Nothing Like The First Listen

The other day a co-worker asked me to make him a mix of tunes. There are few greater small pleasures in life for me. Now he didn't specify what kind of a mix, which would have been easier. No, he didn't request a mix of songs exclusively by British fops or songs only recorded south of the Mason-Dixon Line or songs only about animals--requests that would have been easy to accomplish. So, I had my usual response to the general "make me a mix" request--I went overboard, zealously. He'll be receiving a nice box set of mixes from me, filled with universally great songs as well as some geared more specifically to his personality and perceived likes (though he is a vociferous Rod Stewart hater, how could I refrain from including "Every Picture Tells a Story"?). Of the hundred or so songs I've collected for him, I'd be willing to wager 90% of them will be new to his ears. Just the thought of how thrilled he might be to hear such gems as Dan Reeder's "Work Song" or R.L. Burnside's "Stole My Check" or The Coasters' "Shoppin' For Clothes," or some other unpredictable song for the first time, has me giddy.

I started thinking about this phenomenon--the first time you hear a song destined to be one of your all-time favorites--and was struck by how few of the thousands of "all-time favorite" songs on my list I actually remember in detail hearing for the first time. Why? Shouldn't everybody remember vividly the first time they heard "Satisfaction" or "Like a Rolling Stone" or "Mamma Mia" (sic)? Maybe it's the saturation of listening to such songs so many times over years and years that dims the memory of the first time. Maybe some songs have just always been in one's consciousness. Who knows?

One song that stands out is a rather obscure one, "Boston," by a guy named Dave Derby. I was in a record store, the only customer at the time, and all of a sudden the song came over the speakers. Looking back on it all, I can't say I wasn't the victim of that great record store ploy employed in High Fidelity when John Cusack announces he's about to sell five copies of the Beta Band's 3 Ep's record, puts the record on and everyone in the store starts grooving and asking what the record is. Maybe the guy in the store I was in, who certainly knew a little of my tastes in music, knew that I'd respond to the beautifully gloomy, dreamy "Boston." Halfway through the song I had to ask what was playing, by the end of the song I had bought the record.



Having been a big Meat Puppets fan for several years, I of course was excited when their 1987 record Huevos came out. I remember playing the record for the first time late one night in an apartment I shared with two other guys, after they had gone to bed. Not being able to crank the volume became torture when I heard the first riffage of the great "Look At The Rain." But when the band kicked in again the glorious wailing of the title phrase after a false fade-out, well, in some ways I've been swooning ever since ("I gotta shirt that costs a dollar twenty-five/I know I'm the best-dressed man alive!").



I was at a friend's when he played me Bill Fox's epic Shelter From The Smoke album for the first time. Those jangly first notes and the not-expected high lonesome voice of Bill singing, "Over and away she goes ..." spelled instant addiction. I am blessed to see Bill play often, and often he begins his set with "Over And Away She Goes" and I am able to re-live that first-time thrill of being granted admission to a singular world once again.



Strangely, the most vivid "first-time" listening experience I remember is a bit confusing; I don't remember the exact song I heard. I had just returned to college and had to get up at dawn on a snowy, dark morning to return a rented car. As I drove down empty streets, the radio played the Roches' "Hammond Song," or was it "Losing True"? Seeing that "Losing True" is kind of a re-make of "Hammond Song" (I bet many Roche sister fans wished they'd make more and more re-makes--gorgeously strummed acoustic guitar, three angelic voices all-entwined, and a touch of Frippery thrown in for seasoning), nearly thirty years of memory have confused me as to which one I actually heard on that drive. All I know was that I had to have that song, that sound. Funny, though, I can't remember the first time I actually heard the song I didn't hear that morning.



Here's hoping thirty years from now, when my co-worker is reflecting on his lifetime of good listens, he'll remember a moment listening to one of the mixes I've made for him.

See Emily Dismay

All right, who died and made Emily Dickinson warden of my conscience? At first I thought maybe it was the Dylan folks getting me back for yesterday's gaffe of mistaking the title of Bob's new Christmas album Christmas In The Heart. I had written it was Christmas From The Heart (to be honest, I'd rather have my seasonal carols from the heart, rather than in the heart, beloved Bob's or anybody's).

But no, I detect something more cosmic than a rock star's aide-de-camps has its hand in confounding me like I've been confounded ever since I read the following quote from Ms. Dickinson nearly twenty-four hours ago: "To be worthy of what we lose is the supreme Aim--" (yes, even in her letters, one to T. W. Higginson, summer 1882, from which this atomic bomb comes from, Emily had to get her precious dashes in). What does she mean? Should I supremely aim to be worthy of my thick thatch of glowing red hair that I started losing twenty-five years ago (though at least I'm still losing it, or what thin, unglowing wisps do remain)? Worthy of that tooth? That phone number? That bet I had on Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes?

Okay, piddly stuff. Certainly Emily (who obviously knew a thing or two about saudade even if she didn't know the word), who because she did not stop for death, it kindly stopped for her, and who didn't mean a snake when she wrote about the narrow fellow in the grass, had more important ideas on her mind when writing of "what we lose." But what, loved ones, long-gone opportunities, the physical or emotional courage that we might lose over the years? What? Am I supposed to live my life supremely aiming to be worthy of these lost things? What would that be like, to devote your life so intently on proving yourself worthy of such a lost thing or person?

Of course, with Emily and that "supreme," one does think along religious lines. And maybe that "we" is not so individual but collective: Are we to live so as to be worthy of what "we" lost in the Garden of Eden, that intimate, unconditional, and undemanding love of God?

Now there's a blog project worth something grand, if not a book deal and a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep: publicly inventory your life's losses, and publicly chronicle your attempt to "be worthy" of those losses. Well, publicly, I'll stick to made-up words and UFOs abducting cows, but privately, this one might be hard to shake. Pound for pound, in the psychic quandary category, I'll put my money on the demure Belle of Amherst up against anybody this side of Immanuel Kant (and as far as that side of Immanuel Kant goes, well, as the lavatory attendant in Hell says, "don't go there").

The Roches-Losing True

Percy Mayfield-Lost Love

And because Youtube won't let me "embed" this clip, you have to go directly (t)here to see Elvis singing "The Yellow Rose of Texas."