Move to Bremerton
March 1st, 2008 | Published in food and music, general, tech | 16 Comments
While talking about music earlier in the night, the conversation turned to ‘music that we grew up with’, music that changed us, music that define periods of your life. We all have those, music that have made us who we are now. Like when you walk through a mall and hear a certain song and it triggers specific memories, for the better or worse.
1996: I ‘discover’ music, age 11. Strange sounds coming out of brother’s bedroom? Beautiful. Turns out to be MxPx. “Life In General” is the definitive album of my youth, henceforth. I spend the next few years making mixtapes of punk, ska and grunge music by personally taping the tracks onto cassettes; I spend too much time with my nose in photocopied punkzines (remember those??!), and trying to figure out why people thought I was odd. (Took me some time to realize the thumping music coming out of earphones that were surgically attached to my ears could have done it. Punk is only cool when you’re a 16 year old with a band, not when you’re 11. Not in 1996 anyway.) To this day, I still know all the words to the songs on this album; I still hum them to myself when I’m not thinking about it, and I still think “Do Your Feet Hurt” is the most romantic song ever written — I mean, Mike Herrera sings, “take a ride on my Vespa, I’ll take you home” with panache. The image of a tiny scooter (preferably in a pastel colour) becomes symbolic with romance henceforth, all the way into adulthood.
Chick Magnet
Move to Bremerton
1999: Some albums are so important they define music for that decade, or even that whole entire century. Because they’ll still seem fresh and important decades later, one can take your time to figure out what these albums really mean to you. Radiohead’s “OK Computer” was one of these albums. 1999, and I’ve had my heart broken for the first time. You can see the appeal, then: sprawling corridors of emotions behind every wonderful song on this landmark album. This album changed my life. Five years after, in 2004, I’m sitting at the Sydney Entertainment Centre watching Radiohead, alone. I love all the newer songs too, but when I hear Thom Yorke play “Exit Music” by himself with Phil on drums, and later the whole band playing “Paranoid Android”, I start tearing and I tell myself: I can die in peace now.
2004: I’ve just left my long-term, long-suffering boyfriend. For women. Not one woman, but women. In general. I don’t know who. Or what, or how. I don’t know what I’m doing with myself. It’s dark and I can see no way out of this mess, I hate myself, and I’m going home at eight every morning hating myself even more for the night before. The Arcade Fire, “Funeral”, that album famously put out by band members who had all lost family members around the same time. The first time I heard this album in its entirety I… literally shook. It was powerful. It put a name to grief, and called it “Neighborhoods” — all four of them.
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
2006: I’m in Bangladesh, Sirajgonj district. Quite positively going mad, suddenly in rural South Asia doing more than the travelling I was used to, and… having to find my feet. For a week I sink myself into this, the lepers, the flood victims, the children with polio, acting like I actually know what I’m doing. When Friday — the Bangladeshi week starts on Sunday and ends on Friday — comes around, I’m ready to drop dead. There are riots outside my door. The only alcohol around for miles, I found, was by sneaking some taka to the Malay-speaking Bangladeshi around the corner (newly returned from 7 years in KL, and with better Malay than mine); he’s had to cycle to the next village to buy a bottle of contraband Indian whiskey wrapped several times in a blue towel. I find out I’ve just spent $120 (Singapore dollars) on a long distance call only to be broken up with. The only person I can speak to is a 30 something year old British hippie who recommends a dosage of his cure-all, one that works in any situation, he guarantees. Bob Dylan. He’s right; Bob Dylan cures everything.
It’s All Over Now Baby Blue
It Ain’t Me Babe
Joan Baez’s version
2008: It’s not a Vespa, but that decrepit rental scooter we rode to that fancy bar overlooking the Andaman was quite enough for me. Your helmet didn’t fit, that scooter wobbled dangerously, but I was happy. Even if I ran the risk of running out pages on my passport whenever I want to see you. Riding home at 1am in the Langkawi darkness, I smacked your helmet down so it wouldn’t fly off, and made three important decisions I never mentioned. That was when I held you tight and decided I can’t ever let go. That I’m the luckiest. That I’ll buy you Rogaine if you ever lose your hair. You’re four pages on my passport and counting, but I want there to be more. Much, much more.
The Way I Am
Anyone Else But You
What are the songs and albums that define you, then? Leave a comment!
March 1st, 2008 at 8:32 pm (#)
Probably the best Radiohead experience I ever had was watching them live on tv in 2003: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HDS4wOd_o1I
The camera work and the performance are both amazing.
March 1st, 2008 at 9:05 pm (#)
Hey there!
I’m pretty sure u don’t know me, after all I come from the other side of the globe. i found ur site here just by chance in a way i’ll tell u how if it fits later, but that’s another story. By now let’s say i liked this place so u could say u’ve won one more ciber-fan :)
I guess we’ve all thought about the personal OST of our lives, so i’ll sketch mine up here in just a few flashes back (don’t remember the year it was but how old i was):
15)I start listening to sweet reggae a bit more seriously than I had been, but even today the old Bob keeps defining myself in “Soul Rebel” (bob Marley).
17) Could have been either Pennywise, NoFX, or even blink-182, but the perfect combination to me of happy punk-rock and positiveness to life of Millenconlin just made my youth a better time to live:)
19)I’ve already made my way to the university, and breakdancing is at its peak time in my scale of preferences… no doubt that was partly due to Dj Shadow and his “Organ Donnor”.
22)Just the flight by my own would have been enough, but one more year (after that flight) living in Sweden makes sure the tune of my early twenties is swedish Lopptroop and its Fly away ( i even got it tattoed on my feet afterwards…).
23)Here I am, i’ve already landed one month ago in seoul and, while leaving it on my way back to Spain, I guess the only way i can find to get a bit of peace in the middle of this stream of planes, symbols i don’t know at all and feeling-rollercoasters is to go really back to the roots of beauty and plug my ears to Satie and his Gymnopedie Nr. 1.
OK, i think it’s enough. I hope this doesn’t feel like bothering or disturbing your blog, just followed ur last question. Congratulations for this place u’ve set up, i’ll keep an eye on it!
be happy (or try to),
DreamEssence
March 2nd, 2008 at 1:12 am (#)
The Oasis concert when they finally came over in the indoor stadium. Front row standing shouting nonsense right infront of Noel. Then when they sung Live Forever (not wonderwall, because too many people there seem like they only knew that one song) and everyone swayed left and right, people fainted, people cried, stuffy, hot but no one cared, suddenly it didn’t feel like Singapore again. that was defining
March 2nd, 2008 at 7:00 pm (#)
Did you hear about the Radio and Juliet performance coming to the Singapore Arts Fest? A ballet about the Romeo and Juliet story, set to Radiohead.
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:19 pm (#)
Ok Computer, without a doubt, one of the best, possibly the best album ever!! thom yorke hardly dissapoints!!
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:39 pm (#)
It was the Greenday stuff that kind of defined my youth: a friend and I wanted to be ‘different’ from girls and classmates that listened to silly boybands and 93.3FM, so we sang the songs nobody really knew about, thinking it was damn cool. It was silly, really, because only in my 20s did I realized the crudeness of most of the lyrics, and how fecking ignorant and stupid I must have sounded in those days!
March 5th, 2008 at 3:28 am (#)
Yoz sis, how much did you spent on the eeepc?
March 5th, 2008 at 11:33 am (#)
OK computer was a 1997 release!
March 5th, 2008 at 1:01 pm (#)
@shawnb i know!! but i was 12 in 1997, and it only started making sense for me in 1999, which is why i said you can take your time to figure out what these albums mean to you :)
March 5th, 2008 at 1:54 pm (#)
mxpx! :D
March 8th, 2008 at 2:39 am (#)
1984 - The Smiths, Meat Is Murder
1987 - Pixies, Come On Pilgrim
1988 - 2006: kind of a blur, really
2007 - LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
March 10th, 2008 at 2:13 pm (#)
i like all these boyz band .like boyzone ,boy 2 men .and some brit pop.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:24 pm (#)
ok computer is just amazing. you cant put words to it and how powerful it is.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:01 pm (#)
[...] has been as the curtain of many memmories. A few days ago, I was wandering the net and found out this post. It’s sth I had though so many times I guess it was the perfect excuse to start my own music [...]
April 7th, 2008 at 10:07 pm (#)
I LOVE ‘The Way I Am’. haven’t heard her before.
April 9th, 2008 at 1:19 am (#)
[...] life worth living. I know for sure that my love for discovering new music will never end. I have Move to Bremerton, a Popagandhi post, to thank for my latest “find” - The Way I Am by Ingrid Michaelson. [...]