About the Playlists

I thought you could use a reality check for when I rave about some record or other, so I added some play lists. They are my in-no-way-comprehensive personal best-of, comprised of songs that:

• I happen to like a lot. What else?
• Are easy to like. This is for your sake.
• Are not the obvious choices. What’s the point? You already know what you like, and that stuff might be overplayed anyway.
• I could find.

And since I can’t leave well enough alone, I broke the songs down into decades. I don’t know why. I guess I think it’ll be easier to manage, or it will give you something to get your ears around. If you don’t like the one that’s playing, just pause it and start another one.

The louder, less respectable songs are on “Rock and Roll”. I’ve segregated it so that you can go to it when you’re in the mood. I do when I’m pissed off about something.

I moved the stranger songs to a list called “Weird and Wonderful”. Try this when you’re feeling a little adventurous. And who knows, you might not find them weird at all.

I also decided to add a list called “My Idea of Easy Listening”, which is my admission that quiet music can be very powerful. You already knew that, but I may have given you the idea that I don’t like this kind of thing. Not true, and these are the ones that get to me.

Occasionally, I’ll accidentally grab a sloppy live version or mislabeled song. Let me know and I’ll fix it.

My Led Zeppelin Problem, and Yours, Maybe

There are some artists you love, some you think are okay and some that you hate. If you like them, they’re great, if you don’t, they suck. Taste as aesthetic judgment, right?

But then there are those artists who you don’t like as much as you think you should. Or you may respect their talent and acknowledge that their music is well made. But it just doesn’t move you.

Is it just a matter of taste, or something more? What if you, for some reason, actually dislike the artist? Would this get in the way of your enjoying their music? You’d think the two things were separate. I mean, can’t I just listen to the music without it getting personal? (Actually, I can’t even eat breakfast without it getting personal, but that’s another post entirely.) Apparently not. For some of us, music, like sex (now, anyway) requires that we like the person.

This is my Led Zeppelin problem, and it has strained more than one friendship. When my wife and I compare our teen years, it appears that the Led Zeppelin issue could separate neighborhoods, and even nationalities. After all, how many Irish Led Zeppelin fans do you know? (Actually I know two, but stay with me on this.) How many Italian Grateful Dead fans? (See?) There even seemed to be a correlation to your choice of recreational drug.

But to bring it back to me, just how did Zeppelin and I get to this point?

I trace it back to when I was twelve, and hanging out at my best friend’s house. (We almost always hung there instead of my house. Otherwise, he’d be writing about the Grateful Dead right now.) His big brother put on “Led Zeppelin II”, which had just come out. I’d never heard of them. When it got to all the sound effects in the middle of “Whole Lotta Love”, he made the statement that they were “better than the Beatles”, who couldn’t do this. Wouldn’t was more like it, but what did I know then? He was the one with every Beatles album. And, since older kids were the supreme authorities on everything, this was a major challenge to one of my most deeply held beliefs.

To make matters worse, their fans thought that Jimmy Page was “the best guitar player in the world”. In other words, better than Eric Clapton, who, I happened to know, was the best. The idea that some loud, obnoxious axe-man could be better than modest, unassuming Eric was appalling. (A major theme in my Irish/Catholic youth was that conceited people shouldn’t be better at something than modest people, which was why I hated anyone with a high opinion of themselves. Even Elvis Presley’s sneer signaled egotism instead of libido, which was not yet on my radar.) In retrospect, it might have been that Eric just had better press. Still, after all these years, I don’t quite get it. And when you’re twelve – which is where I am now, emotionally – these things matter.

Now let’s add the swaggering, screeching Robert Plant, who was everything I hated in a singer. I much preferred poor, moaning Greg Allman, or kind but demented Jack Bruce. And moreover, Mr. Plant must be made to answer for all of the shrieking, big-haired male singers that followed in his wake.

So for me, Led Zeppelin was the epitome of rock and roll excess. Their music was unseemly. I would never be able to defend them against my parent’s objections like I could the Beatles.

So I hoped that they would just go away, and that the world, as I defined it, would right itself. But just when the memory of their last LP was fading, another one would come out and sell millions, and it would all start over again.

It was only much later that I learned that Led Zeppelin had a reputation for redoing old blues standards and taking songwriting credit. Although these facts do serve to justify my more ethical objections to them, to be fair, I only became aware of this after I decided that I wouldn’t like them. (But jeez, guys, I think you owe some people some money!)

And on top of all of this, add their reputation for debauchery while on tour. So you can see how a tight-ass like me could really work up a case against them. The libertarian in me, however, feels that the young woman who got slapped with the fish, probably chose to get slapped with the fish. (Don’t ask.)

So they were loud, dishonest, obnoxious, leering, sexist, and remarkably successful with women. And there I was listening to the New Riders of the Purple Sage.

And their fans seemed…well, kinda dumb. This sounds awful, and obviously wrong, in retrospect, but it just didn’t seem like the Zeppelin fans were hanging with the honor students. But they didn’t seem too worried about it. They were too busy having a good time. And if that isn’t a good reason to resent them, I don’t know what is.

So, why should any of this matter?

Well, this issue reared its ugly head again when my wife asked me to add some Zeppelin CDs to our next BMG order. (It had slipped my mind that she ran with a Zeppelin crowd back in the day. And here I was thinking I had her brainwashed.) Had this request come earlier in our relationship, it would have been tantamount to her saying she wanted to see other people.

But now, the notion (buying the CDs, that is) wasn’t as appalling as it might once have been. Still, it was galling to have to guide her to the album that had “Whole Lotta Love” on it, which she thought was their first record. So I – the non fan – rattled off the songs from that record for her. (Doesn’t everybody know this stuff?)

So we got down to the business of deciding which albums to get. We already had several on vinyl, and briefly considered getting the 10-CD-complete-album-box-set-yadayadayada, but declined to pay the $80. Instead, we got four for about $25. She wanted II and IV. I wanted III. Neither of us wanted I, but we got it anyway because, well, what’s the sense in having II, III and IV if you’re not going to get I, too? It wouldn’t be right. It also helped that BMG was having one of those buy-one-get-40 sales. (Because you were going to get those 40 CDs anyway, right?)

So we’re talking the Zeppelin pantheon, more or less. And just how do these records stack up, against, say, the first four Allman Brothers or Cream albums?

Sorry fans, but “Led Zeppelin I” is rip-off central (just type “Zeppelin songwriting credit” into Google) but it has the most music, and man, they sure had their own sound. The Allman Brother’s first record is perfectly good, and it captures their emerging personality. “Fresh Cream” is the most modest of the three. It’s got excellent blues covers, but the originals could be better. I give a very slight edge to Zeppelin, for gall.

“Led Zeppelin II” is, again, a more generous album (albeit, not towards the artists they are still stealing from), and less bloated than their first. But I still prefer the high points of “Idlewild South”. “Disreali Gears” – a supposed classic – is not bad, just a little dated. A slight edge to the Allmans.

The third albums don’t compare easily since two of them are double albums - one all live, and the other half-live. But since such albums usually suck, it all comes out in the wash anyway. “Live at the Fillmore” is the classic. “Wheel’s of Fire” is a mish mosh, with weird studio stuff and loooong live stuff. It can be very silly, but it’s still fun. “Led Zeppelin III” is a departure, and not bad at all. And with all the acoustic stuff, it’s actually pretty brave. But the clear edge goes to the Allmans.

Now, call me crazy but I happen to love the “Eat a Peach”’s 35 minute “Mountain Jam”. Add to that “Blue Sky”, “Little Martha” and “Melissa” and you’ve got a very strong LP. It’s probably my personal favorite here. Cream’s “Good-bye” shows them limping off stage - the sound on the live cuts sucks. But side two is excellent – highlighted by an intense “Sitting on Top of the World” (crappy sound and all) and “Badge” (greatest guitar solo on a pop song, ever?). But you have to give “Led Zeppelin IV” its due. The songwriting is blossoming, the drumming powerful, and production, courtesy of Jimmy Page, absolutely sterling. There’s not a bad song here. It’s one of those records that I don’t love, exactly, but that I know is great. On the whole, a tie between Zeppelin and the Allmans.

Now, I wouldn’t blame you for totally disagreeing with me on all four albums. I mean, talk about your apples and oranges! But that’s exactly my point. Some of us have a preference, and I’m struggling with music I prefer versus music I know is great on its own terms. So how do I explain the fact that Zeppelin has gone toe to toe with the Allmans, who I supposedly prefer, a clearly best Cream, record-wise?

Well, I’ve come to respect Jimmy Page as a sound maker. As a producer, he used to overdo it, of course. Early on, he was always throwing sound affects into the middle of songs. Later on, he learned how to give a record a unified sound, to better effect. And he always strove to add a unique guitar sound to each song.

Paradoxically, this was my problem with him as a guitar player. He was always more sonic than musical for my taste. His actual solos could be a little sloppy, sometimes. Maybe someday I’ll hear the great Jimmy Page solo, but I haven’t yet. And that includes the little display in “Whole Lotta Love”, and the one at the end of “Stairway to Heaven”, which I think is his most Clapton-esque. I’ve heard that Jimmy Page appears on about 60% of all the English rock records between 1963 and 1966. Someday, I hope to find a really good collection of the best ones so that I can fully appreciate his talent.

But I now see that Jimmy Page was consciously trying to make rock and roll records. So he didn’t just hang out until his solo came, like Clapton would. Jimmy Page is all over his records, playing lead, rhythm, acoustic, twelve-string, banjo, mandolin, all in the service of making the end result distinct from start to finish. And that counts for a lot.

And just how did this abrasive band could come up with such beautiful songs as “Thank You”, “That’s the Way”, “The Battle of Evermore” and “Going to California”? Man, the snob appeal of looking down on a supposedly loud, stupid band wore off pretty quickly.

But, not to worry. It’s not like I’m standing around with a Zeppelin CD in one hand, and an Allmans CD in the other, unable to decide what to play. That's what your 5-CD-carousel changer is there for - to get you through such crises. Besides, I’m probably listening to something else altogether now. (Except for the next month or so, since the BMG order just came in.)

When I was a kid, I wanted to believe that you couldn’t be good at something unless you were nice, too. So it’s been hard for me to admit that you can admire or respect someone you don’t particularly like, but it’s time for me to admit that Led Zeppelin has earned a place in my CD player.

So I think I’ve finally made my peace with the blimp from hell.

No Accounting for Taste

Dark Chocolate:

When I was about eight, I bit into one of the greatest chocolate bars of all time - a Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate. I had gone to the local candy store like I did most days and, for whatever reason, on this day I noticed them. Instead of getting the usual milk chocolate bar in the dark brown wrapper, I decided to try this other one in the brighter orange wrapping. Maybe there’s something to judging books by their covers, because I immediately became hooked. I guess I was so used to the smoother taste of the milk chocolate, the sharper taste of the dark chocolate jumped right out at me.

Over the next couple of months, I’d go to the candy store regularly and buy a bar of Special Dark each time. And as I did, I watched the number of bars in the display slowly dwindle. The owner of the store told me that he wouldn’t be ordering more because I was the only one buying them. So in the limited universe of an eight year old, a portal had suddenly closed. I somehow survived this tragedy, and learned to keep my eyes open for the dark chocolate pieces whenever an open box of Russell Stover’s presented itself.

And today you can get ten different types of dark chocolate, with the percent of cacao right there on the label. The Cadbury Royal Dark is quite good, by the way.

Nothing as Bad as Buddwing:

Then there was the summer in the Catskills a few years later, when one of the more upscale resorts was showing a movie one Saturday night. It was sort of an open house situation, so that those of us staying at one of the lesser places could come.

This was kind of a big deal since there were no VCRs or DVD players at the time. You could only catch a movie when it had been theatrically released, or later, in edited form, on TV. Viewing a movie outside of those circumstances was rare. And there was work involved, too. Someone had to set up and man a projector, change the reels, and keep the damned thing in focus.

I can’t remember what it was we were expecting to see – maybe “The Sound of Music” which had been released a few years before - but what we got instead was “Mr. Buddwing”. Never heard of it? Neither did any of us. It starred James Garner as an amnesiac wandering New York City. It was one of the many arty-but-realistic black and white movies that came out in the early sixties.

Being twelve at the time, I can’t say that I understood it (although seeing it again on TMC recently cleared up some of my confusion), but I did find it intriguing Not so the rest of the Irish American audience, whose natural reserve was all that prevented it from pelting the screen with food and drink. This was partly due to dashed expectations. Black and white instead of color (no one had a color TV at the time), James Garner instead of Julie Andrews, the streets of New York (we had just left them for Christ’s sake) instead of the Swiss Alps.

But the dislike was so intense that my cousin ridiculed me for not hating it enough. Apparently I said something to the effect that it wasn’t that bad. The experience became a reference point for anything bad we experienced on that vacation (“Wow, today’s lunch was worse than Mr. Buddwing.” “No way, nothing is worse than that.”)

But it wasn’t that bad.

Staying Up Late for Art:

And I found a lot of other movies like it on the Late Show.

I used to stay up on the weekends watching horror movies on Chiller Theater. A young boy may start out watching these movies for the terror, but a teenage boy begins to notice how many nubile young women are being terrorized. And if the movie that was on after it had some more nubile women, and less terror, so be it. So I came for the horror and stayed for the sex.

But there was at least as much oddness as there was sex. It was TV, after all. The local stations had to fill the hours with whatever they could find, within some obvious limits. I’m sure that part of what seemed odd was just a teenager’s obliviousness to adult themes. But there were some genuinely strange movies being shown. I began to see more movies like “Mr. Buddwing”, and even caught some dubbed versions of foreign films. After a while, I didn’t even mind if they weren’t all that risqué. So now I was coming for the sex, but staying for the strangeness.

These movies were self consciously arty, which I found very cool at the time. So I began looking for this very cool thing called “Art”, which I imagined would have a sign over it when it made its appearance. Since this wasn’t what usually happened, I began to think of it as a secret that I was not yet in on. So I was in search of something that might not have even been there, but I was sure I’d know it when I saw it.

Well, I was wrong about that - I was looking for a thing when I should have just enjoyed the experience - but I knew what I liked. And when I saw it, I knew enough to not announce it to anyone. I didn’t want a repeat of the “Buddwing” experience. These would be my own private movies, and even though a lot of their names escape me now, I hope to revisit them some day. Thank God for Netflix.

I began to think that if I kept a close enough watch on a movie, I'd catch the director throwing the art in. Maybe he’d slip it – sans the sign - into the upper left corner of the screen, so I’d try to not look away for even a second because I might miss it. I remember watching “A Clockwork Orange”, and noticing an orange on a bookshelf. Well, that just had to mean something, didn’t it? At least I think it was an orange.

So I would watch things very, very closely and, again, this being prior to the advent of the VCR, would hate being interrupted because I couldn’t pause it and play it back. One of my friends found this so hilarious, that he made it a rule to call me every Thursday at 10pm, which was when “Hill Street Blues” started.

Technology and wisdom/laziness have allowed me to relax a bit about this, but I still like to follow what’s going on in a movie. I still get annoyed with people who spend the first five minutes of a film catching up with friends, and the next eighty five minutes asking them what the hell’s going on, complaining that the movie made no sense. I equate this to starting a book on page twenty, and steadily turning the pages, whether I’m reading them or not.

I’d like to think that I’ve caught up with the rest of the world by now, having realized that missing the first minute of “Gone With the Wind” isn’t going to ruin it for me. But I do still sympathize with Alvy Singer and Annie Hall when they show up five minutes late for “The Sorrow and the Pity”.

Kooks:

It’s funny how someone can tell you a story, but you end up getting a completely different point from it than the one they intended.

Once, I was listening to two neighborhood guys talking about a third person I knew. They were saying how odd he was. To illustrate the point, they described their experience with him at a recent concert. None of them had heard of the opening band, but the two guys liked their first two songs. The third guy didn’t. The two of them didn’t like the third song. But – surprise! - the third guy did. So their conclusion was that he was kind of strange, or at least he had strange taste.

But I knew the guy, and could identify with him. And the story only proved to me that there are two basic types of listeners - those who know what they like and want to keep hearing it, and those who don’t know what they like, but know that they don’t want to hear the same old thing over and over again. I’m one of the latter, and so was the third guy in the story. We became best friends.

The Origin of WTF:

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the B-52s. It was 1979, and I was in the neighborhood bar, watching Saturday Night Live. They had already done their hit, “Rock Lobster” in the first half of the show. But now it was 12:45am, and time for their second number. They did “Dance This Mess Around”, which, as they say, separates the wheat from the chaff.

Cindy Wilson was, um…singing, about being made to feel like limburger cheese (and who can’t identify with that?). There was no melody to speak of. Just drums, bass, guitar, organ, and a lot of shrieking. Oh, and a cowbell.

When it ended, the young lady sitting next to me at the bar officially invented the phrase “what the f*ck”, as in “what the f*ck was that?” Not the good what the f*ck, either.

But I loved it. The B-52s were, at best, indifferent to what my idea of a good song was up to that point. But they demonstrated that there was Special Dark chocolate in the candy display again.

Taste’s Like…:

But no matter how cool I would like to come across in the story – that I saw what the young lady failed to see, that I was more enlightened, etc. - I know that ultimately it’s just a matter of taste. And there is nothing like comparing musical tastes to learn just how wholly separate and different people can be. For instance, there are actually some people on Earth who don’t love the Beatles. I swear to God.

On a less cosmic level, though, two people can listen to the same record and come away from it with completely different reactions. I like to think of myself as a rational person, not given to blatant appeals to my emotions. So then why is it that I can be moved damn near to tears by a simple pop song like “Never My Love” by the Association? You would be justified in thinking it sentimental fluff. And then, on the other hand, I’ll recommend some godawful noise (a technical term describing music by the Pixies, Wire, Sleater-Kinney) that would give a headache to a rabid Led Zeppelin fan?

Ah, what to mock? What to take seriously? What is cool? What has become uncool? What is fresh? What is ripe for derision? What is just not funny? What is sacred, and what’s just a sacred cow? These are the questions whose answers don’t exactly comprise our taste, but they go a long way towards explaining it. Let’s call it an outlook.

In an earlier post, I alluded to things that are technically “wrong” with a record – a cracked voice, feedback, etc –that can sometimes make it magical. This is utterly subjective, as a missed note to some people is simply…a missed note.

No Accounting:

Back in 1980, my roommate – the weirdo above - and I threw a party and invited a bunch of friends from the neighborhood. By then, we had gotten into a lot of punk and new wave music. The neighborhood was more into the Grateful Dead and Southern rock. People were far more likely to pack a local bar to hear a guy do cover songs on acoustic guitar than to go to a club to hear a new band do original material.

But we were “consensus builders”, and thought we could play music that our guests may not have heard but would still like. At first, we had them put on whatever they wanted, and someone picked “Gold and Platinum” - the first Lynyrd Skynyrd best-of.

Hey, we thought, they like guitars. We like guitars, too! Who else could we put on that they might enjoy? We tried Television’s “Marquee Moon”, which is a great guitar album and if not exactly punk rock, certainly full of punk energy.

But within seconds, we could see that they weren’t buying it. Never had Tom Verlaine’s voice sounded so choked, and the guitars so muffled. This, right after hearing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s sleek and bright sound. No wonder our guests liked them more.

I like Lynyrd Skynyrd, too, but prefer Television. I even understand why most people wouldn’t. One might think that, having achieved that understanding, I would then come to like Lynyrd Skynyrd more, too. But that’s not how taste works.

I had just become acutely aware of the vast gulf between these two styles of music, and the aspects of the Television record that were an immediate turn off to this crowd. And I might have even thought that I’d never like the Television album as much again. But that isn’t what happened. Why not? Television’s guitars sounded much rougher, and had no echo at all. They growled rather than chimed, and I preferred the growl. The solos burrowed in rather than rang out, and I found this sound more joyous than the Lynyrd Skynyrd album that was clearly meant to be so. I just didn’t happen to require the stuff that Television was leaving out. Taste again.

Caveat Emptor:

This is all meant to forewarn you that you might not love what I love. It just doesn’t work that way. You might even wonder how I could love what I love. It would be like explaining how lines like:

I’ll be on my way, ‘cause there’s another girl for me (“Western Union” by the Five Americans)

and

My baby’s got me on another kind of highway (“Hey 98.6” by Keith)

will always move me, when you might find them to be quite ordinary.

So please keep all of this in mind. You might be tempted to try one of my suggestions, and you owe it to yourself to know if the my words come anywhere near to really describing the music.

Community Music

Most young people get to enjoy music when it is generally well known and widely accepted by their peers. It’s nice to hear good music, and it’s even better when you’re enjoying it along with everyone else around you.

When was the last time someone blasted music at the beach, and you enjoyed it? This is what people remember most fondly about the sixties. It was the last time when everyone agreed what the good music was, and for once, everyone was right. There we all were, listening to the current music of the day, not at all nostalgic for another time.

I have countless memories of hearing a song come on the radio while playing in the street, and knowing it was great the very first time I heard it. “Jimmy Mack”, “Dancing in the Street”, “Up Around the Bend” are just the ones I happened to think of now. It happened dozens and dozens of time. Was there ever a song that was so right for a place and time as “Summer in the City” during July in Brooklyn?

For me, the climax of this phenomenon coincided almost exactly with the end of the sixties. My brother and I got “Abbey Road” for Christmas 1969, and listened to it continuously through that winter break. It was also being played on the radio and enjoyed by everyone else we knew. It was, for us, the epitome of “community” music.

The End of Community:

But at that point, the cracks had already begun to appear in the community. Altamont had already occurred. Then the Beatles broke up. Listeners were breaking up, too - into factions – hard rock vs. singer songwriter vs. southern rock vs. glam vs. progressive vs. funk vs. soul, and later in the decade disco vs. punk vs. rap. People were beginning to narrow their tastes to the point of actively disliking anything else. Community music continued to exist, but the communities were now smaller. And Top Forty, which had been the glue holding it all together before – a key ingredient of which was great music - began to suck more and more, until there was no longer a single place where the best of everything could mingle and be enjoyed by all. The individual communities just weren’t interested. For a lot of people, a smaller community is better anyway. Like a gang or a cult, it’s more comfortable because it doesn’t challenge you to look outside of it.

These individual communities can break down even further as people age, get married and see less of their friends. On their own, people then decide if they will move on to other things or not. They eventually get to what will be their own personal music. The fact that they might have some musical favorites in common with others their age may be more a sign of good marketing than anything else. Call it the Coors Light phenomenon.

The Only Community There Is:

And then there are those lovable people who never even figure out that their taste is less than universal. One friend who we’ve invited to family gatherings was visibly appalled at the music we had on at our daughter’s communion party. For us, it was an occasion for friends and family to get together to talk, not necessarily to dance. So we chose music that was entertaining to us and some other friends, but unintrusive. It wasn’t muzak, but it could be ignored if you didn’t like it. My friend didn’t recognize the music, and felt that parties were for dancing and so must have dance music. On another occasion, he came to the house, armed with tapes that he volunteered to put on in order to “liven the party up”. A quote. No doubt there were some people there who would have appreciated it, but I wasn’t one of them.

My friend not only didn’t understand that there were people who didn’t share his taste; he didn’t think anything beyond his taste existed. It’s like that part of the Blues Brothers movie when they go into a Western bar, and the waitress says “We’ve got both kinds of music here, country and western!” Call it the community that doesn’t even know that it’s not the only community.

I’m sure you’ve had someone brag to you that they liked “all kinds of music”, and they then proceeded to play the standard pop music of the day, and absolutely nothing the slightest bit unusual or unique. How can you know what you’re missing when you don’t think you’re missing anything at all?

My Time vs Our Time:

Some lucky people arrive at their personal music by just leaving on the radio. They like what they hear and that’s the end of it. Some others, like me for instance, are so impossible to please that it’s rare indeed when I love a song that’s also very popular. Thank god for the scan button on car radios. Otherwise, I’d have crashed the car by now.

My “personal music” is what has accumulated in my head and record shelves over the years, based on whatever I happened to be interested in at any given time. This sometimes leads me so far astray from current musical developments that the fond memories I associate with my favorite music have nothing at all to do with the whatever was popular at the time. (At the risk of sounding like a snob, it’s usually that music that provides the really bad memories.) They don’t even have any relationship to the time the music I was enjoying was released. I now remember the music I love by what is happening in my life at the time I buy it, not the time it’s made.

So in 1982 I could buy an album that came out in 1968, like “The Who Sell Out”, and love it. But the emotional association is to my life and the things that happened to me in 1982, not what happened to me or the world in 1968. This is a very special, but private, joy that you usually only share with a spouse. It’s just a shame that you can’t share it with anyone else.

And as time goes on, and I go further and further astray, my chances of enjoying community music grow dimmer by the day.

So it’s quite understandable that most of the population seems intent on hearing only their own personal music, by wearing earplugs and listening to an iPod. The problem is that no matter how many songs you can fit on it, you’re still only listening to stuff you already know about. It’s the absolute opposite of community music.

Towards a Newer Community:

I truly envy those people who can still enjoy music at the community level. I think I’m talking about hip hop in its heyday. But I guess it applies to anything that’s popular and exciting to young listeners.

And who knows, maybe this has always been the case. Maybe my memory of the sixties is just another example of a baby boomer trying to make a rather common experience seem like it was invented by his generation. Maybe there always is a community music, and I’m just not part of the community anymore.

I’m not saying that we should, at our now advanced ages, be getting together to party to the latest musical fad. I’m not even saying that the iPod is a bad thing. But it would be nice if we could just unplug our ears a little more often to hear what the other guy is listening to. And when we’re that guy, let’s not disappoint everyone else them by playing them the same old crap.

When I was in college, right before the Christmas holidays, we would have a party in the cafeteria (drinking vodka at 10am, playing cards). Once I brought a tape recorder (not even a radio) with me, and played a pre-recorded tape of stuff I liked at the time. The other guys put up with this because no one else thought of bringing a radio, and I realized that I was imposing on people at least as much as I was entertaining anyone, so I tried not to play it too loudly. But there was one guy there who asked me to turn it up. I warned him that he might not like it, but he replied, “That’s okay, it’s music.”

I don’t know where that guy is now, but he’s my hero.

Recycling

I have a confession to make. I occasionally recycle my albums. Not the good recycling, either. The pathetic recycling. The act of playing each and every one of my albums, one after the other, until I’ve gone through them all. So, day after day, week after week, month after month, I will methodically go down the list – almost to the total exclusion of other music - until I have played every last one of them.

Back in college, one friend admitted to doing this, so I confess now, assuming that this won’t make me seem completely ridiculous. Of course, it gets more ridiculous as you get more albums. And at the time, my friend probably had, what, 50? How long did that take? A few weeks? Ha! We are now closing in on 1300, so I’m talking a level of commitment not given to many marriages.

Why, you ask? Well… there are lots of reasons! Some of them rational:

• You get to hear something great that you haven’t heard for a while.
• You give the albums you didn’t care for the first time around another chance.
• You get to artificially fill the gaping void in your life.

I heard a music writer being interviewed on the radio say that he occasionally recycles his albums to help him decide which ones to get rid of! This, of course, is madness. Who gets rid of albums? No, don’t say it.

Now, it might seem to you that recycling is a pretty straightforward thing to do. Most human endeavors – even the non-ridiculous ones – appear easier at first than they actually are. You probably think that it’s just a matter of starting at the top of a stack of records, and just going until you get to the bottom. Well, yes, you could do that. But silliness in no way implies a lack of seriousness. In fact, it can carry some grave responsibilities with it.

First of all, you probably have CDs, tapes, vinyl and maybe even 8-tracks. So they’re not stacked. Not together anyway. So what to do? First play all the CDs, and then the tapes, etc.? Right? Too easy! Come on, use your imagination! Nothing that is not worthwhile is easy. With that in mind, I shall explain the different varieties of recycling.

Alphabetical:

You can simply play your albums alphabetically (no, not by title, stupid) by Artist. This approach will stand or fall based on the jarring change of tone that occurs when you go from Talking Heads to James Taylor. It keeps things from getting boring, but you may not be in the mood for Sweet Baby James after hearing “Psychokiller”. But then again, maybe you will be.

Personally, I feel that this approach is beneath contempt. You could make the argument that it provides variety by its very arbitrariness. I could make the argument that you could eat your food alphabetically, too.

By Release Date:

Or you can put your records in order of when they came out. In other words, you play your Beatles before your Ramones before your Radiohead. This provides some context for your music, and can give you a greater appreciation for some of your more adventurous stuff.

I like this approach, but, you’ve got to have your music database in order. (What do you mean, you don’t have a music database?)

Is everyone still with me?

By Historically Significant Date:

This is a further refinement on the Release Date method. But instead of blindly going by when the record hit the shelves, you go chronologically by when the music was made. It sounds like the same thing as Release Date, but it’s not. “Let It Be” gets played before “Abbey Road”, for instance. It puts greatest hits albums where they belong, and gets your jazz and classical up front.

This approach is great for guys who don’t have girlfriends.

By When You Bought it:

This is my favorite because it’s the most autobiographical. To do this is to relive old times, good and bad. How do you feel about that? Do you want all those memories coming back?

This is going to happen to some extent, no matter what – it’s the same music, after all, but in a different order - but this approach really rams it down your throat. So if you’ve ever had a particularly bad patch in your life, you might find yourself spending more time on it than is wise.

This is great for those who like to wallow in shame or regret.

Why Not?

You could very reasonably argue that doing any of these things keeps you from exploring new stuff. I agree, but let’s face it, you’re not doing that anyway. Try to consider recycling as a way of tilling the soil. When you’re done, you will be primed to find out what music is being made now.

Call it a cheap thrills project to add pseudo meaning to your life. Or just to pass the time. Because we all have so much of that, don’t we?

Cover Your Ears and Sing "La, La, La..."

We all know the routine. When someone starts telling us something we just don’t want to hear, we stick our fingers in our ears, and start to sing “La, La, La, La…” very loudly.

We’ve seen it on the Simpsons, when Homer has been confronted with the fact that he’s spent the kid’s college money.

I have a variation on this. Whenever a particularly embarrassing or painful memory springs into my mind, just as abruptly, out of nowhere, a song goes on in my head. It’s as though someone drops a phonograph needle on a record, right in the middle of a song. I guess it’s just a clumsy defense mechanism intended to drown out the memory. It’s so ingrained that it happens without any effort on my part. I don’t know if it obliterates the memory or merely pushes it back down into my unconscious only to have it arise again at the most unexpected time.

I’m not sure when I learned to do this. I’m not sure if I learned to do this. Perhaps if I were a mature adult, I could better handle bad memories. Some strategies more normal adults opt for: I could conveniently misremember it. I could rationalize my behavior. I could face it, and either forgive myself or carry the memory around with me until it fades for a while. But for now, a song kicks in like a particularly effective prescription drug. And people wonder why I like music so much.

This may seem like a bad thing, but it’s cheaper than booze or drugs, and I can assure you that there are times when it is really the very best thing. A few years ago, I was in a very difficult work situation, and at one particularly nasty meeting, I found my mind flashing back to a song by the Arcade Fire call “Lies”, from their album “Funeral”. I was fully engaged in the meeting, but at the same time, the song would just kick in suddenly and I wouldn’t be able to get it out of my head. And it would put me in what we now like to call “a happy place”. But it’s not a soothing song. If anything, it’s just the opposite. It’s almost a rallying cry, which I guess is what I needed then.

I had gotten the CD a few weeks before. I liked it well enough, but then put it aside after a few listens. I probably did this so that this very good music wouldn’t get stamped with the memory of the very bad time I was having. But at this meeting from hell, “Lies” came roaring back – not so much the lyrics as the fervent singing and rousing chorus.

And it was at that moment that I decided to quit my job. Prior to that I made all the good “professional” excuses for not doing this – pride, seeing a project through to the bitter end, toughing it out… But now I was giving myself permission to do otherwise.

My theory is that I was in a situation that required that I anesthetize my emotions, but that something from outside began tugging at them, making sure they weren’t dead altogether. I was being reminded that beauty was still out there somewhere, and I could be enjoying it instead of putting myself through this work related torture.

Something else occurred to me then, too, which I guess is less important in the scheme of things. I decided that “Lies” was a great song. Previously, I thought of it as a very good one. Good songs can simulate an emotion really well. Great songs can embody it.

In a way, you could say that the song changed my life. Would I have thought of quitting on my own? Eventually, but I think that it gave me a little push, and I’ll always remember that moment, and that the decision had a soundtrack to it.

The Time of Your Life

When I was about 13, an older friend – he was about 17 - turned me on to a lot of great music: Cream, Jimi Hendrix and a whole lot of other stuff. Then we lost touch for a while - actually we stopped speaking. The next time I ran into him, he must have been in his mid-twenties. He told me he had sold all of his old records, and that now he liked Neil Diamond.

Since this was in the late 1970s, we’re not talking about Neil Diamond, the young turk out of Brooklyn who wrote “Cherry Cherry” and “I’m a Believer”. I mean the one who forgot where he came from, and began wearing wide collars and big hair - the one who considered himself an Artist. I’m sure my old friend is listening to those records a lot these days.

Meanwhile, I just picked up “Are You Experienced?” on CD because my son kept asking me about Jimi Hendrix, who is doing a better job of uniting the generations through his music than any artist of my parents era. My point isn’t that I have better taste than my friend (though I do). And it isn’t quite that rock and roll has stood the test of time (though it has).

I guess my friend felt that he had to put aside childish things. I went through a similar crisis at age 15 regarding clothing (contemporary observers might conclude that the crisis has not yet passed…). I had noticed that the older boys – the seventeen year olds - were starting to wear “grown up” clothing. So, when I turned sixteen, I thought I should wear shoes instead of sneakers, and slacks instead of jeans. Well, that lasted about two days. Thank god I’ve never been very decisive.

Speaking of clothing, when I was around twenty five, another friend tried to get me to go with him to see Shirley Bassey. (This was 1982. I’m not that old.) I guess he figured that we were adults now, and so we should do something that required dressing up and stuff. I really owed it to him, too, since I’d dragged him to see everyone from the Ramones and Talking Heads to Warren Zevon. I must admit that part of the problem was that I didn’t even own a suit, let alone want to wear one. I don’t think my friend ended up going, and he has me to thank for that. Now, I have nothing against Ms. Bassey. All I had to go on was “Goldfinger”, so I wasn’t betting on enjoying the show.

This same friend once complained that he liked the song “It’s You, Babe” by Styx, because “at least you can hear the words”. One of my great regrets was not thinking of replying that some words aren’t worth hearing. Come to think of it, I’m not talking to this guy, either.

So, finally, my point is that you shouldn’t listen to - or not listen to - a certain type of music simply because of your age (or any other demographic for that matter.) If you’re afraid that people will laugh at you, I say let ‘em. They probably do anyway, and if they live with you, they’ve probably earned the right. My Monkees albums won’t make my all time greatest list, but if I feel like hearing them – and I do sometimes - they’re going on. (The problem arises when all you play are those same old Monkees albums, or when you buy the new one every time one comes out.)

I think some people deprived themselves of good music because they thought they were too old for it. I can’t say for sure how that first guy feels now. I do hope he’s enjoying the music he’s listening to, whatever it is. But I also hope it’s because he really wants to listen to it in the first place.

By now the second guy has probably opted for the type of pop music that "mature" people ought to be listening to. And he probably likes it, too. But I’ll bet he doesn’t love it.