Song Folly

Flipping channels last night, I paused to watch the last five minutes of Jeopardy, because if any Final Jeopardy category could cause me to wager it all, it’s 1940s Music History. Well, that and maybe Popular Noise Reduction Plug-Ins. But let’s be real.

The Final Jeopardy answer (paraphrased):

Jerry Wexler coined this term to replace the phrase ‘race music.’

The contestants answers, er, questions: What is rock and roll? What is hip hop? What is jazz?

Seriously?! No one could recall what music was popular during, I don’t know, World War II and the years shortly thereafter?

Rhythm and Blues, people!!

Aside from working on the Ash Grove archive, the Rethink Autism website, records by Florent Ghys and JAS, and a compilation of 1970s Nigerian disco funk, my entire summer has been subsumed by moving.  Cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, butcher paper, packing tape. Apartment hunting, lease signing, check writing, packing, moving, unpacking.  Three months later, I’m sitting in bed staring out my window at evergreen trees.  Evergreen trees!  In my Brooklyn backyard.  I awoke to church bells this morning and knew without opening my eyes that it was nine o’clock.  It’s lovely.  The records have been now unpacked and re-alphabetized.  But the turntable is still encased in bubble wrap in its box.  The CDs purchased in the past few months are shoved haphazardly in a shelf.  The older CDs are still in bins.  Bins, I might add, that we never unpacked last time we moved.  In October 2007.  The iPod hasn’t been updated since June, and even though I raved last month about rediscovering some of my iPod favorites, this month I’m tired of them and have stopped commuting with the iPod.  I’m reading a novel.  Jane Austen, in fact.

Yesterday, our beautiful, rich, massive, vintage Yamaha receiver blew a transistor.  It died.  We already had it repaired once.  This time it might be dead for good. The hulking Vandersteen speakers on either side of it might as well be marble statues.

And so, the rest of our summer will be silent, until we fix the old receiver or buy a new one. Or until we plug in one of our collection of vintage AM radios. Or until we pull out our guitars and revive the family band.

Heck, our home will never be silent.

Between working long and late hours, apartment hunting, and now packing and preparing to move, I haven’t really listened to much music for pleasure this summer, and I haven’t really thought about it.  I listen to music all day for work, so often I crave quiet after ten hours of mastering old blues and folk recordings.

I quit listening to music for most of June, reading during my subway commute and listening to podcasts of This American Life and Radio Lab at the gym.  I left stores if I hated the music, which happened frequently. That new Grizzly Bear CD still sat dusty and unplayed on top of my stereo.

Then, last week, I finished a book and suffered through three consecutive late night subway commutes in which passengers talked so loudly I wished for my earplugs.  So I charged up my iPod, still broken – in fact, even more broken, now that my lock/unlock button only functions sometimes – and hit shuffle.  Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

Wow, music is awesome! It makes me feel so good! All these wonderful songs in random order syncing with my footsteps as I walk to the subway, blocking out the noise as I wait for the train.  My favorites from this week:

While You Wait For The Others – Grizzly Bear

Blagged – Peter Sarstedt

S.O.S. – Abba

I Am A Rock – Davy Graham

I bought a new CD three weeks ago.  Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest. And I have not listened to it yet.  Oh, I have tried.  I unwrapped it the day after I bought it but had to run out of the house before I could listen.  I put it on my iPod (which I hate to do, believing that a CD deserves a full fidelity first listening) to enjoy while waiting in the florescent lit prospective jurors room during my first time ever serving jury duty this week.  But we prospective jurors were all dismissed, so I never had the chance.

Have I not had one hour to devote to listening to a CD in the past three weeks?

Well, I guess not.  Between working and apartment hunting and a few hours of sleep now and then, I’ve been booked solid.  The only music I have listened to has been for work.  (Hours and hours of old timey blues and folk, peppered with early-70s Nigerian disco funk and French experimental — all heavenly!)

If I don’t listen to it this weekend, I will suck it up and listen during a subway commute.  But don’t you think a new CD deserves better?

Walking home from the subway, lugging a heavy hard drive on one shoulder and a new pair of shoes on the other, I heard a woman belting – belting! – Home On The Range in a glorious operatic voice, vibrato thick and slow, phrasing paced as though to coincide with the stop lights.

Beautiful. Awesome.