Saturday, February 6, 2010

Nostalgia Trip

Music is a component of the DNA that makes us who we are. It is uploaded into our cells during the most intensive period of growth, young adulthood. It comes and finds us, but we are pre-set to receive certain types. It tells us who we are, and we use it to tell others who we wish to be.

Oh, it's so neat.

Consider its importance as personal code: There is a point in a courtship when the CDs are exchanged. This is usually quite early, and it is the simplest, purest way of saying, This is who I am; can you love this as I do? It functions both as warning --"Speed metal speaks to me!"--and as hope--"Here is an aural nude portrait of me, to show you just how much I trust."

It is, really, a visit to the Mudd Club in the first year of the eighties, a dark and galvanizing (and filthy) night at CBGB when the Talking Heads took the stage. Most especially, it is the small back room of Maxwell's in Hoboken, when you did not yet know you were where history was being made (What? In this tiny adjunct of my tiny living room?). You also did not know it would be made by these kids you saw every day at the bodega or waiting (waiting, and waiting) for the PATH train--looking very much like you, in fact, in thrift-shop sweaters (which they would write a longing song about, "Autumn Sweater") and Danish book bags--but who would form a band called Yo La Tengo that, unlike the others who would have their moment and then break apart, would stay together and keep blooming, like the peony. Twenty years on they would still be making music that could break your heart, set your teeth on edge, express pure yearning, be depressing as all get-out, or exemplify ironic wittiness. Sometimes in the same song.

The music that I would offer as having made me did so in the two decades starting in 1978. That was the year my college station played a song called "Psycho Killer," and I can still remember where I was standing when I heard it. Actually, I was lying. On the floor of my bedroom. David Byrne's cool and controlled aggression reached out from the air and put its trembling hands around my neck. I had never heard anything like this, but I knew it was made for me. Six months later I spent a cold January alone in the communal house at school while everyone else was home, and every day I struggled with the outline of an aesthetics to explain how genius in art announces itself. The soundtrack to these intellectual gymnastics was my recently purchased Talking Heads: 77 record, played repetitively and at great volume (it was outlawed when the roommate from San Francisco was in residence, as was her Linda Ronstadt when I was home; we agreed only upon Joni Mitchell). The thesis got a barely passing grade, but Talking Heads got the zeitgeist.

The next time music got hold of the weird stuff that was floating around in my brain and gave it external form and voice so I finally knew what I was thinking was after graduation, and this is when I was created by what I heard. There are two tiers of it, the music that's fun to dance to and the music that freezes you where you stand when you hear it. What is it about being young, soft clay that wants to be hard as obsidian, and only music can make its indentations on you? It is perhaps the only form that can reach you then and in that way: from your mind, to your heart, via the pulse of your blood. It moves you. Then later, when you find it again after a remove of many years in which you thought you had changed, you put it on the stereo, just a little test, and there it is. There you are. The past, present. Pounding through the floorboards, and you--singing. Formed again.



{Connect the dots of the music. A picture will take shape: you. Below, my dots. And yours?}











16 comments:

Kevin G. said...

Love this topic. After much reflection and serious head scratching I have finally pared down my list of favorite genres of music to Rock, Alternative and Punk, in your face Blues, R&B, followed by lesser amounts of Irish, Bluegrass, Country and Folk .Favorite albums and bands from my youth are too numerous to catalogue but special mention to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blackfoot, Patti Smith ,Frank Zappa et al. I’ve ALWAYS been very much a chameleon when it comes to musical tastes, with the deciding factor being whatever suits the mood or activity. So, either I love the variety or decision making isn’t my strong suit. Who cares....it’s all good. Many emotions and images are instantly recalled upon hearing a few opening chords of the music that likely provided the accompanying soundtrack way back when. The music and the memory now inseparable. And the beat goes on.

Tina said...

I love hearing some old song that was NOT a favorite,that you hated in fact,never listened to on purpose, never defined you, but was just ubiquitous and always in the background during that window of youthful musical impressionability. It brings back the time the way smells do. For me, this is the Bee Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band, "Brick House," etc. I tried putting one of these on my ipod to see if the effect would be the same when premeditated. It wasn't. Has to come on the car radio or, somewhat morbidly, in the grocery store.

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

Tina, your scientific experiment achieved a proof: music enters the soul without mediation by the brain. Thus: ghost music.

At some point I will examine the phenomenon of the car radio beaming certain songs expressly to tell me what I should do in situations that are bedeviling me. I don't ask it to do this; it just does.

Kevin, your catholic tastes bespeak a broad mind. Plus, they reminded me of a day long forgotten in high school, when we blasted Lynryd Skynyrd out the girls' dorm windows, telling everyone on campus just what kind of people we really were.

Scott from Devon said...

My early teens up until 14 or so were defined by a great love of the music of Simon & Garfunkel - this set me somewhat apart in 1980-82 Australia. Then came the Talking Heads phase (my favourite songs happen to be Slippery People, Life During Wartime, City Of Dreams and Dream Operator) then followed by a Pogues phase which cooincided with my start of playing bluegrass banjo...Billy Bragg...Midnight Oil...Hoodoo Gurus...and now in the last 10 years I am a true devotee of that master of songwriting, Paul Kelly. Still play the banjo, and the smallpipes and border pipes, music is as deeply embedded in me now as it ever was and always will be.

Mike L said...

First dot was listening to my brother's Beatles albums.....Abbey Road and the White Album as a 7th and 8th grader.....with S&G's Bridge Over Troubled Waters in the running as well......

Dot two had to rise up out of an explosion of music exploration fueled by mind altering experiments...A Wizard, A True Star - Todd Rundgren.....

Dot three, four annd five came late in high school and seem to prove how broad music appreciation can be.....The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway - Genesis.....Abraxas - Santana.....Quadrophenia - The Who.

Only two real dots left, coming during college....Katy Lied - Steely Dan......and I Don't Want to Go Home - Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes....

If I had to take just a few albums to an island for the rest of my life, these would be the ones.....

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

No one's going to believe this, but it was not my original intention to gather a database of music that needs to be checked out--but I will be doing exactly that. So far on my list I've got John Prine and Paul Kelly, the only ones of commenters' suggestions I really don't know at all (I think; I forget meaningful stuff all the time).

You betcha I too started out with the Beatles at the very beginning: they are the Old Testament of music, and everyone born in the second half of the twentieth century bears the impress (whether they know it or not) of what they did.

Yeah, Pogues & Billy Bragg for me too.


"Embedded"--that's the word.

Peter J. said...

My first true love hated the doors. I should have known what that meant and moved on right then.
My next "love" loved the Grateful Dead. I should have known what that meant and moved on right then.
Mt next true love (soulmate) dug the Talking Heads. Then she went nuts.

Kevin G. said...

While not my blog,please indulge another quick note.
Scott, if you like Paul Kelly and assorted pipes, you may or may not already enjoy much of the music by Enya. Specifically the CD, " The Celts".
And Melissa, if you haven't yet reached your saturation point of suggested tunes, check out the band Social Distortion.Their song "Highway 101", gets my vote for best song about the open road......EVER!

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

Peter: Did Talking Heads make her insane, or did her insanity draw her to Talking Heads? In any event, you've just explained me to me, and I'm so grateful for the diagnosis.

***

See what I mean? Amazingly, Social Distortion and Enya (two more different sounds would be hard to find) are authentically fit into the same sentence--that's how music covers the waterfront of our emotional lives. You've given me leave, Kevin, to admit that Enya has long been a guilty pleasure; and now you've introduced me to a song that, yes, is literally driving. I like that stuff, a lot.

Scotty from Devon said...

You can cut to the core of Paul Kelly's music by watching the Youtube clip of him performing "Deeper Water" live...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVfwtxxbF1k

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

Yep, I think I got it now. Very moving, and direct in its movingness.

Catherine said...

When I first heard Talking Heads in high school, as well as Elvis Costello, I knew I had found musical utopia. I grew up in a town here in NH where everyone liked such forgettable 70s rocker bands that I can't even remember their names. (although I always likes Electric Light Orchestra and KC and the Sunshine Band--go figure--and Elton John, too--Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was the first album I ever purchased.)

Fuse that with the Clash, Bob Marley, Roxy Music, The Smiths, Morrissey (I like to listen to the Smiths and Morrisey when I'm driving and I can still listen to Talking Heads at any time), an obscure English punk poet/rocker named John Cooper Clarke, and then later Pearl Jam, Steve Earle and most recently Allison Krauss and other bluegrass, as well as the Killers, Kings of Leon and Arcade Fire and you very much have my life playlist...of course I still have my old vinyl LPs and glad I do, even if they are in boxes.

But that doesn't even touch on the Baroque or 19th century musical influence...

Great blog ~ nice to meet you, at last, on Saturday, too.

Catherine said...

Of course, nothing compares to dancing around my living room in Akron with my babysitter to her Beatles 45s: "She Loves You Ya Ya Ya" and "I Wanna Hold Her Hand" I was about 5 at the time. My very first musical radio memory, however, was hearing "Downtown" by Petula Clark and "These Boots Are Made for Walking" by Tina Sinatra and "The Theme from 'A Summer Place'" -- whenever I hear the latter and the first, I almost get tearful.

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

Ha, Catherine--more evidence that we are psychic twins, Ohio-style. That Elton John was the first album I ever bought, too! (I suspect he reaped the financial gains from approximately half a million Melissas and Catherines at the same time.) And so much else on your lists are on mine, too.

At my fifth birthday party, I received the Beatles' "Something New," and my birthday cake was Paul's head (well, not literally, but you know).

Fabulous to put a face to your words, Catherine. Lovely to meet at last.

Catherine said...

Did you also have one of those cool Panasonic? radios that was shaped like a donut and twisted open? I had a blue one and can still remember how much I wanted it for Christmas in 1972 (or was it 1973?).

Yes, great to finally meet! I'm winding down from the trip which led me back to NH, post festival, and now in MA. Good to be back in New England but a bit road weary...

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

Oh, yeah! That big-bracelet radio! I had it in yellow. Or maybe it was my sister's, and I stole it from her. A lot of that was happening then.

I still have the Donovan 45 I filched from her, too.