Music I listen to

Some music I listen to

This is a very-infrequently updated list of some songs which wedge themselves in my psyche so thoroughly that I want to listen to them many times in a row. They're not necessarily new songs, nor is it always the first time I've heard them--they just fit the receptors in my brain at a particular point in time.

From recent to less so:

"Still" by Elvis Costello
"I Got the Music In Me" by Kiki Dee Band
"100 Years" by Five For Fighting (so many people love this song!)
"Alone Again...Naturally" by Gilbert O'Sullivan (I had only heard of this song until a friend started lending me Rhino's 70s compilations. Instead of the self-pitying treacle I expected, to me it's a portrait of existential despair)
"It'll End in Tears (I Won't Cry)" by the Lilac Time
"DND" by Semisonic
"Fill Her Up" and "Brand New Day" by Sting
"The Poisoned Well" by Quasi
"You Get What You Give" by New Radicals
"Wonderwall" by Oasis
"Monkey" by Counting Crows
"Stupid Girl" by Garbage
"One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces" and "Battle of Who Could Care Less" by Ben Folds Five

...gap of about 5 years...

"Accidently Kelly Street" by Frente
"A Man of Great Promise" by The Style Council
"Three Soft Mays"by the Silly Pillows
"Nothing" by nada surf (that's my brother's band! they're actually making it big! unbelievable...)
"Dumb Things" by Paul Kelly and the Messengers (the rest of the album [Under the Sun] sucks IMO)
"Run-Around" by Blues Traveler
"The Ugly Truth" by Matthew Sweet
"I Hate My Generation" by Cracker
"Hotel Womb" by the Church
"Candyman Collapse" by Chris Connelly
"This Cowboy Song" by Sting (yes I like his music & I'm not going to let that kind of thing embarrass me anymore! so there!)

Whole albums:

Let Go by nada surf
lots of techno, specifically The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Crystal Method
Third Eye Blind (first album)
Flair for Darjeeling by the Loch Ness Mouse
the Seal first and second albums
Ready, Steady, Go! by Holiday
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by the Smashing Pumpkins
Kamakiriad by Donad Fagen

...again with the gap...

The Universe of Geoffrey Brown by Captain Sensible
Into the Great Wide Open by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
high/low by nada surf
The Slow Crack by Steve Kilbey
Of Skins and Heart by the Church
File Under Easy Listening by Sugar
Songs to Learn & Sing by Echo & the Bunnymen

History of my musical tastes

When I was in high school, I started listening to all this music that nobody else I knew had heard of. I remember clearly the steps involved:

Brother gives me Zenyatta Mondatta as a birthday present.
I buy an issue of Trouser Press with the Police on the cover.
In it I read a review of the Gang of Four's first EP, and buy it.
I love it! I get a subscription to Trouser Press.
I start listening to NYC's best college station, WNYU.
I hear a song by Robyn Hitchock, "The Cars She Used to Drive."
I buy the album, Groovy Decay.
I move away to college and try to join the radio station ( WHRB).
To get on the station you have to pass a test, which consists of making up a sample playlist.
I put "The Cars She Used to Drive" on my playlist, and the rock director, Geoff Weiss, is impressed because only a handful of people in the US know who Robyn is at that point.
I become a DJ at WHRB and proceed to spend all my money on "new music."

I stopped really collecting music in 1987 when our downstairs "neighbor" stole half our record collection (it was in boxes that he pilfered at random, so big chunks of the alphabet are missing...) It took me a long time to get over that and I've never gone back to being the music fanatic I once was. Simultaneously I started trying to cut way back on our expenditures. Over the past decade I've bought CDs less and less frequently, mainly when I see them used and cheap. My brother Matthew, brilliant songwriting and musician with Nada Surf, gives me stuff I'd never find around here, but my collection is still a lot more mainstream than it used to be.

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