Saturday, February 18, 2006

Listening. . . Remembering

I love waking up on a Saturday morning fixing some coffee, and just putting on albums. Album after album, running through my collection of CDs and LPs, sometimes going by artist, feeling like listening to nothing but Prince - a sampling of his records from the self-titled one with "I Wanna Be Your Lover" on it (I really detest his first album "For You") all the way up through "The Rainbow Children" or "Musicology". Other times it is just albums I feel I haven't listened to in a long time. Ben Folds Five's "Whatever and ever, Amen" or Taj Mahal's "Giant Step/Old Folks in De Home". When was the last time I listened to Fishbone's self-titled first record? Or how about Boogie Down Productions' 'Criminal-Minded' or Public Enemy's 'It takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back'? (How can you not love that title?) Those records just pop out to my eyes as I scan the titles, so I load up the 5 disc changer and let it rip - just laying on my sofa with my eyes closed, listening closely - sometimes sitting up and singing along, sometimes standing and dancing and singing along - sometimes my mind wanders and the next thing I know more than half the song that was on has passed - sometimes I back that shit up and listening again from the beginning - sometimes I let slide.

It is such a lovely way to spend a Saturday morning/afternoon. Experiencing the music in the moment of listening and occasionally letting yourself slip away into the nostalgia of some of those albums. I will never be able to listen to This Mortal Coil's 'Filigree & Shadow' without thinking of lying in the dark in my loft bed in my freshman college dorm room with girlfriend at the time, awkwardly fumbling to undo the buttons of her blouse to reveal those forbidden breasts. I remember having my smooth moment foiled by the size of them. You see, I got great practice unsnapping bras when I was growing up.

My mother would come home exhausted from her job and call me into the bedroom and she'd be standing there, back to me, her blouse hiked up in the back, so I could unsnap her bra, too tired to reach back and do it herself. When I was very young I never thought of it as weird, but when I was little older I always did it reluctantly - but one does not refuse my mother lightly - anyway, at around 11 my older brother told me that I should start practicing doing it one handed as the skill might come in handy one day. I became an expert. I could undo those two snaps with a quick flick of three fingers. And after I got good at doing it right-handed, I started doing it left-handed.

But that two-snap bra was the only kind of bra I had any experience with. I just assumed they were all like that, so that first night as a freshman, as I drew off her blouse and reached to the back of the bra, I did my deft flick and undid two snaps. . . But there were three! I even said, all confused, "There are three?" And suddenly shy again, she folded her arms about her breasts and looked down as This Mortal Coil's version of Judy Collins' 'Ohio' came on. It is emblazoned in my memory.

Don't worry we overcame the awkward moment and I got to behold her in all her double-D glory.

I am never going to be able to listen to Big Black's 'Hammer Party' without thinking those blue-dot blotters I took with my roommate later that same school year. Damn, I used to gobble that stuff up like it was nothing. I was used to it, but it was his first time and I was called away to deal with a 'girlfriend situation'. There I was arguing with her about tripping while I was tripping in a study lounge in her dorm. I trying to alleviate the situation and told her it was no big deal (she was a small town girl. She didn't have experience with this kind of thing - Oh, and I am talking about a different girl here) and succeeding, and even getting her to laugh and fool around a little when her roommate comes to knock on the door of the study lounge. My roommate had called their room. He was listening to Big Black and freaking out. I begged off and ran back to my dorm to rescue him from the mental horrors he was inflicting on himself, lying balled up in one corner of the futon mumbling, "I'm a steel worker. I kill what I eat." He was okay. I just needed to come back and remind him to have fun. The funny thing is I have never really liked Big Black before that - but from that moment on I was a fan, and still am. I think none of the music that it spawned of various industrial modes ever surpasses it for pure snide unfocused expression of anger and dissatisfaction with everything. We are talking 1989-90 here folks. I had a lot of that. Come to think of it, I still do.

It is hard to come up with more recent examples. I mean, music was so much a part of my development as a person, especially in my teens and early twenties, when an album could mean so much. I will never be able to listen to Kraftwerk's 'Trans-Europe Express' without thinking about being about 7 years old and sneaking my older brother's records when he wasn't home and trying to mix two copies of them. I really think that track was the perfect introduction to electronic music and those kinds of beats for a kid because it was about a train, and what seven year old boy doesn't love trains? And how many times did I listen to Pink Floyd's 'the Wall' at age 15 lying in my bunk bed feeling sorry for myself and thinking myself an eternal outsider? It is for that reason it is hard for me to listen to that record these days without associating it with that self-obsessed melodrama that would be embarrassing if it wasn't excused by the fact that I was only 15 years old.

But I hope that that is not the end of such experiences and memories regarding albums. And, now that I think of it, I know it won't be - because I just remembered the repeated listening of the Flaming Lips' 'Soft Bulletin' when I was sick with the flu in early 2003, and becoming overwhelmed by the sounds of it, and the yearning in Wayne Coyne's voice that echoes my own (yearning, that is - not my voice). And those repeated listenings of those albums that come to mean so much and have such strong associations also reveal new aspects to the music every so often, some track or trick of production, some other voice or sound deep in the mix that I had never noticed before.

Ah, the Taj Mahal record just ended. . . I love that I've forgotten what comes on next. . . Oh! 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'. I love it.