It started, predictably, with a girl.
We’d traded mixes — playlists, actually, exchanged not via cassettes or discs but on internet FTP sites (the role of computers and the internet in modern courtship, joining every single other aspect of life, worthy of a post itself). Hers, replete with sunshiney guitars, was more thoughtfully put together than mine. So I promised another. A more complete one. In fact, I offered to put together a life list of 100 songs, the music that mattered most in my life, figuring there can be no better way to acquaint one mind with another.
So I stayed up until 2 a.m., dragging the musical touchstones of my life from one pixelated window to another. Stan Getz, Simon and Garfunkel, Mamas and Papas (my parents’ music, absorbed by my infantile brain). The Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin (grade, middle, and high school demigods). The Cult, Prince, INXS, The Smiths (who aided, abetted, or more often, aggrieved me during various collegiate crushes). Dave Mathews, Jack Johnson, Jeff Buckley, Beck, Luke Reynolds — the alt-rock/folk savants whose lyrics I’ve memorized during thousands of miles of western road trips and hundreds of ascents of Mt. Glory. And about 80 others, all put into approximate chronological order, as they tumbled into my life.
The criteria was simple: these were songs that at one time caused me to practically drop all other music, to replace the needle again and again in the same spot, infatuated. Patsy Cline. Stevie Wonder. Aimee Mann. Nick Drake. A host of ’80s and ’90s dance oddities, from when I wore a lot of black, shot fashion photographs, cared what club was best on what night, and actually bought records by Vicious Pink. And then there are the ones that I think were important. Maybe, at their intersection with my life, I was actually listening to something else. Maybe the whole list is wishful thinking. Maybe all music lovers are continually refining their 100 Lists, subconsciously. And what you end up with, true or not, is your own musical definition of your life.
Back to the original intent — is the Life 100 ever appropriate for romantic purposes? I don’t know — it’s pretty damn personal. To put all these songs into one playlist, and then hit play, is to face the unfolding of one’s life — complete decades of daydreams, friendships, affairs, advances, and retreats. It’s a bit much, all these songs in one place. But if I’ve started now, I want it right. Which meant that recently, while plodding up Mt. Taylor and listening to the list on my iPod, I found myself back in my high school bedroom, cross-legged on the shag carpet, thumbing through my record collection. Floyd, Rush, wait, what’s this? Boston. The first album. I pull it out, study again the cover: a fire-belching, guitar-shaped UFO leaving a rupturing Earth. There is that distinct mingled smell of cardboard and vinyl. I squeeze the edges so the cover puckers and carefully draw out the glossy black disc itself. Side One, Track One. More Than a Feeling.
Nah.
I’ll probably never finish the Life 100. How could I? My life will continue (hopefully) and I do hope to fall in love anew, with music that I’ve never heard before, that hasn’t been created yet. And I know I’m not remembering many of my past sonic crushes. In the past few days, I’ve remembered my first grade musical love, “American Pie” (How could I forget?), a song by the Pixies that saw me through some thorns after college, “I Melt with You” by Modern English (though it’s hard to find an unprotected mp3 of the original recording), and Manfred Mann’s “Blinded by the Light,” which seemed to run incessantly through the sound system of the Time Tunnel, a roller skating rink in El Paso, Texas, and which cemented, for the first time, a relation between girls, music, mystery, and want.
Maybe now, a few decades later, I’ll figure out the lyrics.
Or not.
Not to get too personal, but I’d love to hear others’ picks for their own Life 100s. At least a few. C’mon. Please?
Thank god I’ll never have to conduct a modern courtship via a Life 100 playlist. I’d get creepier looks than I do normally. Too much Zappa, Capt Beefheart, Bonzo Dog Band, Holy Modal Rounders, Kraftwerk and Dewey Cox.
Wasn’t it actually the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band?
Kraftwerk – ex-PIB yourself?
Dewey Cox – sly, d-swift.
How about Nina Child’s Oooh Child and that song from Pulp Fiction Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield. That would be a good start to my list. Have you been watching high High Fidelity?
Thank you DG, as you have successfully derailed an entire day worth of magazine work so that I can now think about my life 100. No. 1 has to be Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head. First song I ever loved. In fact, it was played to me in utero.
Anything from the Ramones!
Hey Dave just wanted to let you know, Your the Snazziest guy I know. I want to start Snazz’n again. Be back on Thursday ill give you a call.
Even though I am a hip hop dancing gangster. I love Rush it just brings me back to freshman year! Nothing like a little 2112 on the top100
A few (?) years ago I shot part of a TV series called “Making Sense of the Sixties”. I did the west coast stories, but the producers were Easterners. Slowly I began to realize that for these NY/Boston liberal intellectuals, history was all about social movements, great oratory, protest marches, etc. While for us in California it was MUSIC that defined history, and sculpted our lives! The White Album, Give Peace a Chance, Its the Singer not the Song, The Lovin Spoonful, Smokey Robinson, Whole Lotta Love, TGD acid parties – you get the picture…
Great Post, David – you are an awesome Dude…
Thanks, Pierre. Sometime, you’ll have to tell us all about your years touring with the Mamas and Papas. I bet you have some groovy stories.
Rolling Stones, “Moonlight Mile”, doesn’t get much better for me!
3rd grade, my first little ridiculously bright orange record player, I played cat’s in the cradle, Harry Chapin, over and over, the 6th grade dance, Earth Wind & Fire, fantasy, 9th grade, smokin’ in the basement to James Taylor, high school, on some other plane, college, Yaz, Midnight Lyrics, “it’s Raining outside …”, Grateful Dead, Eyes of the World, Bob Marley, Life without Music, so many great memories, moments in time, the list goes on and on … thanks for taking me back!
what about a dave mathews cover band song?
Like this?
You’ve inspired me to make my own list…
Here’s three to share:
Nina Simone-Feeling Good
Nina Simone-Mood Indigo
Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong-Summertime
Starting it off smooth….
I’m glad you’re actually trying to do this, because it sure isn’t easy. People just don’t realize that being a Rock n’ Roll fan is the hardest job in the world. There is something so wonderful (and pathetic) about it. When I was in college, if someone hadn’t heard Nevermind, or more specifically, had and didn’t like it, then that person was the enemy. You could be the nicest, sweetist, most honorable, chivalric person, but if you said, “Yeah, but they’re just not that good.” My response was simple: “Well, Fuck you. Your mom’s not that good.”
Like I said, it’s hard.
One more thing: Never trust anyone who doesn’t like the Kinks.
did you factor in Iron Butterfly’s “inna gotta davita” that you had stuck in your pinto’s 8-track all through high school?
The best song when you feel like you’re just a screw up and can’t get anything right.
“The end of the longest line” by NOFX helped me sulk my way through tenth grade.
Hey, Tate, when was that, 2003?
1997, but the album was 1992.
about the same time you started getting AARP junk mail.
Isn’t it time for Lora to put you down for a nap?
no time for sleep. I’m working on knocking JHunderground, TetonAT, and TheSnaz off the JH Planet “Best of JH 2009: Blogger of the year award.” Did they realize that 2009 just started?
I’m gonna go with Queen. One of the first bands that I bought my own album of right along with Shawn Cassidy- I was 7 alright. But I was stoked and just recently put “Dragon Attack remix” on a mix for Ganster Polly. It was the school girls version of hip hop back in the day.