#musicdiaryproject

Fresh Direct showed up at 7:58 a.m. and I couldn't go back to sleep. Finished reading 50 Shades of Silly. Still not quite sure why it's so popular. Clearly giving up smut-writing was a mistake.

It's Mother's Day! I call my moms at a reasonable 10:00 a.m. She tells me to come pick up my demon seed NOW. We get in the borrowed car and drive around Brooklyn looking for the perfect batch of peonies. The radio is on but rather than scan from station to station, we let it play. It's mostly classic rock, the usual FM suspects. I thought about writing titles down but I forgot my pen.

We get uptown, pick up our kid, head back out to meet my cousins. J usually does well when surrounded by a crew of shrieking, smack-talking Latinas and today is no exception. He is a prince among men, that one. We eat lunch at their place and the kids play while we chew. My cousin M is playing her ipod on shuffle. I realize that most of the music on it comes courtesy of me. She is not super fond of music but likes mood-setting so, for Christamases and birthdays, I've always supplied her with easy to digest restaurant-style sounds. Gauzy, not-too-alarming things to play over three bean salad and chilled white wine, like Zero 7 and Feist. This is acceptable to me, better than no music at all.

We go back up to Harlem, return the car and wait at my mom's for our cab back to Brooklyn. Cab is late, there's nightmarish traffic everywhere and our kid is crashing hard. We get home, he throws a massive tantrum, I put him in his bed and read him a story about whether or not his mama is a llama. He turns around and promptly falls asleep. I close the door gently, go sit on the couch while J walks around, turning on lights, putting things away and singing oh so softly, under his breath, Oh my gosh, I'm so in love, found you finally, you make me want to say. I stop and smile. He shuts his eyes in dismay and says, UGH. No, my love. It's oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh OMG.

* * *

Austin Gibbs - Creepshow (Live)

As I did last year, I took part in this year's Music Diary Project (you can thank Nick Southall for both the great idea and the putting-it-into-action).

One of the primary goals of the exercise is to examine the ways in which we consume and interact with music over the course of a week, both actively and passively, and at least from an active listening standpoint this was, in many ways, a rather unusual week for me. Generally I'm giving a lot of play to one or two albums I'm reviewing, but this week caught me at the tail end of one review with nothing pressing for a bit. And this weekend was hardly a typical weekend, what with the travel and the family time, and the getting sick.  (Which evolved into bronchitis that had me knocked on my ass until today, keeping me out of work and leaving my brain far too muddled to write anything coherent until just about now).

One way it WAS typical is that I did a great deal of my music listening at live shows. If anything, last week was a light one for me in terms of shows; a "normal" week will find me at maybe 3, with as many as 6 shows some weeks. A big part of the fun of taking part in the project is seeing how other people take in music (go search #musicdiaryproject or #musicdiary2012 here on tumblr or twitter and dive in, its fun and enlightening and a great way to find people who enjoy talking about music on a more-than-surface level), and for the second year in a row I've noted that it seems very few people taking part in the project are going to live shows on a regular basis. I'm not sure if there's any grand conclusion to be drawn from that, but follow the trail as you will.

My music diary entries:

Monday, May 7

Tuesday, May 8

Wednesday, May 9

Thursday, May 10

Friday, May 11

Saturday, May 12

Sunday, May 13

Blur - "Tender"

Scout Niblett - "Boy"

Eef Barzelay - "Could Be Worse"

Holly Miranda - "Waves"

Tune Yards (no, I'm not spelling it the creative way) - "Gansta"

Cher - "Love Hurts"

The Jam - "The Bitterest Pill"

Jenny Lewis - "Acid Tongue"

Jenny Lewis - "Carpetbaggers"

Ryan Adams - "This is It"

Marissa Nadler - "Famous Blue Raincoat"

Patti Smith - "Because the Night"

Richard and Linda Thompson - "Walking on a Wire"

Johnny Thunders - "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory"

Rufus Wainwright - "Montauk"

Saturday means I sleep until 8:00. Then after several hours of child-wrangling we made our way into Manhattan via express bus. My son looked out the window and asked me about double decker buses and I read the very funny 50 Shades of Grey, which unfortunately is more than one book. It features a "Hispanic-American" (author's constant description) man named Jose who says "Ay, Dios Mio!" at the beginning of every sentence. Despite this, I can't stop reading it, because sometimes "so bad, it's bad" is instructive in its own hellish way.

There was no music, save for the occasional bachata from a passing car on the road, never lingering long enough to make an impression.

Made it to the city, borrowed my cousin's car, picked up my mom, drove back to Brooklyn. J and I played with the radio since the car's cd system is stashed in the dashboards innards and we've never been able to figure out how it works. 

Dancing Days/Led Zeppelin

Philadelphia Freedom/Elton John (which our kid really enjoyed for some reason)

Freebird/Lynyrd Skynyrd

Moves Like Jagger/Maroon 5

Several reggaeton songs on La Mega

Can't Get Next To You/The Temptations

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant/Billy Joel No, I cannot. Unless it's Big Shot, that shit ain't happening.

Livin' on a Prayer/Bon Jovi See above.

You Don't Have To Say You Love Me/Dusty Springfield

We Found a Love/Rihanna

* * *

We turned off the radio. Later that evening my mom offered to take our kid for the night, to which we said YES immediately. We dropped them back off in Harlem, bought Avengers tickets and made our way downtown. We had the super dance mega mix station on and a ridiculous UNCHA UNCHA UNCHA version of Somebody That I Used To Know was on. Nothing makes me want to get down like entitled exes. Usher's OMG started playing and I sang along like IT WAS MY JAM. J eyed me and said, how do you know this song, I never hear you listening to it?

This is why I'm more behind than usual. Our computers died at the same time and the borrowed laptop we have at home can't hold iTunes or any of our music. J's working from home and can pop in a CD, but I'm bereft. I've got nothing new to hear, just the same old stuff from last year and I like to hear things alone, in my head, with no one else commenting. I live a headphones appreciation life. Pat Kiernan says to wait past the holidays before buying any computers because of a new operating system or somesuch BUT I CANNOT WAIT. I fail at the marshmallow test. I just fail.

Blake Babies - "I'm Not Your Mother"

The Weakerthans - "(Past Due)"

Kevin Devine - "You're Trailing Yourself"

Marissa Nadler - "Little Hells"

Mika - "Toy Boy"

Liliput - "Die Mastrosen"

Rolling Stones - "Dead Flowers"

The Replacements - "Can't Hardly Wait"

Paul Westerberg - "Breath Some New Life"

New Pornographers - "Bleeding Heart Show"

The Weakerthans - "Reconstruction Site"

X - "Los Angeles"

The Weakerthans - "Plea From a Cat Named Virtute"

Ryan Adams - "This Is It"

Richard Thompson - "Why Must I Plead"

The Ike Reilly Assassination - "8 More Days Till the 4th of July"

I didn't bring my ipod in today 'cause I just didn't feel like it. Someone on the F train was rocking out to shitty techno and everyone in the car took turns giving them the stink eye.

Got to work, worked in silence all day long.

During my break I looked at pictures of women in awesome dresses at the Met, then read a book for the remainder. It was about the joy of having two children. These books make me nod as much as they make me smirk. I'm not sure where I fit in target audience-wise for this type of thing. Yes, I'm a parent but I'm also a cynical, perpetually on the outskirts of the group, pointing and laughing type of person. Where are the books for me?