from Grey Ice Water to Gypsy In The Mood

Day 594, Session 109:
When/Where: Monday February 4th - Sitting around the house trying to figure out how there can be a thunderstorm at the beginning of February and whether that's a metaphor for something grander.
First song: Grey Ice Water by Modest Mouse
Last full song: Gypsy In The Mood by The Jayhawks
Progress: 1709-1733 of 5700 (one skipped podcast)
Total Songs Heard: 1385

Grim Heart/Black Rose by Converge has been deleted. It was from a 2006 mixtape from some trendy music site. Obviously I do not have trendy taste in music.

One thing today: A Bruce Springsteen performance from exactly 33 years ago today... which also happened to be 364 days before I was born.

If I had tried to draw up exactly when I would hear Growin' Up, could I have timed it any better than hear it on my birthday? Probably not. And seeing as how the whole aversion to growing up thing is kind of a recurring theme around here don't I have to share it? I found this recording over at Fuel Friends and the first time I listened to it I was struck by the fact that voices of this bootleg recording were younger than me when this recording was made... and now they are old. Not just Springsteen either... during the intro you can clearly hear voices in the crowd. The contradiction between the life and energy in the recording (and really, I could feel it bursting from the headphones) and the vast distance of time (my entire life!) that has passed since is kind of messing with my head. Combine that with the fact that recording was made in Bryn Mawr, PA (the next town over from where I grew up) and now I'm faced with the thought that the crowd voices in this recording could be people I grew up around. It just makes it all so very real.

Of course I realize that every recording ever made is exactly the same. It was made on someone's birthday in someone's hometown and so we are left to think... What kind of mark am I leaving here? Will someone come back here in 30 years and find this and think... "Wow, this guy is sitting in his house in Chicago, listening to music, sharing his thoughts...thoughts that are older than I am and yet they still seem so immediate, so real."

I hope so.

Growin' Up - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (recorded Feb. 5th, 1975 @ The Point in Bryn Mawr, PA)