On Music.

This recent post by the Rock Creek Rambler not only hit the nail on the head, but also drove it straight through the beam. Music -- the arts in general, but music is the one that's culturally pervasive -- is integral to human emotion and expression. The music we listen to, the music we create, it doesn't matter. I'm a shitty guitar player and I can't sing worth a dime, but that doesn't stop me from hacking away at The Shins or Neil Young.

It's difficult keeping an interest in new music alive when conditions in your life don't allow for the same level of exposure you once had: for example when you can't get to live shows and radio sucks so completely that the advertisements are becoming more interesting than the music they play (Why the fuck by the way does DC not have a college radio outlet? And by that I think people know that I don't mean WAMU, as much as I like NPR). Web radio has freed that up a bit I think, allowing people to hear alternative cuts (not "alternative rock") and a different mix of artists, but it hardly builds a local community, does it?

Some songs or bands simply evoke moments of your life. The Who will always remind me of my best friend in high school and the weekends we spent doing little else than playing at being rock stars in our minds.

The mix tape -- which as RCR notes is now anachronistic -- meant Oh So Much. It was your soul broken into three minute chunks. This past summer my brother-in-law was putting together a mix tape for his girlfriend. I asked him why he didn't just burn a cd. He gave me a look that told me I clearly did not understand and then showed me the elaborate case he'd constructed for the tape: it was a crescent moon he'd built out of cardboard and had painted. The packaging of course was more important than the convenience of the media.

I suppose this evening I'll be running through a few numbers for the kids...