The English Geek

2011 Books & Music

I put this list together for a project at work, but I thought I'd share it here, too. The list of my favorite 2011 releases, by genre:

My Favorite Released-in-2011 Grown-Up Fiction

1. The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (which, OK: I haven't finished yet, but only because I am savoring it slowly)
2. Sister by Rosamund Lupton
3. I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson
4. To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal
5. The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

(Side note: the 2011 new releases I want to read but haven't yet: State of Wonderby Ann Patchett; The Marriage Plotby Jeffrey Eugenides; The Stranger's Childby Alan Hollingshead; The Night Circusby Erin Morgenstern, The Cat's Tableby Michael Ondaatje, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, and 1q84by Haruki Murakami)

My Favorite Released-in-2011 Teen Fiction
(I am completely unsure as to why I didn't write about any teen fiction this year.)

1. A Monster Calls  by Patrick Ness. A combination of Siobbhan Dowd and Patrick Ness? With illustrations that powerfully capture the emotion in the story? Oh, my. I can't tell you how much I loved this book. Enough that I haven't brought myself to write about it yet.
2. Divergentby Veronica Roth. One of the better of the new crop of dystopian novels.
3. How to Save a Lifeby Sara Zarr. Told in alternating chapters, this is the story of two teenagers: on who's pregnant and might want to give her baby up for adoption, one who's trying to deal with the grief from her dad's death.
4. Chime by Frannie Billingsly. Another dystopian novel, this one is so well written it's like jewelry, somehow.
5. Between Shades of Greyby Ruta Sepetyas. A historical novel about Stalin's rule in Russia. I don't think this topic in history is very well known, and this isn't a happy book. But beautiful, still.

(The 2011 new teen releases that I'm still waiting to get to the top of the waiting list: Ashfall by Mike Mullin; The Scorpio Racesby Maggie Stiefvater; Blood Red Road by Moira Young; Legend by Marie Lu; The Unbecoming of Mara Dyerby Michelle Hodkin)

My Favorite Released-in-2011 Nonfiction

1. Just my Type by Simon Garfield. Have I ever blogged about my affection for fonts and typography? I don't believe I have. I should, one day. Suffice it to say: this book has an entire chapter about Comic Sans. No font nerd could resist it.
2. In Other Worlds: Science Fiction and the Human Imaginationby Margaret Atwood. Hello...my favorite writer. Her words about science fiction that began as a response to Ursula K. Le Guin's review of Year of the Flood. What isn't there to love for me?
3. A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet by Eavan Boland. Just her name, with its Irish connotations, gives me shivers. Even better, this is exactly the sort of book I love to read, with its mishmash of writing and the writing life and poetics and poems and thinking and discussing.
4. Blue Nightsby Joan Didion. I loved her The Year of Magical Thinking, which is about the year after her husband's death. Blue Nights, equally as powerful, details the time after her daughter died.
5. A Widow's Storyby Joyce Carol Oates. I'm not sure why the details of someone else's grief are compelling to me. But this one---the story of Oates' dealing with the death of her husband---just works for me.

 My Favorite Released-in-2011 CDs
(I only am listing three because I only discovered three. I'm trying to broaden my musical horizons but so far I'm not being very successful.)

1. 21 by Adele. Although I ran with these songs as company many times during my marathon training, they evoke for me the first long autumn run I did. "Turning Tables" is perhaps my favorite song on the album—nearly a soundtrack for some autumn moments—perhaps because of the lyric "next time I'll be braver, I'll be my own savior." I don't often manage, like I used to, to find exactly the wisdom I need in a song. But I needed that line. I still need it.
2. Ceremonials by Florence + the Machine. In real life, I think Florence might bug me a little bit—too dramatic. But in music, gah. I love her work. I am approaching this CD like I used to approach CDs: learning all the songs by heart.
3. Ahk-toong BAY-bi by a whole bunch of musicians. This is a CD that was released in England to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the U2 CD Achtung Baby. It's a cover album---lots of different musicians covering each song from the original. It's got Depeche Mode on it, singing "So Cruel," which is just about all I need, but, hello: The Fray singing "Trying to Throw your Arms Around the World"? and Patti Smith doing "Until the End of the World"? oh, and Damien Rice's version of "One"! and Snow Patrol on "Mysterious Ways"! This has been on nearly-non-stop rotation on my playlist. I love it. So. Much.

Did you have any 2011-new-release favorites?

I Think I Love You

(a book note)

When I was almost 15, I fell in love with the band Depeche Mode. This happened after my Lake-Powell friend Carrie's older sister introduced me to Alphaville (one of my life's seminal moments); Alphaville lead me to my local alternative radio station (KJQ), which lead me to the larger DM oeuvre. (Because who, in 1986, hadn't heard "People are People"?) I became a Depeche Mode junkie: I saved all my spare money to spend on buying cassettes, which I listened to over and over again. "Dressed in Black" became my personal anthem and understanding "Stripped" became a litmus test for boys. Lucky for me, my dad enabled my music addiction; his big stereo downstairs was wired so we could also play music on the upstairs speakers. I could listen to music while hanging out downstairs (probably reading) and while forced into upstairs slave labor (cleaning the kitchen). I'm certain this drove my family, who didn't quite share my taste in music, insane, and probably prompted my Big Gift that Christmas: my own stereo. I never had to be music-less again.

 

Much as I loved the music, perhaps what I obsessed about more was the lead singer, Dave Gahan. It didn't hurt that he looked vaguely similar to my eternal adolescent crush. I admired everything about him: his dark, velvety voice; his penchant with words (I assumed, of course, that since he sang the songs, he also wrote them, an assumption that left out the real lyricist, Martin Gore); the mysterious, brooding aura he assumed in the videos. I scoured magazines for articles about him (luckily my library took Rolling Stone). I accumulated a sparse but highly valued collection of magazine images of him that I grouped together on my bedroom wall.

 

Since "normal" wasn't ever one of my qualities, this adolescent obsession of mine didn't enter the realms of your average adolescent obsession. In other words, I didn't spend hours imagining what it would be like to make out with Dave Gahan. I never kissed my posters of him. I hardly ever thought of him in a physical way. (Well...not very much. Really.)  Instead, my fantasies involved hanging out with him in an English pub, where we'd drink soda (I might have even known what his favorite beverage was at that point in my life) and just, you know, talk. About his song lyrics—where in his soul they came from, and how he wrote them, and how true they were. I thought "Here in this House" was the most romantic song in existence and "Strangelove" the only real love song ever written, and I wanted to tell him that.

 

Poor Martin Gore!

 

And while Petra, the protagonist in Allison Pearson's novel I Think I Love You has a quite different obsession—David Cassidy, obviously—I think she'd relate to my experiences. Petra is head-over-heels in groupiefandomness with David Cassidy. She and her friend Sharon spend hours assembling magazine pictures and posters of David Cassidy, kissing said posters, and reading Tiger Beat, which Sharon's aunt gets her from America, and The Essential David Cassidy Magazine, which comes to their small town in Wales via its London publishing office. Sharon and Petra have just, finally, made it into the "in" crowd at their junior high, so when they're not obsessing over David they're a little bit anxious about keeping on queen-bee Gillian's good side. Petra especially. She should be practicing her cello more often, since she's going to be performing for Princess Margaret soon, but instead she panders to Gillian and dreams about conversations with David. "I never revealed my favorite song to the other girls," she explains. "If I told them, then they could copy my idea. . . he was going to be so impressed I hadn't chosen one of his obvious hits, wasn't he? 'Gee, that's amazing, Petra. You dig "I am a Clown"? Wow. No one else ever noticed that song and it means so much to me.'"

 

See, Petra and I are soul mates.

 

If this was only a book about a teenage girl obsessing over a musician, I don't think I would have liked it. I enjoyed it because it captured a bit of what it's like, in the beginning of your teenage years, when every decision and conversation and action seem to have unexpected results; sometimes a surprise good ending but more often they shove you off a cliff into the icy puddle of your own despairing, lonely existence. Petra is caught up in all sorts of little anguishes: the bit with Gillian, but there's also her mother who's highly disappointed in her husband and never loses an opportunity to tell Petra about it, and the tug between wanting to be a better musician and just hanging out with her friends, and that unsettled, distrustful feeling of being the last girl to need a bra. (I feel your pain, Petra. I'm still waiting to need one.) It also tells the story of Bill, who writes for The Essential David Cassidy Magazine, and Petra and Sharon's story twenty-five years post-David obsession.

 

And even though I was skeptical about this book—it seemed to have a high potential for cheesiness—I ended up really, really liking it. I can't say I loved it, mostly because the adolescent Petra sometimes comes across with that wiser-than-her-age thing that often happens with teens in novels. What bugged me about this was how much I liked what she was saying, balanced with knowing she couldn't know this at 13. An example:

 

You chose the kind of friends you wanted because you hoped you could be like them and not like you. To improve your image, you made yourself more stupid and less kind . . . The hierarchy of girls was so much more brutal than that of boys. The boys battled for supremacy out on the pitch and, after, they showered away the harm. The girls played dirtier. For girls, it was never just a game.

 

It's exactly true, but thirteen-year-olds don't realize any of that. They just know their friends make them miserable sometimes, or that they make their friends miserable.

 

That aside, though, I highly recommend this one, mostly for its redemptive qualities. Even some of my very own friends didn't understand my Dave Gahan obsession. They all knew I loved Depeche Mode, and even liked the band as well, but they didn't share my mania preoccupation affection and thought I was slightly odd for it. Even now that I'm grown up, and even though it's more than a little bit embarrassing, I confess: I still listen to quite a bit of DM. This garners more than a little bit of familial mockery from both Kendell and Haley, but I hardly care; the music still reminds me of how it felt to feel like that. I could explain what I mean, but I love how Petra, grown up now, puts the musical reunion: it's a sort of "emotion recollected in tranquility, of all the women like her in this auditorium who are looking back on their thirteen-year-old selves, on the pressure of all that yearning. Wanting to be loved so badly. That was the great engine of life, revving up back then, if only they'd known it." Now that my engine has already revved and is starting to sputter, revisiting that version of myself reminds me of emotions and experience that shaped me, even though sometimes I've forgotten how.

 

Especially if you, too, suffered through your own bout of adolescent obsession (Didn't we all? Wait...did we all? Or are Petra and I on our own here? Which musical personality did youobsess over?), I think you should read this. Or, go listen to some Depeche Mode just so you can hear what I mean.

Songs I Love Right Now

Yesterday morning while we were waiting for his carpool to pick him up, Nathan and I turned the radio on. A song came on I vaguely remember hearing before, but not really paying attention to. That morning though, I paid attention to it. We danced along, laughing together, and I fell in love with the experience and with the song. So as soon as he left, I raced to my computer so I could download it. (I buy my songs from Amazon, as iTunes is sacriligious in our home!) Before I completed my purchase, though, Amazon warned me that I had already bought it. Sweet! I got it back in January when I had some free download codes but no songs I was dying to have, so Haley used the codes. Awesome song, already purchased? (And not even purchased, but downloaded for free?) Color me happy!

So, without further ado, a few of my current favorite songs, just because they make me happy and I want to remember happiness too:

01 - Dog Days Are Over

(The song Nathan and I danced to)

07 - Little Lion Man

(I didn't realize I like folk music, but that is how this is catalogued at the library. I'm waiting to get to the top of the hold list so I can hear the rest of the CD but I couldn't wait for this song. I love it.)

My Only Offer

(My friend Apryl introduced me to Mates of State and now I am slightly obsessed but this is my favorite so far.)

09 bulletproof

(I heard this at spin class and now I love the entire CD)

12 relator

(Kendell HATES this song, and while I can kind of see his point—Scarlett Johansen does sound a little stupid—my affection for it remains unfettered by his opinion.

What songs are you in love with right now? What band am I totally missing out on?

Holiday Hodgepodge #1: A Christmas Cornucopia

Sometimes I have to come at a goal sideways. For example, I always want to blog more, but in November I had an unwritten and undeclared goal to blog every day. The fact that I didn't announce it made it easier, somehow, to actually blog every day. When I finally missed a day, the lack of "I'm blogging everyday!" pronouncements gave me permission to just start up again without labeling myself as a failure. I was able to push closer towards my blog-everyday-goal (20 out of 30 days) simply by not making a public declaration.

See? Coming at a goal sideways.

I'm going to try a more direct approach this month, however. I really wouldlike to make an entire month of blogging. So! Onward and upward through December. In the spirit of the month, I'm planning a whole bunch of December-Christmas-Holiday related posts. A Holiday Hodgepodge, if you will. Which brings me directly to today's topic: Christmas music.

I've blogged before about my Christmas-music tastes. Right now I am especially and still and thoroughly in love with Tori Amos's Midwinter Graces and Sarah McLachlan's Wintersong. But! Today I fell in love with a new CD, Annie Lennox's A Christmas Cornucopia. As any self-respecting alternative music fan would, I have a long-standing relationship with Annie Lennox. Is there anything better than "Love is a Stranger"? And of course I already own her rendition of "Winter Wonderland."

But! This CD—an entire album of songs sung by Ms. Lennox herself—is gorgeous. I love her voice—distinctive and strong. Nearly all my favorite carols are here. Only missing is The Carol of the Bells, which no one really sings much, anyway. And her version of The Holly and The Ivy? Oh my. I think I have listened to it 507 times today. It is SO GOOD. The whole CD is divine, in fact.

So divine that I can forgive the horridly awfully terribly bad cover:

 
Annie Lennox in puffy sleeves and a beatific feminine pose? My alt roots are quivering. Dear Annie: tell me this is meant to be ironic? Please?

An added bonus: Amazon has tons of Christmas albums available as $5.00 downloads. Too much for me to resist!

Songs Right Now

Yesterday afternoon, after my run, I sat in my usual stretching place in our yard (exactly under the spot where the sycamore and the plum tree touch limbs, so it's all lacy contrast) to, well, stretch. I was on that blissed-out wave that comes after a good run, and then I realized: ummm, hello Amy, you are singing out loud.

The song? Dave Matthews' "The Space Between" which has lately become my favorite post-run-stretching song. I heard it on the radio a couple of weeks ago and remembered how much I love it. As I stretched and did a little bit of pilates (yep, right there on the grass...my neighbors are used to this by now, although I usually try not to sing out loud because, well, we all know what my voice sounds like) I thought about the other songs I have been listening to lately. Tunes sort of come and go in my rotation...sometimes I'll get hooked on one or two songs and listen to them over and over until I can't stand them, and other times I'm completely OK with random. Still, certain songs start to become associated with certain time periods. At any rate, my post-run sing/stretch made me think I wanted to write about a few of my current faves, just because. (And, yes, I am thoroughly aware that most of them aren't really "current." That's just how I flow.)

• "Song Away" by Hockey. I mostly tend to listen to the lyrics when I listen to music, rather than the music itself. (Is that weird?) This song is a good blend of both though. "This ain't no Roxy music"? Maybe not...but it's still awesome. Like...awesome with an 80's groove. ;)
• "1,000 Oceans" by Tori Amos. This is from some movie soundtrack or other. It sounds like the old Tori whom I loved. Plus, no music list would be complete for me without at least one Tori Amos song. A sort of Haley-Amy theme song, although she'd roll her eyes at that idea! (Haley, not Tori.)
• "LoveGame" by Lady Gaga. Honestly: I am ashamed and embarrassed and horrified to admit I like this song. My gothy roots are vomiting in protest. My motherly protective instinct is rising up. My "I only like intelligent stuff" credo is trembling. This really is a horrid and nasty song. But it's also got a rhythm that matches my running gait. Yeah. I don't know if you can dance to it, but you can definitely run to it.
• "Any Second Now" by Depeche Mode. OK, you're right. This song is, like, twenty years old. At least. But suddenly I can't stop listening to it. The simpleness, perhaps. The building tension of the chords. That first line—"she remembers all the shadows and the doubts, the same film." It's short, let's listen to it again!
• "Eye" by Eve's Plum. Sometimes I'll hear a song somewhere—Grey's Anatomy, maybe?—fall in instant love, and download it. Then I forget where I first heard it. This song is in that category. It's sort of funky and random, hardcore-ish and mellow, depending on the spot.
• "When the Stars Go Blue" by Bono + The Corrs. Yet another old-ish song. I used this once for a title on a scrapbook layout. That Irish lilt to their voices never wears thin in my ears. "Where do you go when you're lonely?" I love that line!
• "Mad About You" by Sting. (OK, I'll stop with the this-is-an-old-song asides. You know me well enough by now, right?) I'd forgotten about this song for years until suddenly it turned up on my MP3 player. I don't know how it got there, but it was the first song that came up when I ran the Moab Other Half and it's been in heavy rotation since. It came out when Kendell and I were dating and if we had had dancing and/or a wedding song at our nuptials, this would have been it. Even though it's really about David (you know...in the Bible). It's such a gorgeous song.
•  "Just Say Yes" by Snow Patrol. For a slow-ish song, this one is oddly fast and is, somehow, perfect for running to. Kaleb also likes it, although he calls it "that gosh-sakes song."
• "Wouldn't it be Good" by the Danny Hutton Hitters. I caught the tail end of Pretty in Pink last week (the part where Andy yells at Blaine by his locker—love that) and now I can't stop listening to this song. It is a classic.
• "Undercover" by Pete Yorn. I can't help it. I love Pete Yorn. Pete Yorn, I love you. In the same bullet I'll also mention that "Break Up" is equally awesome, although don't you know I'm way prettier than Scarlett Johansson? ;) Just kidding. She's gorgeous and I need to get over my schoolgirl infatuation. Squeeee!
• "Gives you Hell" by All-American Rejects. But only when my kids can't hear it.
• Almost the entire Alice in Wonderland soundtrack, Almost Alice. Robert Smith! Avril Lavigne! Grace Potter & the Nocturnals! I can almost put up with the Owl City song. (have I mentioned: I detest and loathe and hate and am strongly against that lightening-bug song. BUGS ME!) It could only be better if Pete Yorn had a song on it, too. (Have I also mentioned how much I love the spot in Alice in Wonderland when Johnny D/Mad Hatter talks about Alice losing her muchness? Probably I love it because I might have lost some of my own muchness. But still.)
• Violent Femmes by Violent Femmes. You know, the good album, with all the good songs on it. I recently rediscovered my copy of this CD and it makes me happy to listen to it again. It takes me back to one exact moment driving in Chris's little red car (WHAT kind of car was the cherry, Chris?) on a warm afternoon just before school was out for the year—a summoning sense of freedom.

So, tell me (or even better...tell me you blogged about it!): what tunes are limning your life right now?

Making Happy, Music Edition

My parents didn't set an awesome musical example for my sisters and me. Kenny Rogers, Roger Whittaker, Barbara Mandrell. Actually, when I stop to think about it, I'm not sure my mom cared about music at all. My dad did, though; he was a stereophile before they invented the term. At Christmas he'd play the Christmas records of all his favorites, and even then, even at eight or nine, I'd roll my eyes and yearn for something a little more cool. It's a miracle I didn't grow up to be a country-music fan (although two of my sisters did; I do still love them but have been known to gently tease them, too).

Thank goodness some of my favorite musicians have at least one Christmas song for me to track down.

I'll confess: I've bought an entire Christmas CD just to get one song by a musician I love. (Like the nearly-completely horrid Kevin & Bean KROQ CD I bought---used, at least---just so I could have Tori Amos singing "Little Drummer Boy" on my Christmas playlist.) Of course, downloadable MP3s have made this process easier. As has the fact that Sarah M. has a Christmas CD, and then there are the bits and pieces I've found on the Very Special Christmas anthologies, and there's the Barenaked Ladies CD, and I also love the Celtic Women (who don't really fit, but whatever: It's MY Christmas playlist!)

So when I discovered, completely by accident in Walmart, that Tori Amos has a Christmas CD, I purchased it without delay. Without even doing any sort of price comparison! It's been getting fairly heavy rotation since I bought it. I don't love every song on the CD (the song "Pink and Glitter" could not be more annoying to me; when Haley heard it---playing on the stereo in the kitchen---she said "what kind of a weird song is this?), but that's OK, because most of the songs are perfect. What draws me most to Tori Amos's music is her lyrics; she has a knack for an elegant metaphor, a skill at dropping obtuse references that makes me shiver a little bit (in a good way, as in, for example, "Don't Make Me Come to Vegas"---not, obviously, on the Christmas CD---which has this lyric: don't make me pull him out of your head/Athena will attest/that it could be done and yeah: happy shiver), and a way of stringing words together that makes me think we could be friends.

So I didn't really expect her Christmas CD to just be singing the same songs everyone else sings, and I was right. Most of the traditional carols she sings are reinterpreted. In "Star of Wonder," for example, the wisemen speak: "some say we have been in exile/What we need is solar fire." Or "Coventry Carol" (a carol I both love and detest, because it puts you right into the Herod's raging) which has a sort of pre-song introduction thing. What works with the songs is that they sound like a Christmas carol should sound. Except also with the Tori-Amos sound. The new songs (written by her) do, too. "Winter's Carol" is my favorite.

It is, like the rest of my Christmas music, happy making.

Just for fun, the rest of my listen-to-all-December list:

Wintersong by Sarah McLachlan (I love, love her version of "What Child is This?" and "River" and "First Noel" and...well, the entire CD)

Celtic Women (Especially The Carol of the Bells, which is my favorite carol ever)

Joy by Jewel (I think her version of "Joy to the World" is perfect)

and these individual, long-sought-for songs:
Winter Wonderland, Jason Mraz
New York Christmas, Rob Thomas
Little Drummer Boy, Tori Amos (NOT on the new CD...this was the hardest one to find, but worth it as it gives me chills)
Winter Wonderland, Eurythmics
The Coventry Carol, Allison Moyet (Again: chills, even more than the Tori version)
Christmas Day, Dido
I Saw Three Ships, Sting (although I wonder every time I sing along: didn't the writers of Olde English ballads know that Bethlehem is, ummm, landlocked?)
Children Go Where I Send Thee, Natalie Merchant
O Holy Night, Traci Chapman
Oi to the World, No Doubt (This is Kaleb's favorite Christmas song, which never fails to crack me up)
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, Sarah McLachlan (not on Wintersong)
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Barenaked Ladies & Sarah M.
The Night Before Christmas, Carly Simon
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, The Pretenders

One of the perks of being a grown up is that I have forgiven my parents for their musical sins. Haley, I'm pretty certain, thinks that most of my music comes straight from the musical garbage heap, which I think is my bad juju for mocking Dad over his Country Christmas Allstars record. It's a good thing, listening to Christmas music your own way.

Now if I could just get over feeling guilty for failing to provide a constant stream of MoTab all December, all would be peaceful and bright.

What's on your Christmas playlist?

PS: writing about music is HARD. Unless you, the reader, has heard the song I am writing about, none of this matters. Must learn more about writing about music!
 

U2

"I know it would be totally expensive," our friend Steve asked us a few weeks ago, "but if you had the chance, would you see U2 in concert?"

I didn't hesitate with my answer. "Only if they agreed to only play music they wrote before 1990. Nothing that came after 'Achtung Baby.'" Because old U2? SO GOOD. The new U2? I can't stand it. I mean---I love that they have transcended their 80s fan base, that twenty years later they're still going strong. I think Bono's great and it does cheer me up to hear his voice on the radio, even if I hate the song. The U2 concept? Great stuff.

But the new music?

Stinks, in my opinion. It all sounds the same. Big arena rock. No longer intimate. But I thought about Steve's question, and I've been trying. I've been listening to their newer CDs. I have developed an affection for some of the songs. "Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own" and "Miracle Drug" are OK. "Walk On" is good, and I can confess to loving "In A Little While." (Who couldn't love a lyric that goes "when the night takes a deep breath, and the daylight has no end"?)

I think a large chunk of my resistance is the emotional connection I have to the old U2 songs. They're not just songs; they're an aural representation of my feelings. I don't just listen to them, I feel them. (And, less I sound like an absolute U2 fanatic, it's not just U2's music that holds those feelings for me.) At the senior end of my 30somethings, I don't define myself with music quite so much anymore. I've moved beyond the days when a song's lyrics were all I needed to explain how I felt. So it's probably not about the quality of the new U2 music. It's probably more about me.

But I'm not 100% on that last statement, either. U2 just isn't an edgy band anymore. (Ironic, yes, considering they still have their Edge?) They're not angry and victorious and torn apart anymore. They're not raw. And I suppose it's unfair of me to expect my favorite bands to remain rooted in rawness while I settle for middle-aged complacency. But I won't stop wishing Bono et all could still write songs like "Bad" and "In God's Country," "One Tree Hill" and "Dancing Barefoot." "Spanish Eyes." "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Not to mention my personal favorite U2 song, "Running to Stand Still," which I loved even before life taught me exactly what it meant.

"But you went to The Police concert last summer," Steve argued back. He's right. But I wouldn't have gone to a Sting concert. I went to The Police because it was The Police, in all their moody 80s glory. A little spot of time travel. They wouldn't play any of their new stuff because they don't have any new stuff. I went to reconnect, which I couldn't do at a U2 concert.

Unless they promised to play "Running." I think I'd still pay to see that one performed live. Maybe.

(And now I'm going to quit hesitating over the "save" button, and just post this thing. I'm not sure if it will make sense to anyone but me! But...if you, too, are a U2 fan---what's your favorite?)

The Police: A Concert Review of Sorts

This summer marks the 20-year anniversary of my friend Chris and I meeting. Something far larger than me made sure we were in the same group at our telemarketing jobs, and we became instant friends—kindred spirits, you might say. She was one of my adolescent years’ biggest blessings; it is hard to explain what she means to me. Like no one else in my group of high-school friends, she had my back. She knew me and loved me and even took care of me when I was at my most unlovable phase. She is the keeper of all my past secrets. But we don’t get to see each other enough, now that we’re all grown up. So when the chance came up—even though I felt guilty about leaving my kids for the night—I went to The Police concert with her.

And I am so glad I did.

Because going to a concert like that reminds me of how it felt to be my old self. The scents of beer, cigarette smoke, bodies, warm grass, surrounded by pieces of conversation and laughter, and then the music: a sensory time-machine that made me remember things I forgot I had forgotten. I kept thinking that everyone else should be there, not just me and Chris, but all the friends I had sloughed off of me through processes of betrayal and back-stabbing. In between the opening act (Elvis Costello, who did a cool version of "Allison" with Sting himself) and the main event, we set off to find the bathrooms but instead actually did discover an old friend, Jennifer. If Chris is the keeper of my old secrets, then Jenn is the keeper of my hardest self. During our senior year Jenn and I were always together (Chris was working in Maryland as a nanny then), rebellious and angry and stupid. I made many life-changing decisions that year, and the Amy Jenn knew was almost nothing like the Amy I am now.

Jenn and I both nearly cried when we saw each other. Maybe we both felt the same way: that the other held memories that almost no one else does. What I wanted the reunion to feel like was equal, three old friends comparing life stories. A scene from a book. Instead I felt vaguely ashamed of my current existence, the smallness of a small-town librarian and mother. What happened to all that fiery ambition we both used to have? She’d done something with hers (ad-agency employee approving press passes and doing other glamorous things), but it was hard to confess I still haven’t managed to accomplish much. Plus, she’s still rail-thin (she always was) while I am...well, not.

After Chris and I said good-bye to Jenn (with promises of keeping in touch) and finally made it to the bathroom, I found myself thinking about that Amy I used to be, the one whose environment was founded in rebellion-as-religion. My greatest contempt was for people who seemed to be pretending. (Still is, really.) And yet, standing there surrounded by ghosts, dancing a bit to "Message in a Bottle," I wondered: when was I pretending? Was my down-with-church, vodka-drinking self who I really am? Or is it the person I am now, trying to live my religion and be a good mother, feeling guilty over not achieving housewifery-goddesshood? They are two nearly black-and-white different versions of myself, and I’m not sure which is the authentic one.

But what I did decide: I wasn’t ever pretending when it came to music. That is the truest face of my goth-girl incarnation, loving good music. How many concerts have Chris and I gone to together? Erasure and Boingo and Depeche Mode and INXS and Book of Love. Jenn and I, too: PIL, Peter Murphy, Ministry at the Speedway Café. I still listen to a ton of the same music I listened to at 17, or to musicians who were influenced by those bands. It wasn’t until the first encore, though, that I remembered just exactly what I loved most about The Police: their song "King of Pain." When they played it, another mini time-travel machine shoved me back to my despondent adolescent nights, when my soul really did feel like a black spot caught up there. It is good, despite my unsurity of authenticity, to no longer feel that black despair.

Twenty years ago, when Chris and I went to see Erasure together, going to a concert wasn’t just about the music. It was also about keeping an eye out for spottings of The Boy (the one you loved beyond reason or hope), or perhaps even sitting with him for a few minutes and feeling that never-to-be-repeated feeling of pure, hormone-edged adoration; about illegal substances snuck into the concert in the hidden inner pockets of leather jackets; about wild abandon. Now, of course, it’s about hanging out with old friends and telling yourself you deserve an evening away, worrying about traffic afterwards, checking the cell phone for missed calls from the kids. And about old friendships themselves, how they carry that unseen bundle of memory and old selves. How they matter as much because of the past as of the present. But it’s still about the music, how it weaves, somehow, around nearly every one of those old memories and old selves. Along with Chris, it was music I took with me from that Amy version, and I am glad to have both.

I Need to Pick Your (musical) Brain!

So. I'm rebuilding my MP3 playlist, as my dumb little MP3 player (we officially Do Not Believe in Mac Products---iPods included---in this house) was not very happy, and its unhappiness---expressed by randomly shutting itself off every three minutes or so---was affecting my running. Anyway. As I've been shuffling through all the tons of music I have on my computer, I have started to see this trend. *I* think I have great taste in music, of course, but my tastes seem to run towards the slightly...well, I've dubbed it "lyrical" music. (The DH calls it something else.) It's great for almost everything I do. But I want something fast, upbeat, and energetic to dump onto my (hopefully-happy-now) player, to entertain me while I'm running.

That's where the picking of your brain comes in. I (and my MP3 player and my wanting-to-be-useful running muscles) would be ever-so-grateful to any of you blog readers who'd be kind enough to suggest some tunes. What are your favorite fast, upbeat, and/or energetic songs (that are not rap, or country, or overly annoying)? Or, if you're a runner/hiker/biker/elipitical-trainer-er/whatever who listens to music (even on an iPod!) while you're exercising, what's on your playlist?

My quads thank you.

Rewind

The radio station I listened to for about 35% of my adolescent years (45% of the time was given to listening to tapes; do the math and that leaves about 15% of my life left over to silence), KJQ, would, early on Sunday mornings, play an album that was going to be released later that week. My friend Jennifer and I spent many nights up late, waiting to hear that week's album. Bauhaus, Depeche Mode, the Cure, the Pixies, REM, Love & Rockets, the Cult, Xymox, Peter Murphy---some of the albums that influenced my very way of thinking and feeling, I heard first at about two a.m. on a Sunday morning. Jenn's stereo was way better than mine, so she'd always tape the program while we listened, so we could hear the songs again, up until we could finally buy an official copy. (I still have most of those tapes in a box downstairs, which is silly since I don't even own a tape player anymore, but I can't bear to get rid of them---they really wouldn't mean anything to anyone but me.)

I found myself remembering those album previews tonight, while I was making dinner. (Crispy chicken, homemade mac 'n cheese, and mixed veggies if you were curious!) I had the radio on, and they were doing a review of the new REM CD, the one that is supposed to sound (finally!) like the old REM. That idea was something the DJ discussed quite often: whether or not the new songs sounded like the old REM, the band we all loved when we were young and the band was young. Even a few of the people who called in to comment on the CD discussed whether or not the band achieved their old sound.

In between making bread crumbs, cleaning up raw chicken, moderating arguments between kiddos, and fielding about ten phone calls from Kendell, I didn't get to hear much of the CD. What I did hear, I liked, and I even thought it did sound a bit like old REM. But what I found myself caring about more than the music was the idea of a band sounding like it used to. I think having that desire is less about the band itself and more about wanting to feel like you felt when you first heard their music. And I don't think that's something you can ever really achieve. In a way, we end up loving the music or albums out of pure coincidence; they enter our lives when we're experiencing something and then end up jiving with that emotion. We become attached to that band because they resonate with who we are at that moment.

Take Jenn and me, and our primitive 80's method of downloading songs (lol...those taped copies were always so scratchy). I don't think I'll ever feel the way I did when we first listened to Peter Murphy's Deep, when I was just on the cusp of my last big rebellion, and starting to maybe settle down a bit, and staring down the barrel of my life's biggest heartache so far. When I listen to that album now---and just for old time's sake, I've got "Cuts You Up" playing as I write---the way it felt to be that version of myself comes rushing back.

But I've stopped wanting old bands to sound like they used to. I don't want the emotions to get muddied, for one thing---every time I listen to, say, Music for the Masses, I want to remember how it felt during the summer I was 16 and I listened to it for the first time. If I were to buy a new Depeche Mode album, I want it to remind me why I love the band---but I don't want it to sound exactly the same. A new album from an old band needs to be about both memory and new experience, but not in equal doses, for me to want to listen to it. It needs to create some new emotional resonance. And it's also that I am not the same person, and neither are they; the band is obviously going to come to their creativity from a different mindset with each album. They are going to evolve, and sometimes I am going to resonate with that evolution. And sometimes not.

So, yeah: I'll confess to bemoaning the fact that the current U2 sounds nothing like the U2 I love. But then, I'm not the girl who listened to Lani Pickering's copy of The Unforgettable Fire until the tape quite literally broke, either. But I'm also able to separate the two bands: my U2 and someone else's. I'm starting to be able to let go of wanting to re-feel an emotion and to trust in the strength of memory. To not need a new REM CD to remember sitting in my bedroom and rewinding "Swan Swan H" over and over while waiting for a pebble to be flung against my window and wondering what happiness might be.