There are certain things that I listen to and immediately think of people I love or people who once meant a lot to me.
I can’t ever listen to Yo La Tengo or that song that goes “lookin’ so crazy my love got me lookin’ got me lookin’ so crazy my love” (hey, it was playing at all the clubs that we went to…) without thinking of Craig, the boy I dated during my senior year in college. (I credit him, by the way, with getting me into music in a big way. He made me mix CDs all the time based on what he knew I liked…and after a few of those, I got the urge to reciprocate. Yeah, it’s not very feminist, blah, blah…I’m over it. Shut up.) When Craig and I broke it off, Ben had gotten me hooked on Elvis Costello, The Apples in Stereo, and the Pixies when he sold me his old iPod and left all his music on it – so right after Craig and I broke up, I went to Belize with amazing music in tow [and got over him in short order].
I hear Paul Westerberg and Wilco and immediately think of the managing editor of my school paper, who was brutally honest with me about what he thought was my flakiness and my insufficient fandom of these and other bands (which, yeah, maybe was true). One particular Paul Westerberg lyric always makes me think of my good friend John Whitaker, because he quoted it to me one night when he was talking me through a funk I was in: “There’s a world in between being everything to everyone and being nothing to no one.” [That whole album is A+. Get it right now. Listen to it daily.]
Crazy party songs remind me of Leigh: Tears for Fears’ “Head over Heels” and anything from MIA’s Kala, all of which she had a penchant for screaming at the top of her lungs whenever they play at parties while standing pigeon-toed and kind of bouncing her knees while mildly swaying (I’m convinced that she only does this crazy pseudo-dance move when she’s drunk, and that she does it because she’s drunk).
Jeremy’s musical realm was huge. I remember him playing Neutral Milk Hotel for me and me thinking that it was crazy shit, then listening for about the fourth time and finally getting it. I remember seeing Yo La Tengo at Bonnaroo when we’d been up on our feet for hours and we were exhausted, so we laid down in the tent where they were playing and dozed to the music. I remember introducing him to VHS or Beta like I’ve done to almost everyone. Clearly VHS or Beta exists in the provenance of Amanda Lee in his mind…one of the most recent texts he sent was from a show of theirs: “OMG! It’s not right here without you!” I think of him also whenever I hear any of my favorites from my trip to visit him in Japan – Air, the Magnetic Fields, Heart. And the last time I cried with him was at an Arcade Fire show.
Molly, Katherine, and Ben were with me in the summer of 2006 when Sufjan Stevens and Wilco both saved my life. Katherine and I made a New York-themed mix for our New York City road trip, and one of the tracks was “I’m the Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side.”
Daniel turned me on to Cut Copy and M83, and we saw M83 in concert together on my 27th birthday. Everything about either of those artists will immediately evoke the summer of 2008 – our skimboarding adventures, playing board games in the freezing-cold air conditioning [or the blistering heat] while sipping Tecate or smoking from his hookah.
I will never hear “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” without immediately thinking of Hilly, who plays this every week like nobody’s business to force everyone to get their asses onto the dance floor at her Tuesday DJ nights – along with Kid Cudi [whom she hates, but always seems to play]. Hilly also turned me on to Wild Beasts and Edward Sharp+Magnetic Zeros, both of which are making my current work environment super-productive. A brief tweet about The Long Winters is one of the initial reasons I met Jay. [Also, he is a karaoke master, and was the first person I ever knew to mash up "Poker Face" and "Kids". Like this, but better.] Keeh is a Fleetwood Mac queen at karaoke, and the night before she left the country to go live in England, we sang “Thunder only Happens…” together and I felt ridiculously sad. And this song had nothing to do with me and Robert, but it sure as hell helped me to move on after it was over.
And Chris? Well, we love lots of things. Our default getting-ready-to-go-someplace-fun playlist includes “My Chick Bad,” “Bad Romance,” and “Juicy” interspersed with touches of Joanna Newsom, Dan Deacon, Sleigh Bells, the old-school soul station on Pandora, and SomaFM’s Space Station. He also listens patiently along to my Minor Leagues demos while I’m trying to write keyboard parts. He’s also distantly related to Phil Collins, and in light of that, we blast “Invisible Touch” at stoplights and occasionally sing it at karaoke. Because of him, I’ve developed a new appreciation for Graceland [and as a result, I still won't say I'm a Vampire Weekend fan, but I can understand its appeal].
Do you have any music-related memories that call to mind a specific person? Who introduced you to your favorite band/album/artist/song?
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1 comment
tori says:
Jun 2, 2010
ooh, this is a dangerous subject. i might make a post of my own about this.