from In A Future Age to In the Curve

Day 895, Session 147:
When/Where: Monday December 8th - Hanging around the house
First song: In A Future Age by Wilco
Last full song: In the Curve by The Avett Brothers
Progress: 2053-2072 of 6037
Total Songs Heard: 1913

Haven't deleted anything in a while, so let's do that now. Goodbye, In Deux Time by Deux Process. I just couldn't get over their constant pronunciation of the world deux like it was the word dew. It was one of those iTunes free singles of the week, so it's not like I had any real attachment to the thing.

The Wife has recently given up the coaching of the basketball dance team at her high school to concentrate full-time (well, you know, full-time after her day full of teaching) on the school flag team. For those of you who weren't nerds in high school and thus didn't spend much time around the marching band, in the fall, the flag team performs with the band at football games, but apparently in the winter, the flag team performs on their own at competitions. (I would like to note here that The Wife's school didn't even have a winter flag team until last year when she started the program by volunteering to coach it. The Wife is pretty awesome.)

Since there's no band playing with the winter team, they have to choose a piece of music to perform with. Monday night The Wife asked if I had any suggestions for songs they could use. Asking me for a musical suggestion is no simple feat. What I'm sure she was hoping would be a 10-minute conversation became a 2-hour effort to find the perfect song.

There were 2 primary criteria, the song had to be 3-4 minutes long and not too slow, and one secondary, it helped if the song told a story. Here was my tertiary criteria, the song should be pretty awesome.

After much deliberation, here are the two suggestions I came up with:
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel
When I heard this song earlier in the day I just took note of how much I love it. When the flag team discussion came up I immediately thought of it. It's fast AND I'm pretty sure it's in 6/8 time. How many other flag teams are going to be performing in 6/8? Musically it's a great jumble of buzzing bass, trumpet, AND people playing SAWS! It tells an interpretive version of the journey of life. It weighs in nicely at 3:22.

Underground - Ben Folds Five
Tempo-rific, plus there are shifts that could be used to break up different sections of the routine. The song itself is about the alienation of high school and finding a place where that alienated feeling goes away. What could be more perfect for a high school flag team?!? Just slightly long at 4:11, but the last 15 seconds or so are vampy piano bits which could be faded on.

Here is what the girls decided to go with:
Uptown Girl - Billy Joel
Don't get me wrong, I love Billy Joel and while this particular song isn't a favorite of mine, it did help him score Christy Brinkley, so it can't be all bad. But really? This is the song they wanted to go with over the other two? Bah, kids today! I just don't understand them. (Confession time: Part of the reason this picks disturbs me is because I think high schoolers today would pick this song because they find it campy and amusing. Granted, this particular song probably is, but campy and amusing aren't two words I use to describe Billy Joel in general. I fear Billy Joel is to kids today what my enjoyment of say, ELO or Styx is to me. Yeah, I like them, but I kind of view them as relics of a bygone era (as opposed to say The Beatles whose music is timeless.) Just another sign of how out of touch I am with the young.)

There's a chance I'm wrong about this, but I don't think so. Please consider all three songs and vote for which one would be best for a high school flag routine. If you've got something that will work even better, leave it in the comments.

In The Curve from The Avett Brothers was also in the ears today. This is currently my favorite sing-along-with-really-loudly-every-time-I-hear-it song. It's one of those songs that makes me think, "If I could just figure out how to play guitar, I could actually perform this one." It also speaks to the self destructive streak that runs through me. Sure I haven't finished a bottle of bourbon and then gone out for a drive, but I have finished a bottle of bourbon, which is a terrible idea by itself. I do stupid things. I make bad decisions (*cough*quitting my job with nothing else lined up*cough*) but I will walk away. Sure, right now it feels like I've been hitchhiking along the road forever, but I'm sure I'll make it Concord. Hope to see you there.

Tuesday November 21st - Morning

Day 152, Session 52:
Location: In my holding pen at the cube farm... er, at work.
First song: Cold Fire by Rush
Last full song: Come Down by Toad the Wet Sprocket
Progress: 649-658 of 4446
Total Songs Heard: 606

Toad seems to fixate on certain words and phrases in their song titles. They had 4 different songs that started with the word "all." Now I hit 2 different songs with strikingly similar titles Come Down and Come Back Down. That's the sort of thing that I think I'd notice if I was in a band. I might look around and ask if anyone else thought our song titles were starting to sound overly familiar. Eventually, I might just ask if we could name the next song "Pants" just so they'd all stop sounding the same.

My senior year of high school... Christmas break. I was visiting my parents (I didn't live with my parents senior year of high school, a story for another time perhaps.) I received "Pale" by Toad the Wet Sprocket as a gift (on cassette!) I got a call from my girlfriend.

In high school I sang in the chorus, which because we were uppity, were officially called Chamber Singers. I was good enough, but not great. Lucky for me, there weren't any other guys in my school willing to sing bass, so I always seemed better than I actually was. I auditioned for district chorus my junior year. My audition went horribly. They had us audition on a song that had no words... so it was basically humming (a capella) 16 bars of music. Once I lost my place in that I had no way to get back. As I left the room, feeling more than a little embarrassed, the first person I saw was my friend Seth. He was a year older and quite a performer. We weren't particularly close outside of music stuff, but we got along well enough. I half-jokingly collapsed into his arms when he asked me how it went. It went poorly, but Seth reminded me immediately that there was always next year.

A year later, I was a senior and the chorus, er Chamber Singers, were performing in the basement of the library (I guess that counts as a chamber) sometime near Thanksgiving. Seth must have been on break from college because he came to see the show. After the show he came up and gave big hugs to everyone. For some reason, that particular night I wasn't in the mood for a hug. I mostly turned away from it and took off shortly after the show without doing much catching up.

A month later, I got that call from my girlfriend. Seth had died at school. To this day, I'm still not sure exactly what happened, other than it was not drug, alcohol or suicide related. I think he had some sort of infection which made its way to his heart, but I'm not sure. After some tears and hanging up the phone, I went upstairs to my room, turned off the lights and listened to "Pale." Come Back Down is not my favorite song from that album, but it's the song I remember hearing that day. It's the song I remember hearing as I thought about the fact that the last time I had seen Seth, I had blown him off.

I made district chorus senior year... and quit Chamber Singers shortly thereafter.

Tuesday October 24th

Day 124, Session 47:
Location: The train, the desk, the first hour at work
First song: Change In Speak by De La Soul
Last full song: Chinese Baby by Clem Snide
Progress: 614-632 of 4508
Total Songs Heard: 546

Two different versions of Chicago by Sufjan Stevens was the big song of the day. Normally having two versions of the same song on the same cd would seem like a waste of time to me. Not in this case. The two songs are different enough that it's justified. Chicago...

I've been in Chicago for 5 and a half years now. I did not arrive in Chicago under the best of circumstances. I had been fired from a job I loved. I had been unemployed for 4 months. Chicago wasn't really on my radar of places to go next except for that one minor point... it's where the girl was. I spent 4 more months unemployed once I moved here, so while I was free for an entire summer in a great city, I was also broke which meant not a whole lot of actually being able to do anything. And nothing I did! I had a standing date with the television every day for 4 or 5 hours.

I tried to jump into the improv scene in town, but I found a few problems... 1) I had never done any improv before and there was no improv at UD so 2) I wasn't very good and 3) I wasn't very good at meeting new people. So while the folks I was in class with either had A) preexisting bonds from past improv experience or college, or B) were able to mesh by being good on stage together or at the very least C) had basic people skills, I didn't have any of those things. It left me feeling like an outsider among the group I was with. The only thing better than being an outsider among people you're hanging out with semi-regularly is paying (a lot) for the privilege (when you're already kind of broke.)

(I should note here for the record that as far as I remember, no one actively rejected me or anything. I just wasn't able to make it work. It's possible that people actually didn't like me, but no one ever said so to my face.)

To recap for the first few months in town I had no job, no new real friends and an expensive new hobby that I wasn't very good at.

Eventually I did get a job (which kind of sucked) and then another job (which didn't suck at first, but eventually, unless you're doing something you really love, all jobs suck.) Eventually I made some new friends, but still no one all that close. (Which raises the question of whether it's even possible to make new friends after a certain age.) Eventually I even became not terrible at the whole improv/theater thing. Luckily, the whole reason for moving here (the girl) worked out in the end.

But still... looking back, I'm pretty sure I still haven't gotten over the way I arrived and the first year in this city.

I'm not sure Chicago and I will ever feel good about each other, but now I'm stuck here. Married home owners can not just up and leave any time they feel like it.

So maybe Chicago and I need to reevaluate our relationship. Maybe it's time to (finally) move past the rough start.

I made a lot of mistakes in my mind, in my mind