1987

For me the best music is frozen between 1985 and 1987. I haven't had physical copies of the music I had in high school in 15 years. An unfortunate brain washing incident when I was in Marquette caused me to dump my entire music collection. While cassettes were never meant to last, throwing them away once makes justifying their CD replacements a bit impossible. The great thing about this music though is that my spongy high school mind absorbed it all. Even with the poor audio quality and the volume reduced to accommodate age... it's like being 17 again. The words are as fresh in my head as after the first listen. The happy is there. I haven't quit smiling since I found this stuff on Youtube. These songs are portals to another time.

My fingers want to fly over the keyboard as fast as the music. Thoughts and images are flying through my head like they did when I was writing a lot of fiction. And this, I think is where Wilw's Artists oogabooga comes in handy. This was the soundtrack to everything that I was writing about. It is the encryption code for all the things that were flying through my head: pain and sorrow, joy and laughter, fear, loathing dreaming the future alive and wishing the past a peaceful death... it's all in this music.

Here's what I mean. These are snippets from the Swing of Things, a track from A-ha's second release Scoundrel Days. And this is going to mean a trip to Borders to see if they can get it for me. If not, it will be the portal to an iPod.

how can I speak of the world rushing by
with a lump in my throat
and tears in my eyes

how can I sleep with your voice in my head
an ocean between us
and room in my bed

there's a world full out there
of people I fear

oh what have I done
what lies I have told
I've played games with the ones
who rescued my soul

Yeah, at 17 that room in my bed was the empty spot where the cat used to sleep. The voice in my head was synthesized, a composite of all the chastising one little fat kid could/couldn't handle in one day. At 17 the only lies I was telling on a regular basis I told to myself. But even those affect how you interact with others so the lie spreads like ripples in a pond...
It is haunting music. And it still applies today. But now I do know that adult emptiness and there is still some fear and trepidation in dealing with the world full of people. But the same thing that I heard at 17, the message of hope and truth is that "there is still time to get into the swing of things."

Gotta go back in time

Wilw is absolutely right about time travel.

You tube has turned out to be a better resource for recreating a mix tape that an exchange student made for me in high school. Messalina went back to Austria and within a few weeks sent me a great package. Sadly I was an idiot and didn't respond quickly enough... that whole empathic stay connected longer than others thing again. The package had a tape in it with over three hours of music recorded from a radio station. All German all the time.

I wore the tape out learning the lyrics and trying to memorize the artists that went with the music. It was the background to a lot of my homework sessions, some of my fiction writing sessions. But mostly, especially after Grampa died, it was my meditation. I'd lay in front of my east facing window at night, in the moonlight with the head phones on and listen. Peter Alexander's "Schwarzes Gold" is the most like "grampa style" German music. It recalls a nationalist feeling like Edleweiss does for Austria. But it is romanticized and a little country. While not a ragtime melody, it brings to mind the era of the Sting. I don't know why I always thought that. Perhaps my German wasn't good enough to imagine it was different or more than a song about working for oil. Today I find, if the You tube poster is accurate, it was done in 1979. And my German still isn't very good.

I can, even while present and writing in 2010, feel and see myself on the blue carpet in my room. Right now, in 1987, it is a mid-afternoon in July. My feet are on the wood trim of the bottom of the window sill while my back is on one of Gramma's floral sheets. The sheet is a cool barrier between me and my carpet. The sun is on the other side of the house but the air coming in the open window is "varmish" and the sun still bright.
"Ohne leiber. Ohne Leiber.... Herzt uber Kopf. Hertz uber Kopf! ...ein fam einsen Keit" while I am reading a story from Marion Zimmer Bradley. "Mists of Avalon" that Carol Bliss lent me. While I am lost in this song I look at the cover of a woman on horseback, traveling across a misty moor, braided head hung in contemplation or grief. I can't tell which.
I an smell warm grass on the slight breeze. I miss Grampa, hit the rewind button to go back to the strings on Hertz uber Kopf, and tears start to drip down by my ear lobe. After a while I can feel them pool around the earphones. The cushiony part is getting wet and irritating. Instead of finishing the book I've decided to consciously listen to the music. This song over and over until the pain starts to ease. Then I listen to the rest of the tape.

The tape self destructed in 1989. After such use and abuse the cassette player spit out several feet of brown shiny tape and the cassette was useless. I still have it. And I have the cassette holder somewhere in storage. In 2010 I can still sing along with most of the things that I have found on Youtube. I've got ten songs of the whole tape. All four of Roland Kaiser's songs, two of Herbert Groenemeyer, the beep beep song from the Spider Murphy gang...

What a trip. Those were good Summers. Good friends. Great grandparents. Thank God I can safely go back in time this way.

bizarre things make me happy

And one of those bizarre things is the way other people's minds combine things. For instance Nena's 99 Luftballoons and Rammstein's Du Hast. I found it on you tube this morning.
It's funny how well the two blend until someone got a little impatient and ran Nena over with some heavy Rammstein lyrics. And my brother said it couldn't be done.

He doesn't know music geeks very well does he?