songbook

I spent a lot of December 2017 listening to the Hold Steady’s “Entitlement Crew,” and it’s a perfect puzzle of a song. Craig Finn tells a story, but it’s a tale told through things omitted. And the more I listen, the more I imagine the branching narrative paths of those omissions.

My three lyrical favorite sections of this song:

1: “Tequila take off, Tekate landing. Sorry about the centerpiece, thanks for understanding.”

This is the first couplet of the song, and it sets an improbable stage. What happened to the centerpiece? A party tussle? A drunken stumble? Something heaved across the room? An ugly fixture that needed to go? And why is the person invoked so understanding of this? 

2: “I like the party favors, but I hate the party people.”

Yep.

3: “And your brother’s in Boston, and he’s acting like a dick. I remember back before we knew he was sick.”

Sure, the brother’s acting like a dick, but can we blame him? Or did we, before we knew about his illness? How have we changed since?

The whole of Fly By Wire has, for me, a very summery feel, but "Nightwater Girlfriend" especially brings to mind both the calm and fervor of July in the midwest.

American Football's "Never Meant". I'm not sure how many times I've listened to this song, but the play count has to be well into the hundreds. I still spin it monthly, if not weekly. Timeless.

I tend to trace my life in music: 1996, finding a promo copy of Jimmy Eat World's Static Prevails in the mail bin at the radio station; 1997, The Get Up Kids Four Minute Mile purchased from a mail order catalog; 1999, No Knife's Fire in the City of Automatons special ordered from Cat's Records; 2000, a copy of We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes played on repeat at Kyle's House on Optimist Drive; and so on. There's a timeline here--growth charted through albums, a lineage of records that speak to and through the life lived.

I think, for 2013/2014, Into It Over It's Intersections is the record I'll remember. I'm not sure if it's the echoes of so many bands I've loved or the reflections on aging or the sing-along hooks, but damn: There's something here that gets to the very core of what I love about music and rock music in particular, something that needs to be known first through a long drive and then through headphones... that tender space between acceleration and introspection.

Or maybe it's all about space, about locating memories through sound. I can tell you about the rainy afternoon on the release date of Clarity, when I sat in the record store's parking lot, pushed the driver's seat back, closed my eyes, and listened to "Goodbye Sky Harbor" beginning to end. Or the time we drove through the night from Indianapolis and sang "Holidays" ("what became of everyone I used to know?") as far as our tired voices could carry us.

Next fall I will move away from Philadelphia, and I think that when I look back on this city and the people in it I care for so much, it will be to the accompaniment of "New North Side Air," to the pulsing piano and the meditations on aging. Or maybe I'll remember it all through "Upstate Blues," a skyline of memories and interstate noise.

This summer I want to write a Twitter bot that posts Pavement lyrics out of context.

"No. Not me. I'm an island of such great complexity."

"You're so beautiful to look at when you cry."

"Distress surrounds the muddy, peaceful center of this town."