Five Crazy Things: Mood Music

While the cats are away, Day 2: Welcome, Dawn!

Dawn: Before we get started here, I’d like to thank Barb and Deb for asking me if I’d like to write something while they were going to be away. I was thrilled they asked, they were thrilled I said yes. Here’s the result of the thrilling love-fest:

A lot of the Olympic athletes have been shown listening to iPods in between races or meets or whatever. Does anyone else here wonder what they’re listening to, or why? Does it relax them? Does it motivate them? Does it annoy the crap out of them and give them something stupid to distract themselves with while waiting around for their turn? It could be any or all of the above. Point is, it's obviously doing SOMETHING for them. 

What 5 songs motivate you? Pick you up when you’re down? Just make you jump up and dance?

I also call this list “Five songs I never skip over when they come up on the iPod or radio.”

1. “Come Sail Away” by Styx (1977).  I discovered Styx in high school. One of the songwriters, Dennis DeYoung, is damn good at putting how I feel into words with fantastic music. This is definitely one of his best. (Plus, piano!)

2. “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey.  Journey’s “Escape” and Foreigner’s “4” albums were the first true rock BAND albums I owned. (Before that, it was all K-tel.) This song is what got me singing into a lipstick-tube microphone for the first time. (And it has piano!)

3. “Freeze Frame” by J. Geils. Poppy, funky, pointless FUN. The video was fun. (Anyone remember a bunch of guys in white overalls throwing paint splats all over a white set?) The beat is fun, and it makes my mood FUN. I love it love it love it.

4. “Walking in Memphis” by Mark Cohn. This is the song I believe I sing better than any other song. Best listened to in the car by myself. ;) (And, more piano!)

5. “It Don’t Make Sense (You Can’t Make Peace)” by Styx (2006). Dennis DeYoung and the rest of Styx “divorced” in 1999. The recreated Styx covered, and seriously reworked, this song and turned it into something whose funky sound is stuck firmly in my head.

Okay? Ready, set, go!

Barbara: Oooh, I love this topic, Dawn, because a) I wondered the same thing about the athletes, and b) I definitely have specific mood music.

1. “Song 2” by Blur, for getting motivated (cliché, I know, but it was my gear-up song waaaay before the sports arenas adopted it).

2. “Bohemian Like You” by the Dandy Warhols. This song just makes me feel happy and good and ready for anything.

3. “Wolf Like Me” by TV on the Radio. For power. Oooh, yeah.

4. “Cosmic Love” by Florence and the Machine. For working. For uplifting. Ready for everything/anything. “I Will Wait”, a new song by Mumford & Sons, is doing it for me in this regard too.

5. “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails. For feeling sorry for myself. Which sometimes hurts so good. Johnny Cash’s version works too.

Musical Mob

Barbara: Flashmobs always make me weepy and grateful, but this one is truly special. It has a beautiful filmic feel and must have been especially tricky to manifest. I so love it and I hope you do too!

A Record Of My Past

Deb: My husband and I just came home from a big show selling old vinyl records. Cash only, bartering welcome. We went down just to see what we would see and to make a few purchases.

Nothing gives me more joy than popping a disc on the record player. Slipping the vinyl out of its sleeve, blowing the dust off, and gingerly placing the needle on the thick groove at the edge.

What comes next is the lovely scratch of anticipation, then––BOOM––instant time machine.

When I was a kid, records were my pride and joy. I would actually carry around a fave album at school with my schoolbooks like it was a baby. I remember Led Zeppelin 2 actually having the welt of my handprint on it.

Today, at the record show, that history was for sale. Boxes and boxes of albums, some carefully labelled alphabetically and others tossed randomly in a crate. People were pouring through them searching for their own musical treasures of the record player age.

I was looking for my own memories. Specifically, for good copies of albums I already had that were scratched beyond recognition. And oh, the treasures I found. First was an album called Nucleus. Mine had been played and played and played until its only use was as a serving tray. And I found it. Nucleus. Perfect condition. Then I found The Eagles Long Run, perfect condition. Then I found a Beach Boys Christmas Album and a very rare Beatles album with a cover I have never seen in my life. Snapped them up! The cold hard cash we were carrying was gone in fifteen minutes. There were no bank machines and we were empty. Spent, literally. As we were strolling out the door I was grinning like a gargoyle clutching my albums, feeling all Grade 11.

Suddenly something caught my eye. Led Zeppelin 2. A beam of light shot from the heavens and pointed me right to it. Original packaging, NEVER BEEN OPENED. Heart pounding, I approached gingerly. And I was playing it so cool. LIES. Not cool at all. Covetous. Approaching maniacal. Picked it up and read the price. $60.00. Fair price for a masterpiece, UNLESS YOU DON’T HAVE THE DOUGH ON YOU. So we left and realized that we forgot to get the seller’s card.

So please, send a prayer to the rock and roll gods to give me a chance at that album again. That pristine perfect platter of my past. I will NOT fail the next time. I will search and I will find it. But till then, I will “ramble on, and now’s the time, the time is now to sing my song.” And I will. It will be a scratchy duet. But when I get a good clean copy, I will dance the dance of the air guitar and it will be sweet! “Leaves are falling all around, time I was on my way-ay!”

Barbara: Mmmmm, real records. Now that triggers a surge of nostalgia in me like almost nothing else. When I was growing up, my dad worked in the record industry and I got most of my LPs for free. Yes, we had the requisite photos hanging on our walls of him posing with industry luminaries: The BeeGees, John Mellencamp, The Village People (shut up!). Music was always playing in our house, whether it was classical, opera, rock, or the soundtrack from the latest hot new movie musical Grease. 

So buying my first album with my very own hard-earned money was definitely a rite of passage that I came to much later than most teens. But I remember it well: The Cars by The Cars. Oh my. Sex in music. I could’ve listened to it all day. And, yes, the scratchy sound, the lack of crisp clarity were all part of the aural charm.

Unlike you, Deb, I don’t have a player hooked up anymore, but Phil and I have talked about setting one up. Your post just makes that urge that much stronger. I love my CDs (and legally paid for downloads), but there is something about that classic, making-out-in-dark-basements vibe of the good ‘ol record that beckons.