EJ - 50 Songs

 

3172Re: 50 songs (weetabix's entry that reminded me of this)

Apr. 29, 2005

 

 

2005-04-28

When I'm walking, I strut my stuff

I have mentioned in the past that Green Bay is a radio wasteland and
I think nothing demonstrates this simple truth more than the fact
that I had to move from this city of more than a hundred thousand to
the sleepy little college town of Stevens Point in order to
experience my first truly wonderful radio station. Located three
blocks from my dorm, WWSP provided the soundtrack for that eighteen-
month stretch of my life. I would wind around the surrounding
farmland and embark deep into the national forest, just to have an
excuse to listen to the radio on the tinny speakers of my red
Chevrolet Monza. Yes, that's right. A Monza. To this day, I'm still
not sure what a Monza is supposed to be, animal or mineral, earthly
or otherwise, English or maybe some other rich Corinthian leather of
a language. I used to imagine that "Monza" was perhaps slang for a
form of venereal disease, perhaps named after the exotic hooker who
was first diagnosed with the disease. Suffice to say, however, the
Monza lived up to its name in that it was shaped like a suppository,
rode about three inches off the ground, and was plagued by a weird
miasma of mechanical problems until the transmission decided that it
had had enough of this bullshit and completely dropped out of the car
at a neat 90,001 miles. They don't make them like they used to, for
which we should all be thankful.

But for what it was worth, the Monza played its role in shaping my
musical tastes. I just didn't think it was possible that there were
other people out there who liked to listen to the same kind of music
that I did, the tapes that I had stashed around my room, the songs
that they played at the dry punk club where we hung out and sweated
off our midnight runs to Taco Bell. It didn't seem possible, and yet,
there it was. Which meant that the cretins in Green Bay who were
adamantly playing the Paula Abdul and Bel Biv Devoe on not one, not
three, but eighteen bagillion stations, were doing so not because the
FCC would not allow them to play music by the Violent Femmes or The
Replacements or The Cure, but because they WANTED to. Such
disillusionment.

And so, I made mix tapes. Most of them have long since been lost, the
victims to many messy moves, and thus when I discovered Napster back
in, oh, 1998 or something, I quickly and without guilt set forth
trying to recreate all of my mix tapes from my college years. These
mix tapes, the Napster of their day, were taped from the radio to my
boom box. Ah boom boxes. How quaint a word. I can't imagine what my
18-year-old self would think of my iPod.

The problem with this is that my mixed tapes were just snippets of my
listening pleasure during those brief few lovely months in Point, and
then my recreation of said mix tapes were limited to only the artists
and song titles I knew or could remember.

However, recently, due to the divine intervention of iTunes and their
deliciously addictive music store, I have rediscovered a lost pearl.
Peter Murphy's Cuts You Up. Oh yes, Peter, yes. The moment I hit the
preview and heard those haunting strings, it was like my head had
transported back to May 1990, on my way out to a beach party, my hair
in pigtails and my sunglasses on, a pair of long black leggings
pulled over my swimsuit because there would be boys (during winter
months, I cultivate a proper Victorian consumptive pallor) and also
because May in Wisconsin is not always the warmest of months. And the
sun was shining and there were overly charred 99-cent turkey dogs and
possibly some underage drinking about to happen and I had the lucky
coincidence of being the adored freshman roommate of a very popular
and beautiful upperclassman, so it was an automatic in to hang out
with guys who looked like actual men, who shaved and smoked and had
bartending gigs and played guitars. And it cuts you up. La duh da da
da DA da duh da da ladadadadadaaaah.

Thanks to reader Barbara, who has been sending me free Pepsi iTunes,
I snagged that bad boy up before I even had a chance to consider it.
And then, 1990? You're soaking in it.

The song may have been released earlier than 1990, but because of
radio free Green Bay, I never heard it until it was played on
constant thirty minute loop on WWSP (the down low of the low end) and
then never heard it again when I moved back to Green Bay. Peter
Murphy disappeared from my brain, like the last name of my friend
Karen and my old dorm room number (but my phone number was 345-6464!
Still know that one! Because the health center was 346-4646 (and
maybe still is), but on campus callers only dialed the last four
digits and I'd regularly get calls requesting test results and
bottles of Rid. This is why I never slept with anyone from that
school… I'm pretty sure that they all had raging cases of clap and
genital lice). And then, just like that, he was back. Finding me in
the morning, after dreams of distant signs. And this, my friends, was
a delightful and unexpected find. A glimpse back in time, something I
haven't made banal through overplay and introspection. Sure, it's
only a matter of time before the cobwebs are cleared and I have new
memories associated with it, the way that "Just Like Heaven" now
makes me think of my wedding weekend and how "All Out Of Love" makes
me think of hugging strangers-turned-best-friends at bar time. But
for now, it's there. I'm 18, fresh from my first professional writing
gig, an entirety of college and life and possibilities stretching out
like a Get Out Of Adolescence Free card and I have just discovered
that there are people out there who like the same things I do, in
just the same way. And that is a wonderful thing.

The comments section wants to know which songs are your musical time
capsules.

173Re: 50 songs

 

Apr. 29, 2005

 

 

changed my mind:

29. Favorite Springsteen song: GLORY DAYS (springsteen always

> reminds me of Joe Chicago)