The Northward Contrail

The musical ambush

I love music.  Sometimes I hate music.  And other times, I love and hate it at the same time.  There's a handful of very lovely songs like this; they tap too deeply into my heart and make me start crying because they remind me too much of how much I love.  For instance, I've never seen Dumbo all the way through because I know what's going to happen when the scene starts when Dumbo visits his imprisoned mom and "Baby Mine" starts up.  Not only is it going to make me cry then and there, but it'll stay in my head for the next few days, no matter what I do, and it'll whack me in the kneecap when I least expect it.

Right up there with that is "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." Any version of it can do it, but Roberta Flack will forever own that song, and there's an ache in her voice as she sings it that really brings on the tears for me.  (Here's the story behind that ache, by the way, which will break your heart.)  It drilled me enough when I was single, but, oh, how it takes on new meaning once you've found someone and shared your life with that person for years and years.

And then one sneaks up on you.  That's what happened with "I Say A Little Prayer."  One night a few years ago, hubby and I were sitting on the couch listening to the radio, and that came on.  And I thought, "Holy cow, that's exactly what I do for him, too, isn't it?"  And the lump came to my throat.  I'd put that aside for a little while, but one day a couple weeks back we were at home and that song was played at the end of a Cold Case re-run.  Sure enough, there's that lump in my throat again, and the tears weren't that far behind.  Nor were they the next morning, when I thought about it.

Music, why must you be so eloquently accurate?  And why must you lodge in my brain like a Milk Dud in my teeth?

Getting pumped for the day

There are some mornings I need some really hard-driving music to get pumped up for the day's first class.  Sometimes I'll seek it on YouTube.  This is one of my particular favorites.  To me, it begs to be played really loud over a set of good headphones. 

Of course, I don't know what's more characteristic of me: that it's a big, loud, hard-rocking song, or that it's about the consequences of making a fool of yourself.

These are things I'm sure of

I look back on my past and remember myself as a kid who went to bed worrying that the world might not be there the next morning.  And even though this song was really for those who remember the "duck and cover" days, it's still the only one I've found that really captures how I feel about those days.  So, kid, this is for you.

Music, memories, fun and you

I was driving to work the other morning and was doing my usual despondent flipping around my radio presets.  I say "despondent" because so often, so little is worth listening to.  There's a rather juvenile yukfest that's on some of those stations, but I have no interest in their snottily partisan bits, their shopworn music playlist, or their affinity for cracking themselves up.  Other stations are little better; few seem to realize that some of us just want some really good music without being forced to laugh at toilet jokes or saccharine "rise and shine!" antics.  At best, I want something that's as grouchy as I am, or at the very least, I want good music with a minimum of talk.  (My vote is often for "grouchy."  Bring back Hughes Rudd from the dead.  Put him on the radio.  That's what I want to wake up to.)

(By the way, I know I could listen to NPR.  But in the mornings, I don't want to listen to much talk.  Plus, I have all the rest of the day to be immersed in current events.  The last thing I really want is to be hit between the eyes with more current events, which invariably means bad news.  My response to most things I hear in the news now is a despondent "Oh, man, they wouldn't do that, now, would they?")

But the other morning, I was playing with the presets and caught the last minute or so of "Walkin' on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves (by the way, given what happened a couple decades later, you wish they could go back and tweak what eventually became a doubly-unfortunate name).  I mentioned the other day how certain songs bring back certain memories for you.  In this case, "Walkin' on Sunshine" makes me think of the first time I met the man who became my beloved.  It was the end of the trip, and we'd said our goodbyes earlier that morning.  I was sitting aboard a 767, and we were stuck in a protracted ground hold, just idling while the backed-up traffic came in.  I was listening to the in-flight audio over those stethoscope-style plastic headphones, and one of Delta's audio channels that month was devoted to music of the 1980s. 

Now, let me set this up even further.  At the time, I was getting over a broken heart.  A month before, I'd had my heart broken when the realization hit me that someone I'd really flipped for didn't feel the same for me; he wanted to just be friends with shared interests.  I had a rather heartbroken trip back home, gotten my grief out and all that.  Then I decided that, dammit, I'd build a very happy independent life for myself.  No guy?  No problem.  It's just that much more freedom, I decided.

That was the backdrop that Tuesday morning as "Walkin' on Sunshine" came on.  I'd been amused by the song because David Letterman used to have it as a campy backing track during the mid-show film segments showing him and Paul Shaffer having a grand day out.  This time, though, I half-listened to the lyrics.  I remembered the fun I'd had over the previous few days.  I thought of how well he and I had gotten along.  And suddenly I was experiencing the same thing Janeane Garofalo used to talk about: when an abandoned puppy looks at you with those sad eyes, that same sinking feeling that the life you'd built for yourself is about to be turned upside down because you've opened your heart, and your life, to another creature.  "I have a dog now!"  (Followed by several expletives.)

So, yeah.  I wouldn't trade the last several years for anything, but I still can't hear that song without thinking about my feeling that morning: "I have a boyfriend now!" (Followed by several expletives.)

The kicker: I didn't know it when the trip started, but the draggy feeling and sore throat I had at the beginning of the trip was influenza incubating within me.  It erupted two days in, when I woke up with a 101-degree fever.  Two days later, I felt better, though I should have bought stock in the parent company of Kleenex.  So, as our 767 began its ascent, I laughed as the music channel started playing "Sloop John B."  Followed by the theme song from the movie M*A*S*H.  (For those of you who don't know, it's a song called "Suicide is Painless.")  Now that's a song you really want to hear while you're tens of thousands of feet in the air in a speeding, pressurized tube, no?  (And, given the events of the following year aboard two other 767s, really unfortunate.)

The power of a song

Music has always been powerful to me.  I'm sure I'm not alone.  There are certain songs you hear, and they bring back powerful memories.  For instance, you can be in the grocery store and a certain song comes over the in-store music system, and suddenly you're not inspecting the leeks and radishes any longer.  Nope, you're where you were when you heard it for the first time, or you're where you were when you it and fell in love with your mate, or something like that. 

In our dreams, we always have this romantic vision of falling in love to some certain special song or another.  For instance, you may have dreams of taking your first slow dance with your beloved to something by Frank Sinatra (well, that was always my fantasy, anyway).  More often, though, we don't get to dictate the songs that go with a given memory.  Sometimes, the songs that go with them are the last songs you'd pick. 

I am perhaps the last person in the world who would choose to listen to Matchbox 20.  It's not that I have anything against them.  Rather, it's that their music does not match the person I am.  To me, their music is bland, too radio-friendly, and way too overplayed, and the band wore out its welcome with me in a huge hurry.  ("3 A.M." was absolutely beat to death on the radio, and things weren't helped a few years later when that Rob Thomas/Santana track got played to death.)  Ordinarily, I'd change the station, put in a CD, or just turn the radio off. 

But, so help me, any time I hear "If You're Gone" on the radio, it brings back this huge flood of memories.  It happens that song was being played to death about the time I moved off on my own, went looking for and found my first real-world job, and all that.  I have such memories of those days every time I hear that song, those radio-friendly riffs and cushiony trumpets...so help me, I hear it and it's the year 2000 all over again, with all its wonder and uncertainty. 

The same goes for "Unwell," a couple or three years later: the memories of settling in at this new job, wondering if I was going to make it here, all the fascinations and heartbreaks of back then, all contained in three minutes and 48 seconds of auditory mediocrity.  I'm not a fan by any stretch, but, darn it, I hear these songs and the memories make me listen.  If not buy the stupid tracks off iTunes.  I really despise them, but at the same time, completely against my will, I love them.  I hear those songs, and I know how awful I think they are, but I keep listening because of the memories.

Grrr.

Labor Day

In some ways Labor Day has long been the goofiest-feeling holiday of any of them.  I guess that's because for most of my life, I've been tied to an academic calendar.  The new year has begun, you're getting accustomed to being back in the grind, and then abruptly there's a day off, right when you're back in the swing of work.  Don't get me wrong: I love the day off, but there's something about a day off in early September that feels like a two-day-old bruise. 

Back in the day, Labor Day for me would involve watching at least part of the Jerry Lewis Telethon.  Oh, did that used to be a show.  For me, it didn't get much better than when Jerry would have Sammy Davis, Jr. on the ol' telethon, doing what Sammy did so very well.  And when I hear Ed McMahon, I think of the telethons (well, along with his time as Carson's sidekick, the Budweiser commercials, and the Alpo commercials).  Now Sammy's gone, and so is Ed, and Jerry's not getting any younger.  Oh, well.  That's how the world runs, no?

None better

I talk a lot about great voices on here, especially about the voices of broadcast newsmen and staff announcers.  But I found something a few days ago that's kind of strange, but I love it: this 1972 Amoco commercial with Johnny Cash.  I don't know what I love most: the man himself, that deep voice with its familiar cadence, the dark soundstage with the two out-of-place gasoline pumps, or that infectiously twangy background music. 

I've always loved the sound of Johnny Cash's voice.  All at once it's strong, sad, weary, folksy, soothing.  It's a voice that, in itself, had a story.  Johnny Cash could have read the telephone book and it would have captured me. 

A lot of people have said people like Patrick Stewart or James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman have voices that they imagine sound like what God's voice must sound like.  Deep in my heart, though, I've long hoped that if God is indeed male, He has a voice like Johnny Cash.  That's part of why I loved this episode of The Simpsons so much.  Cash isn't voicing God, but the character taps into the spiritual regardless.

Strike that one

I started working on a post last night.  But I could never get the post where I wanted it.  I finally said "enough" and gave up.  Sorry.

So, instead, ladies and gentlemen...Mr. Conway Twitty.

Nashville or bust

Being a vulture for culture, I love to check the AV Club every weekday.  (And, no, not because I was on the A.V. squad in high school.  Which I was, by the way.)  Agree or disagree with their reviews and opinions, the folks there always make me think, and they make me consider new angles on the stuff I already love and even on some things I didn't care for.  I'll always give you points for making me do that, so the AV Club is well ahead on that point.

I grew up with country music, to the point of being tragically un-hip come junior high school time.  But it was about all my parents listened to, and if they listened to it, then so did we.  I went through a period when I didn't care much for it (which happened to coincide with the Garth Brooks ascendancy), but later on I came back to the stuff I grew up with, guys like Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins, and even some earlier stuff Hank Williams Jr. did before he became a self-caricature.

It just happens that a writer at the AV Club has been immersing himself in country music and writing about it as part of an ongoing series, and I highly recommend it.  While some of his essays have been great so far, I don't believe I've found any of them as astonishingly compelling as this week's piece on George "The Ol' Possum" Jones.  Wow.  I'm not going to spoil it for you.  Just go read it. 

The "Nashville or Bust" series has been great reading, and I highly recommend it.  The list of upcoming subjects has me pretty darn excited, too: Billy Joe Shaver, Buck Owens, Emmylou Harris, Lefty Frizzell and Kinky Friedman.  Can't beat that.

A thought for Thursday

I've been enjoying a Todd Snider CD I bought last weekend.  The song "Can't Complain" has become a particular favorite -- especially this verse, which I've probably needed more than once in my life:

I was talkin to my girlfriend
I told her I was stressed
I said I'm going off the deep end
She said give it a rest
We’re all waiting in the dugout
Thinking we should pitch
How you gonna throw a shutout
If all you do is bitch?