Somewhere Only We Know by Keane
Crooked Teeth by Death Cab for Cutie
Soul Meets Body by Death Cab for Cutie
Think I'm In Love by Beck The Information (Bonus Video Version)
Other Side of the World by KT Tunstall
Hurt by Johnny Cash