Tunesday

I grew up in a home where I was often rudely awoken by repetitive scales played on a grand piano. Once her hands were warmed up and I was storming up the stairs, my mother would have moved on to Chopin. I would know my parents were going to the symphony when the hallway smelled of perfume. While my mother finished dressing, my father would play Rachmaninoff. This was the sound of playful impatience. I learned how to fall asleep even when the windows were buzzing from my brother practicing  drums. Once we were teenagers, there was a constant flow of boys in shaggy hair and flannel shirts marching up and down the stairs carrying amps and guitars. They’d play Nirvana for hours, stopping only to smoke cigarettes. Sometimes neighbors who lived a quarter of a mile down the street would say to my parents, “Alex is really getting good!” One summer, an unmarked police car staked out the house for weeks. There was so much constant coming and going of suspicious looking teenaged boys and pretty girls, I think neighbors thought we were running a drug ring. In a way, we were. Down in the cave of the basement, under fluorescent lights, music was growing up the walls.

Since I am the black note in my family, I spend an immoderate amount of time hunting for perfect songs. I read music blogs. I subscribe to several podcasts that send me free mp3s daily. I’m almost ready for my own radio station. I can’t play music, but if you could hear what I compose in my head, you’d want to take that Grammy away from Taylor Swift and hand it to me. Thus, I’ve decided to share my musical findings with you. Every Tuesday, I will offer you a small, well-groomed list of songs. Also, is an iTunes media player from which you can listen to a clip and purchase the songs I’ve jammed about.

Without further ado, here is your first communion:

Beach House- Zebra.  Once I lived inside a soda bottle. The glass was thick and vaguely green. Shapes in the world were either very small or very large. Sometimes I would see eyes the size of moons peer inside, but no one let me out. One day, someone turned the bottle upside down and I tumbled out, a little sticky, but otherwise unharmed. I didn’t fall in love with him at first, but then he pointed to a skyscraper and said, “one day we will dance up at the very top and we won’t be afraid.” He always wore green jeans until he gave them to me, and said, “always remember me.” I do. We never danced on top of the skyscraper, but if we did, it would be to this song. Him in green jeans, me in soda pop.

 Elvis Perkins in Dearland- 123 Goodbye.  I saw this band hours after I had landed in New Orleans. Elvis Perkins is the son of Anthony Perkins. His mother was killed in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11th. He opened his show by saying, “let’s get this one over with” and then he played this song. He keeps trying to say goodbye. Ready? 1, 2, 3...I’m going to really do it this time. Eventually, he does. Eventually, we all do. It isn’t easy, is it. 

The Low Anthem- Charlie Darwin. This album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, is the product of 23 instruments, many of which you’ve never heard,  passed between three people. One of them is a NASA technician and classical composer, another is a folk musician and painter, and the other is a Jazz bassist and baseball scholar. Intrigued? Buy the whole album. Right now. Then, go to NPR and watch them play live. During “This God Damn House” one of them puts down a horn, dials one cell phone from another, whistles and moves them closer and further apart to create reverb that somehow sounds completely organic and entirely otherworldy. Genius.

The Long Winters- The Commander Thinks Aloud. When the Challenger exploded, I was in third grade. I had just done a report on Christa McAuliffe. She was my hero. The television my teacher had rolled into the room was malfunctioning. She was pressing the buttons and checking the plugs when the principle came in and took her into the hallway. When she came back, she was crying. By the time they brought in a working televison, the space shuttle was reduced to smoke. This song is about the Challenger disaster. Listen to it in the car, driving fast, windows down, and loud.

5. Pearl Jam- The End.  I almost waited a few weeks to add this. If I had, you would know enough of my musical sensibility to be surprised that I’d include a Pearl Jam song. I loved them when I was sixteen. Ten had just come out, and they had the two o’clock slot at Lollapalooza. During Black, Eddie Vedder  disappeared from the stage. Someone near me pointed to the sound wall at the back of the lawn. There was Eddie, standing on top, thousands of people away from the stage. He stretched his arms out, and as the crowd gathered, fell backwards into their arms. I got an elbow. He floated on top of a sea of people and then was lifted back on stage where he finished the song. That was the most rock and roll moment of my life, the trust it took for him to fall like that, to be carried by strangers who could have taken him anywhere. It was performance art. I was sixteen. Everything had meaning. But, then I fell off the sound wall.  A few of my friends are still die hard Pearl Jam fans and have urged me to listen to Backspacer. Yesterday, I heard this song for the first time. It didn’t take me back to my adolescence. Pearl Jam is relevant now. I should have known, Eddie, to trust you with my ears like you trusted me with your elbow in the summer of ‘93. 

If you have a suggestion of something I should include in Tunesdays to come, feel free to email me at love@hollyselph.com . 

Comments

[Mish]

Awesome. Thank you for sharing!