as you know, i have better taste in music than you. it's true.
but this wasn't always the case.
i listened to extreme at one point. alot of van halen. now, van halen is good, but i listened well into the hagar years. unforgivable.
i listened to ALOT of bad music. but to misquote costello 'a few things that i regret, but nothing that i need to forget'.
then i met lucy. and for some reason she liked me.
and she made me mixed tapes.
and they changed the way i listened to music.
i would say a good 70% of the music i listen to now is indirectly linked to the tapes lucy made me.
the misfits, galaxy 500, the feelies, daniel johnston, early, early bob marley, wedding present, jonathan richman, sebadoh...SEBADOH!!!! jesus fucking christ! and those were on just one of the many tapes she made me!
i remember when we sent a summer apart she would send them. i would open the big brown envelope, stuffed with other oddities, and put the tape right in. ride around with it. it absolutely set me on the right course. it made me feel music much more deeply than i ever had. the music i heard sounded like what was going on in my head. not just musically, emotionally.
oh, the smiths! i barely knew the smiths before! she put 'there is a light that never goes out' on the 2nd tape! can you imagine! what a gift!
so, i want to say, publicly, to my soon to be ex-wife: thank you. thank you so much for the many gifts you've given me. i love you and will love you always. thank you, mostly, tho', for those wonderful tapes. they will be with me every step of the way.
4 comments:
Wow, thanks!! To be cited as a musical influence on The Feeb is a huge honor! I don't know anyone that loves music more than you. You seem to feel music so strongly, to appreciate it in ways that I never did, that it’s exciting to be able to share music that I love with you. Those care packages kept me going during a hot, lonely, boring upstate NY summer. (What did I do with that “I love John Stamos” pin?)
I quickly came to see that we didn't even hear music in the same way. Oftentimes you would say something like, "Did you hear the way that cello changed slightly for this verse? That just gets me every time!" Meanwhile, I had never even noticed the cello, much less its subtle changes from one verse to another. And some of those bands that I felt were “mine” (you know how we can get possessive over “our” bands??) so clearly were meant to be “yours,” Sebadoh being the best example, I think.
The last mix I made was a hard one. I put it together just before we separated, and when I made you a copy recently, I admit to changing the set list a little bit. Some of it was a bit too, I don’t know… Is “raw” the right word? (BTW, I think it’s time for a mix from YOU. I want to hear what you’ve been listening to, and I could use some of your musical inspiration right now.)
I'm glad you've enjoyed them as much as I loved making them for you. I love you 2tm.
I got a mixed tape from you once. Let’s say 1993. I remember listening to it on a ride down to LI.
Let’s see.
The Replacements – Alex Chilton/Here Comes A Regular?
Yo La Tengo – Big Day Coming
Richard Thompson – God Loves a Drunk
Queensrÿche – Silent Lucidity (Just kidding)
Shit what were the others?
Well said! By all of you! My musical world too was opened up through those mixed tapes -- it was like getting a signal from outer space -- like finally receiving a message from my home planet! Would I have ever gotten into Guided By Voices, or would I have never gotten any deeper than Julianna Hatfield?
Well I guess I should thank at least the three of you for introducing me to good music. I wish I could forget it all just to discover it again for the first time.
And Jim, I'm sure I still have your mixed tape somewhere. Maybe in Raleigh still.
So thanks for the music.
Remember, this is the guy who when pressed cited Bob Segar as a great American song writer.
Against the wind,
Brian
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