Up the Junction

I just made a website on Tumblr, which is a weird, confusing world. If you're also a Tumblr user, tell me and we can be Internet friends.

- "Up the Junction" by Squeeze, from Cool for Cats (1979)

Defining "Great" Music

London Calling by The Clash was one of the first albums I ever loved as a collection of songs. Before the luxury of Internet access and online streaming, I had CDs, cassettes, and the radio, which meant my listening habits were strictly enclosed. I either listened to the albums I loved on repeat or to the broadcast prescriptions of the local radio stations. Which, as you might imagine, meant that I became very familiar with the music that mattered to me.

London Calling was one of those pieces of music. No matter how I'm feeling, this album puts my mind in a very specific, upbeat place. Like riding a bike, I can rely on always falling into this feeling. I'm not sure why. It's not because of the memories connected to the music. It's because they're simply good songs, songs which also happen to work very well together as a greater musical piece.

I guess the beauty of a great album (whatever that might mean to me in this moment) is that it somehow pulls off that magic of a single great song, repeatedly and in different ways, while cohering as a collection that achieves an even rarer magic. Part of that magic is the contained journey that exists within a great album. Sitting down and listening to Nico's Marble Index, for instance, I experience a narrative. The album tells a story, and to sit down and listen to the album in full is to give that story a chance to be heard. A rarer aspect of that magic is persistence through time: I loved London Calling when I was ten, and I love it still at twenty-two. And while I can't predict the future, I'm sure I'll still love it in a decade.

If you're like me, however, you probably don't often sit down to listen to full albums. Like most millennials, I cut-and-paste the songs I like into forms that work for me while I'm running around the lake, or walking to class, or driving to the grocery store. There are probably forty or fifty mix CDs in my car, because they're the songs that meant the most to me over time. And that meaning has, in most cases, overwrought any singular associations or experiences that occurred in conjunction with that music. Those songs have meant frustration, puppy love, fear, exhilaration, hesitation, loss, and growth. They've stuck with me.

I often worry that this inclination toward mixtapes and singles is endangering the album. It seems like, more and more, people are talking about "that new Adele song" or "Macklemore's latest single" instead of the albums from which those songs are released. Like fashion, we've cycled back to the 7" ways of the 1950s, only the vinyl has been replaced by iPhones and Spotify. Given this trend, I'm confident that the album will, within my lifetime, reemerge as the widely-practiced form it was during the 1970s. Until then, I'm content to enjoy catchy singles and standalone songs, because great music is great, regardless of its format.

To conclude this confused celebration, here's a quote from Nick Hornby's Songbook. It's incredible how he can express, in one sentence, the same feeling I can't even define in a page:

"If you love a song, love it enough for it to accompany you throughout the different stages of your life, then any specific memory is rubbed away by use."

- "Wrong 'Em Boyo" by The Clash, from London Calling (1979)

French Chris at the Drive-In

Electrified.

"French Chris at the Drive-In, NJ" by Nan Goldin, 1979

Head of the Charles

The Head of the Charles, which is one of the world's biggest rowing regattas, took place this weekend. I went to cheer on the Wellesley boat with a few of my very good friends, and it was the kind of Sunday I think I needed to have.

Now I'm writing fellowship applications and doing astronomy homework to the soundtrack of Unknown Pleasures. It never ends...

Some team rows under the Weeks Bridge

Goodbye Stranger

Not to be trite and predictable, but...

-"Goodbye Stranger" by Supertramp, from Breakfast in America (1979)

I fly home to Kansas City tomorrow, where my cat and bed await me. My goals for break are, in approximate order:

1. Catch up with my family and friends and cat and favorite climbing trees
2. Sleep and read and maybe recover from mono before getting my wisdom teeth out. Also, it would be nice if this full-body rash went completely away, but I'm not holding my breath on that count, especially since it's calmed down a lot in the past week and I should be less vain anyway
3. Write a final paper on Robert Lowell
4. Finish a final project for my other poetry class
5. Prepare for ESPAÑA
6. And probably some other stuff that I'm forgetting because I'm still pretty focused on packing, to be honest