5/6/12

I keep a couple dozen old burned CDs in the center console in my Saturn. There's plenty more where these came from in a big and dusty faux leather binder that I spent around $25 on back in the day - which felt like a lot. But when I got the Saturn this past fall, with the first car CD player I'd ever had, it was a chance to rediscover the CDs that used to spin in my Discman on a daily basis.

Some are mixes, some are albums. Some are labeled in Sharpie, some are decorated in swirls and stars and colors with little pictures accentuating words in album titles. Some are not labeled at all. They're all a nice daily reminder of who I am, where I came from, what I stand for, etc. It's also a nice way to spice up what I'm listening to on my drive in, as there's always a surprise or two to be found.

So today I pull out a disc at random on my way to the grocery store and laundromat, and it's Something Corporate, "Leaving Through the Window." OK. I'll take that. From the opening bars of "I Want to Save You" I'm suddenly a sophomore again, and all I want is some boy with shaggy hair and kind eyes and a killer CD collection to hold my hand and wear my hair ties and rubber pink bracelets on his wrist.



"She drives away, she's feeling worthless 
Used again but nothing's different 
She'd stay the night but knows he doesn't care 


Home by three, a deafening quiet 
The porch light's off guess they forgot it 
She'd cry herself to sleep, but she don't dare" 
~I Want to Save You
Something Corporate, Leaving Through the Window

I keep listening as I go through my day and I remember how this album as a whole is still so, so good. It's real, it's raw, it's driving. It's part of the original class of pop punk that arrived at an early-decade apex right when the kids were really starting to pay attention and start screaming for more. But it's never too angry, and there's slower moments, hinting at the heartfelt sentiment Andrew McMahon would continue to shape on "North" and with Jack's Mannequin. He talks about skin and limbs and veins and cars as was the way back then, but it's never for surface value, it's just the poetry of it. Combine the lyrics with piano-driven melodies and key-change choruses, and you make an album that was as classic than as it is today.

Ask almost anyone who graduated high school between 2004 and 2007. They'll tell ya.

One song, "The Astronaut," was never a favorite in high school, but today it made more sense. That chorus kicked in and I kept driving, silent, onto my destination. Today it felt inspiring. Today it reminded me that if you're going to worry about any road, it should be the one before you, and what you saw on the way there is right where it needs to be, namely behind you, but also in memory.




"i've been sleeping with ghosts 
i've been watching stars 
crawling out of the sky 
and i've been hoping 
i'm close to the space man movies 
i call my life 


and i've been climbing ladders through time 
i've got tunnel vision 
but i'm doing fine 
and i've been 
watching stars coming off of the wall 
and maybe if i'm lucky i can catch them 
before you fall 
and you are not alone 


calling out to the astronaut 
i need some of what you've got 
i need to be high 
crawling out of the world she brought 
calling out to the astronaut 
i need to be high"
~Astronaut
Something Corporate, Leaving Through the Window

8/5/08

I'm glad I was there when emo happened. I know "emo" as we've come to define is nearly two decades in the making, but for me, around 2002-2005 is where it all began, where all these artists who seemed to fit me started creeping out of the closet (really, I was just a lonely kid on Limewire)

Jesse Lacey, Adam Lazzarra, John Nolan, Andrew McMahon, Jim Adkins, (and for theatrical measure) Conor Oberst...those guys were writing my fucking soundtrack.

Violence, guns and car crashes from TBS or Brand New, lonely-awkward guy heartbreak from SoCo or Straylight Run, and the madness and drama wrapped up in Bright Eyes' "Fevers and Mirrors"...those kind of songs taught me about love and relationships and people as much as chick flicks marketed toward teenage girls, or Jane Austen or wherever we get all our ideals from.

It was all so bright-sounding, so new to me and so true-to-my-own life. Looking back some of the stories are tragic, some are just plain whiny, and some of the lyrics really fucking suck.

Jimmy Eat World was big, too--the first time I realized SoCo's Konstantine referenced "For Me This is Heaven" I felt like I was discovering a tomb of buried treasure.

Then Elliott Smith's "From a Basement on a Hill" was released when I was 16, and I found out about a whole bunch of other stuff. After lots of classic rock up til high school,combined with lots of Tori Amos from ballet class, trembling songwriting like his was some kind of music for my "still-not-bleeding" ears.

Then there was the first Spill Canvas record, Sunsets and Car Crashes. god such a cheesy title, but I listened to that thing every waking moment. I must've burned 5 copies of that thing because I kept breaking or scratching the ones I'd carry around with me. I preached that record like it was the damn third testament, pawning it off to anyone who would listen to see if it got to them the way it got to me.

I think I had it before it was actually released, too (zomg!!) and I remember hearing different studio versions of the songs and being like "what the fuck happened to my songs!" It's especially noticeable on "Caterpillars" or the backup vocals on the title track.

Made me smile when I heard his single on the XM radio station at work. "All Over You" or whatever. I had to go out and buy that CD when it came out, too. I had to see what he did. It sounds exactly the same to me, the same kind of writing, same kind of phrases all direct and dramatic and frustrated and insistent.

I've made leaps and bounds in my emotional and musical maturity in the past five years, but I hope that fucking CD will always have that same kind of magic to me.


What very well might be on every mix CD i made sophomore year of high school:

Something Vague
(Sing me to death, Conor Oberst! This guy just wails...let's see how his solo album, stripped of the Bright Eyes name, fares with his fans.)

Embers and Envelopes
(I forgot how much I liked Mae. The have a new CD that I really want to hear, but for some reason it would be weird.)

Cute without the "e"
(I never would've admitted loving this song, but you bet I did.)

Punk Rock Princess
(So bright. So bouncy. So cuffed-wrists holding hands. Ah, memories! I still listen to this song, it is so fucking cute, and somehow still sarcastic. And look at McMahon in his sweater. He looks/sounds so young!)


Sweetnesshttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
(Don't ask how I responded when I saw that Paramore was covering that. So many wires in my head got crossed.)

And of course...
The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows
I remember watching that video to death. "Your Favorite Weapon" was an instant favorite as soon as I heard it, for whatever reason, I downloaded it, I think, after hearing Seventy Times Seven. When I looked them up and realized they had just released this second record...well, next time I was at the mall with my mom I took my restaurant paycheck and bought "Deja Entendu." Peeled through those liner notes, I couldn't believe what this dude was saying and how it sounded.

Still fucking love that song.