My eyes can't look at you any other way

#940 - Detlef Schrempf :: Band of Horses

“So take it as a song,
or a lesson to learn,
and sometime soon be better than you were.
If you say you’re gonna go,
then be careful,
and watch how you treat every living soul.”

Band of Horses was a slow developed love for me. For a good long while I knew, and loved, No One’s Gonna Love You, but anything else I’d heard seemed to disappear into the background. After a little time, though, I started paying atttention, and the background music began to pull me in.

This song, especially, drew me in and mesmerized me.

It is a stunningly beautiful, simple, and lyrically moving song. There is a bittersweet feeling to it that seems to make me quietly melancholic when listening, but also hopeful in that way that music seems to only be able to convey. That feeling that one is not alone in their emotions and fears, hopes and dreams, and sadness.

Sometimes music understands more than anything else.

I need love

#944 - I Need Love :: Sam Phillips

“I need love,
not some sentimental prison.
I need god,
not the political church.
I need fire,
to melt the frozen sea inside me.
I need love.”

In 1994 I’d come to a crossroads in my life, of sorts. Well, one of the handful of “crossroads” I’ve had, so far. I had a failed marriage behind me, a young daughter, a job at a record store, and no real idea of what I wanted or where I was going with my life.

I had all these trappings of adulthood, yet I felt completely unprepared, and at times both older and younger than my chronological age. My naive optimism was wrestling with a newfound jadedness towards love, but I was still trying to hold on and believe it was possible.

I needed something to believe in, to strive after, to make me feel alive.

I found some of that, lost some of that, found some of that again, lost it again, and hit other stops and crossroads and starts along the way. That’s life, though, right?

And, no matter where we are, or how lost we find ourselves sometimes, we all need love.

and I will rise up with fists

#945 - Rise Up With Fists!! :: Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins

“What are you changing?
Who do you think you’re changing?
You can’t change things, we’re all stuck in our ways.”

I could probably choose the entire Rabbit Fur Coat album as a favorite, and it would definitely be part of my favorite album list, because pretty much every song on the album resonates deeply with me. It is also representative of a time in my life when everything was breaking apart, and I was trying to hold on for my life and pick myself back up.

I had to find a way to “rise up with fists”, in my own way.

You're my Summer babe

#946 - Summer Babe (Winter Version) :: Pavement

"My eyes stick to all the shiny roses."

We took that road trip to San Francisco, it was late Summer, you and I, and the baby in the backseat. You picked up this album in that record store in Berkeley, and afterwards we shared a slice. She slept most afternoons in her stroller while we walked up and down the streets.

At night we'd take her in when we played pool, or into that bar your friend owned. One night we wrapped her up and took her into the park where they should movies on the side of the wall.

I think it may have been Casablanca.

For a blink of time we were a family, the three of us. On our way back from that trip we contemplated, albeit briefly, just staying. Sometimes I wonder if it would have made any difference.

Was all our "stuff" so necessary to come back for? Would we have had a fighting chance somewhere new?

Oh, isn't it wild?

#947 - Nightclubbing :: Iggy Pop

“Nightclubbing we’re nightclubbing,
we’re what’s happening.”

My very late teens/very early twenties were spent nightclubbing in Hollywood. Those nights/early mornings were definitive in my life, and played out as a rite of passage much more than any of my adolescence did. Those nights/early mornings, with all that music (and other things) were my own life’s prom and homecoming dances - no limos, and no real dates, but so much dancing and stolen kisss, and yeah, so much drama.

There were good times and bad times, things I will never forget, things I wish I didn’t remember, but all of it makes up a kaleidoscope of memories that are so much of who I was then. And all those stories…I will keep them with me forever.

I don’t think I’d want to go back, but maybe for a night, or two?

These hazards of love never more will trouble us

#948 - The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned) :: The Decemberists

"Tell me now, tell me this,
A forest's son, a river's daughter
,A willow on the willow wisp,
our ghosts will wander all of the water."

The Decemberists albums play like a stack of storybooks to me, and I'm always so drawn to the plot within the melody, the story within the song.

I often want to drive around for hours, no where in particular, listening to songs like this one. I'd let my mind wander while the miles go by. The markers of neon and soon forgotten street names, burger joints and bars, all of them becoming part of the landscape as it changes, as it movves on. All of it would fade and become a brush stroke in my memories.

Other times I want to sit with blank pages in front of me, playing this song over and over, bringing to life the characters I see and hear in this song.

This song brings to life something like this, for me:

Music was the way Gram had met both Trixie and Mush; well, music and drugs, but music was the true connection that had started, and continued, their friendship. It was also what had sealed the deal between the two of them as a couple, and what kept them going through changes and the obstacles that life slings at people as you go along living.

Gram always knew their paths would cross again, even though it had been years between and the letters had long ceased their arrival in his post box. The last had been a postcard from some nameless beach city out on the west coast; the wish you were here variety with the predictable panoramic sunset and sand shot, the unmistakable scratch of nearly indiscernible pen markings making it clear who it was from even before he red the MT at the bottom. Long ago they'd stopped signing their names individually to him, even though he'd known each of them at different times, separately, and then later together. After awhile the lines between them blurred to him as well, one never far from the other, Mush and Trixie becoming slurred into one name, one word, and then simply into two bold letters.

He'd held onto all of them, the long drug fueled letters from their first trip to New Orleans, the paintings with small printed notes on the back from Trixie's studio in Soho, wrinkled napkins with sketched notions of tattoos stuffed in brown paper envelopes with ever-changing postmarks, along with matchbooks from various restaurants and bars, and of course mixes of music. Mush always sent tapes, a diehard believer that a true mix can only be made on a cassette; the time and skill required he claimed were where the art resides, all part and parcel with the telltale whir from the tape spooling from red to black, before the first chords of a song begin. Trixie differed in opinion, and would hold strong to the counter argument that a mix CD required just as much, if not more, care and finesse to produce the final

Zeros and ones

#949 - Science vs. Romance :: Rilo Kiley

"Text versus romance,
you go and add it all you want,
still, we're not robots inside a grid."

Sometimes I find myself so baffled by love. I sound older than my years to say I don't quite understand all the machinations of modern romance, and that often I'm just muddling through it all, trying hard to just be myself in all of it. I was never one for playing games, disguising my feelings, or relying on well-tested tricks to get ahead in matters of the heart.

I think that science and love don't play well together, and that when I try to sort it all out all I do is over-think. And, just as in the critical nature of self-editing as a writer, there is something pure and raw and real that gets lost when you over-think love.

Though, I do love the mathematics, and the science, and the brain meets the heart kind of lyrics that make-up this song; geek music love personified, or something like that.

Hearts too young to euthenize

#950 - I Got High (live) :: Clem Snide

"This song goes out to all you beautiful,
American girls and boys."

Sometimes I run into a song quite by accident, and in that taken by surprise state I want to stop time for awhile and just listen. I want to sit alone with the song, the lyrics, the melody and take it all in. And then I want to write to it, see where it takes me, what characters and images and plots the song pulls out of me.

This song does that to me, makes me crave those moments, and the space to write to all of it.

I see two young boys, well I would call them young, and boys. They are somewhere in-between boys and men, those adolescent years, where everything changes. They live in a small town just outside a city, close enough to see it in the skyline and to visit now and then, but far enough away to feel not part of it.

There is not much to do in this town. A bowling alley with only one working lane, a diner owned by one of the boys Aunt's, a Wallmart that helped to shut down all the smaller stores all once owned by people both of the boys knew. There is a parking lot, one of those non-chain 24-hour convenience store parking lots, and that is where they sit every night in the Summer.
They get high and look at the parts of the sky that the city lights up from afar - light pollution, I think they call it, and they silently discuss escape.

Love me, love me tonight

#951 - Temptation Eyes :: Blake Babies

"His wild-eyed innocence is just a game,
But just the same my head is spinnin',
He's got a way to keep me on his side,
It's just a ride that's never ending,
Tonight with me he'll be so exciting,
I want him all for myself."

This song reminds me of my first apartment. It was upstairs, a tiny one-bedroom that I shared with the boy who would become Julia's Dad. We didn't have a television, but we had stacks and stacks of books, and all these milk crates full of records and cassettes.

I always woke up before he did. It took me months to ever feel comfortable sleeping regularly with someone else. I'd wake up tangled up in blankets and one of his limbs, the wall too close to my face, and I'd try to plot out how to get out of bed without waking him up. I learned, after awhile, that he'd sleep through anything - earthquakes, fire alarms, loud pounding on doors, a baby crying, me crying.

Most morning I'd tiptoe out into the kitchen, turn on our coffee pot (we'd bought it at a garage sale, there was something wrong with it, some kind of slight damage, and it would take over a half hour to brew), and then flip on the stereo. One of his friends had leant me a tape with Blake Babies on it, as we'd discussed our mutual love of girl groups and female singers, and I'd fallen in love with it.

Listening to this song now, it feels like a postcard from my past, and I can see (and hear) it all so vividly.

Me & my friend saw a platypus

#952 - Handlebars :: Flobots

"Look at me, look at me,
hands in the air like it's good to be alive."

Catchy, melodic, poetic, and thoughtful - this is one of those songs that caught me off-guard and had me loving it without ever expecting to. I think this is one of the songs on this list that Julia introduced me to.

Loudly, while driving on the freeway, this is the best way to listen to this one.

I lost my heart under the bridge

#953 - Down By The Water :: PJ Harvey

"Little fish, big fish,
swimming in water,
Come back here, man,
bring me my daughter."

The smell of cigarettes and gasoline, the dim lights of a nearly deserted parking lot, the hour so late that it was almost the next day, and this song playing over us. We had one of those strange relationships that is never quite defined: lover, friend, companion, accomplice. I know our times together were stolen - hours between shifts and responsibilities and places we were meant to be. We were unexpected, which helped keep a veil of secrecy around us, though I'm still not sure what we were trying to hide.

There was always music. There was always conversation. Sometimes there was kissing, and other physical trysts. Sometimes there were arguements, or silent sulks. Sometimes there was nothing but two people in a car, driving fast, escaping in silencing, touching hands sometimes as if to remind ourselves that we weren't alone.

This song was part of that time, part of us, and now forever part of that memory.

They were all in love with dying

#954 - Pepper :: Butthole Surfers

“I don’t mind the sun sometimes,
the images it shows.
I can taste you on my lips,
and smell you in my clothes.
Cinnamon and sugary,
and softly spoken lies.
You never know just how you look,
through other people’s eyes.”

This song has always felt like two songs in one to me. The verses remind me of The Jim Carroll Band’s song ‘People Who Died’ - laundry list of people and tragedies, and the sound/style of it. And then the chorus kicks in, a bit of melodic poetry, and a change of mood/feeling from tragedy to a kind of beauty.

This song reminds me of the late 90’s, the writing I was doing then, the place I was somewhat stuck at in my life. It wasn’t exactly a happy time, not at all, but there was a electric kind of spark to what I was creating - I suppose the rough edges of days will do that to you - will bring out the art.

This was one of my favorite songs at the time, and I still love it - especially the chorus - and the line “you’ll never know just how you look through other people’s eyes.”

My heart is blue

#955 - Rock & Roll Queen :: The Subways

“You are the sun,
you are the only one.
You are so cool,
you are so rock and roll.”

This song seems designed for movies, for action scenes, for screaming at the top of your lungs, for driving fast in the middle of the night in the desert towards Las Vegas, for past 3am after hour clubs with dark hallways, and for really hot nights with some kind of lover.

It just feels like sex, drugs and rock-and-roll - cliches aside (or included) - all wrapped up in a song. And, I mean that as a damn good thing.

I’d also include this song in a list of best movie scenes utilizing music (in a non-musical movie) for the use of this song in RocknRolla…it is a brilliant blending of music and film…truly.

Give you some songs & sunshine

#956 - All In My Mind :: Love & Rockets

“So, just give me an hour,
I’ll show you how you feel.”

This song reminds me of a certain summer - the people I hung around with, the things we did, and the music that played. It was kohl black eyeliner, late nights turned to mornings at various parks around the valley, long boots and dark dance floors, and cherry sour kisses.

I still have a case full of mixed tapes from that summer. Sometimes I like to pull them out and look through them, read off the tracklists and remember what that time felt like. I need to get my hands on a cassette player again, one of these days, so I can give them a listen.

Though Earth, Moon, Sun is my all-time favorite Love and Rockets album, I do love Express quite a lot, and it is more memory-loaded for me.

This is one of the bands that I’ve never seen live that I really, really wish I had.

Liz Taylor is not his style

#957 - My Baby Just Cares For Me :: Nina Simone

“My baby don’t care who knows,
my baby just cares for me.”

In the middle of the night, or maybe it was closer to very early morning, I sat in a Las Vegas casino and discussed music with someone I’d just met. There was all this noise all around us, the clanging of change spitting out of slot machines, the jangly machines themselves, the buzz and hum of the clusters and crowds, and yet it seemed like it was only the two of us there, talking.

Somehow the discussion of love songs came up, and our ideas of what would make the perfect love song. This was the song he chose. He said the song felt like that kind of feeling you get when you first fall for someone, and how, for a moment, everything disappears, or matters less, except for that other person.

A day or two later we ran into each other again, and as we walked off together, he started humming this. It was one of those moments that seem insignificant, but later, on recollection, meant something.

I love when music becomes interwoven in a memory, and adds to the significance of a moment.

Call my baby lollipop

#958 - Lollipop :: The Chordettes

“Lollipop, lollipop.
Oh lolli, lolli, lolli.”

Anytime I hear this song I’m immediately transported to a much, much younger version of me, probably age five or six, singing-a-long with my Mom to this song. We are in our old light blue Oldsmobile, a glass bottle of Coke passed between us, being “sharing friends”.

For awhile, growing up, this was my nickname and my Mom would often say/sing “Oh lolli, lolli, lolli” to me.

Hearing it, anytime, makes me feel like a little girl again.

Its tangled up with me

#959 - Trouble :: Coldplay

"I never meant to cause you trouble."

I will preface this by saying that yes, I do like Coldplay. I like them enough that a few of their songs made this list. I will also say that I truly do not understand the overwhelming hatred of this band. So be it, though, I like them and I'm not one to apologize for what I like.

Parachutes, the album that this song comes from, came out the year I was married for the second time. It was also the year that I moved out of state for the first time. It was the year that I took risks and made big changes, which in hindsight were not my best choices, but as with much else in my life, I do not regret.

It was such a vivid time in my life though, and as always, music was right there with me, connecting the scenes, and singing-a-long with me. I remember the first time I heard this song as if it were yesterday.

I think it was one of the albums the two of us bought before we took off for Salt Lake City. I remember it playing in the basement of the house we were moving into, the room a clutter of boxes to unpack, and that sort of excitement and overwhelm that new starts are full of.

We were a new start then, too.

The song, listening now, it was very fitting for all of it.

At the edge of the ocean

#960 - Edge of the Ocean :: Ivy

"We can begin again.
Shed our skin, let the sun shine in."

I have a long-standing love affair with the ocean, one that is fully realized and requited, and that never falters even when I’ve drifted far away for spells, living farther away then I ever really care to be.

I’ve written stories set at the edge of the ocean. I’ve had my own stories right there on the sand. I’ve had my heart broken by the sea, and I’ve healed by its side, as well. I’ve fallen in love, fallen apart, and fallen into good and bad things, up and down the coast. Through it all, though, I do not regret a thing.

Like music, the ocean is one of my true loves forever.

I'm gonna chase the sky forever

#961 - Silver Stallion :: Cat Power

"I'm gonna find me a reckless man,
razor blades and dice in his eyes.
Just a touch of sadness in his fingers,
thunder and lightening in his thighs."

I have a musical crush on Chan Marshall's voice. It is a little bit rough, with a slight sting to it, like a shot of whiskey late at night at some anonymous dive bar. It is a bit sweet, with a sensual slur to it, like early morning kisses that start out tentative, but lead elsewhere eventually.

And this song? it is filled with stories just waiting to be written. it feels like a life ready to be lived, chomping at the bit, clanging a set of keys together impatiently waiting to go. It is heart-racing, skin-prickling, delicious moments that you will always remember, the kind of times you whisper to your best friend, or confess to the pages of a locked diary.

Before you slip into unconsciousness

#962 - The Crystal Ship :: The Doors

“The days are bright,
and filled with pain,
enclose me in your gentle rain.”

When I was 19 I fell in love with Jim Morrison, and The Doors.

I’m pretty sure my Mom found it amusing, at the time, since she’d been such a huge fan of them herself, at about the same age, if not a wee bit younger.

I remember watching VHS tapes of The Doors live at the Hollywood Bowl, and a behind-the-scenes documentary, listening to their albums pretty much non-stop, and reading books of Jim’s poetry. Then the film came out a few years later, when I was 22, and I fell again.

Sometimes I think their music is just a little part of my bloodstream, passed through from my Mom, and her love of their music.

This has always been one of my favorites of their songs…I love it, and still do.