musical memories...

On the way to work this morning I listened to a CD from my high school music. Not that I was cool enough to have a CD player in high school. Ha. No, this is a CD purchased a few years into college. I thought, this morning, that it would be fun to hear HUP by the Wonder Stuff. 1989. Enjoyable, but not so much fun.

I started thinking of how annoying the music of my high school self must have been to my parents. The music isn't awful, but it is a bit silly and 1989ish. The other music I listened to in high school, the music no longer in my current rotation might just annoy me now. Most of HUP did this morning. To be truthful, there are some tracks on the album that still resonate, but most I skipped after the first verse.

No matter how silly my music occasionally was, I still think it leaps and bounds better than what was on pop radio at the time. Not that I listened to the radio in high school. No car, no reason to listen to the radio much; that and my radio in my room didn't get Album 88, the only station to listen to if you were cool. And I did want to be cool, never quite got there. It's good to be a grown up. Any hoo, my twice daily ride on the bus exposed me to pop radio at the time. Two songs come immediately to mind because they seemed to be played morning and afternoon - "Just the way it is, baby" by the Rembrandts (you remember, "baby" is said something like 72 times in the song) and "Waiting for a star to fall" by Boy Meets Girl. I'm not linking the songs because, if you want to have them rip through your brain on an incessant loop, I won't give you the tool to heap the blame on me. They are terribly catchy, you remember. More hook than song. A bit like the CD I put in this morning. Funny how that works.

I've been listening to the NPR All Songs Considered podcasts. Started with early 2007. I'm a little proud of myself that I know about more than half the bands featured so far. A small point of pride, but it's there nonetheless. I need more new music in my life. My favorite podcasts are about South By Southwest in Austin (this year's is going on this week/end). Not a festival I could attend with my aversion to crowds of drunk young people, but it is a wonderful thing that SXSW exists.