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Pick A Winner

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November 22, 2004

To me it's always seemed like asking someone what their prison cell would have as decoration. The same thing, over and over, forever, will just drive me insane, and no matter how much I adore it now, or adored it 15 years ago, and no matter how many levels there may be to it, there is some point at which one CD, that one Desert Island Disc, would be enough to make me lose my mind. This is a long way of saying that I couldn't tell you what my favorite CD is, or even, what my favorite musician is. To me, music is like food--I've got to have it, and when I don't, I think about it, dream of it, make it myself, if only to remember how I felt. I spent 15 days on Outward Bound once, playing--in my head--Pearl Jam's "Indifference" in the attempt to remember every single word of the song, and then recalling just the right inflections of voice, echoes of guitar, and slides of fingers on strings to make it solid. But the thing about food, as with music, is that while you can return to the food that gives you comfort--grilled cheese, tomato soup, chocolate cake, pick you poison--if you were to have that, and only that, for the rest of eternity, you'd probably ask not to have a choice. Uniformity can breed resentment, and while people in Los Angeles will tell you that upper-70s-and-sunny is the only way to go, sometimes you need a little rainstorm in your life for re-centering; sometimes you need it to be cold to remind you of the joy of sun. For me, there are albums in my life that I can just put on, sing all the way through, and potentially play over and over again, that I am nevertheless loathe to do so because I love them so much, because I worry that they might lose their lustre. I've seen it happen so many times before. One-hit wonders and certain artists whose works have been the subject of my obsessive completism have both been stricken from my regular playlist solely because I over-loved them, like Lenny, or like the stuffed toy that gets worn down to the weave by a little child; they are the Velveteen Rabbits. But since I am aware of such tendencies in myself, I listen to them only in certain contexts, filter out songs one at a time, catch a piece here or there on the radio, but rarely, if ever, pick out the album and listen to it for its own sake, over and over again, so as to truly learn the album. There's little doubt, though, that I have listened to each song hundreds of times; I can hear them in my head when there's silence around me. I don't even know how that's possible, sometimes. That said, sometimes a musician or a CD speaks to you, and like comfort food, warm sweats and bed rest on a blustery, blizzard-day, you have to throw it on just to remind yourself of those feelings, to re-center yourself with a personal, auditory little rainstorm. For those times, there are U2's The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, Pearl Jam's Ten and Vs., Dave Matthews Band's Under The Table And Dreaming, Dispatch's Who Are We Living For? and Four Day Trials, and dozens of other albums which, although I cannot think of them at the moment, counts as part of my favorites, each of which recalls a place and time for me, but which also is a feat of musicianship and recording prowess that makes me hang on each instant of sound. Sometimes you just know--you have to hear that one CD the moment you get home.

This was Musical Musing , and it appeared on November 22, 2004 5:34 PM.

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