Like in 10th grade when I would wear red plaid pants and Granny's cowboy boots I retrieved from the never-ending depths of Mom's closet and that red and white and blue ski jacket from Value Village that was so old it was made in "British Hong Kong" according to the decrepit tag on the collar. When we would play whiffle ball after school and when Tim would drive me to LW in his car that was always well-stocked with shop-lifted candy. When the mix-tapes we made to listen to in David's 1989 Ford Tempo that only had a tape deck would litter the front and back seats and sometimes warp in the sun. Like the time I was learning to drive in our old royal blue and wood-panneled station wagon on Whidbey Island and it was late summer and we were going camping with our usual overabundance of snacks from Trader Joe's and I almost drove off the road. And when shows were the only thing worth spending money on and when it seemed like I would never, ever be old enough to go to the 21+ shows.
But now when I go back and listen to that music, it makes me so nostalgic that I have to stop. Partly its because I listened to a helluva lot of melancholy music, but its also because Teenagerdom for me was bittersweet in itself. I mean, I can listen to a cute happy song from those times and instead be brought back in an instant to my melancholia. Things like growing up, my blossoming interest in art and music and film and photography and literature, love and hopeless crushes, not feeling cool enough for my group of friends, always wanting to be different from what I perceived to be the mindless riff-raff of LW, vintage dresses, wanting to be taken seriously by adults and my existential confusion as to what religion was really all about. Music embodies this time for me with more veracity than an untouched time capsule could ever hope.
Here's what I remember:
Jens Lekman, Sufjan Stevens, The Mountain Goats, Elliott Smith (I basically devoured these first four,) Broken Social Scene, Death Cab for Cutie, Sigur Ros, Iron & Wine (and these two,) The Softies, Deerhoof, Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, Yo La Tengo, The Shins, Modest Mouse, Animal Collective, CocoRosie, Seabear, Laura Veirs, The Moldy Peaces/Kimya Dawson, Stars, Tegan and Sara, that one Joanna Newsom song "Peach, Plum Pear," Langhorne Slim, The Flaming Lips album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, The Northern Drive, The Jesus and Mary Chain, the Ride song "Vapour Trail," Sonic Youth (mostly because David listened to them all of the time,) Pavement, My Bloody Valentine, Television, Orbital, Beat Happening, The Stone Roses, Neutral Milk Hotel, Ryan Adams. And maybe there's more but whatever's left is deeply tucked away in folds of brain tissue and does not want out.
...I don't deny that I loftily thought myself to have quite discerning taste in music. Hah! It seemed so important back then. And surprisingly, I didn't come to The Smiths until first year of college.
Anyway, this is the song we were listening to that summer day in the station wagon when I almost crashed and what brought about this whole topic in the first place because I just listened to it out of the blue:
I think it is safe to say that this song sparked my love affair with the banjo.
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