Saturdays

A couple of weeks ago I was making my weekly Saturday morning jaunt to the OKC downtown library, clean, cool, refreshing on the bright, empty and windy streets when I heard a great indie electro-dance song on dad’s XM radio by a band I hadn’t heard of, a song called ‘House Jam’ on ‘Saint Dymphna’ by ‘Gang Gang Dance’. I rehearsed the name so as not to forget it while parking and walking into the big new building and a few minutes later found myself in a study room with windows facing the cool art noveau county building, sitting at my laptop, looking at Pandora radio, Pitchfork Media, itunes store, and jamglue.com, a remixing site, all at the same time… obsession.
This morning I was taking my usual Saturday drive to the library to work on grad-school apps when I decided, instead, to make camp in a downtown coffee shop, and there I see Wayne Coyne and his wife, with a small dog in her purse.
Well, I’m star-struck, and it occurs to me that just last night I was gazing at the framed The Soft Bulletin poster on our bedroom wall, with Wayne singing into a megaphone, and how Claire got me Christmas on Mars on DVD for Christmas and how once while listening to the Flaming Lips through headphones outside Cafe Sole in south Boulder I saw in my mind’s eye a VW Bug transform into a robot. I think about approaching and thanking him for his work, but I’d feel too awkward, and though I doubt they’d mind, these Coyne’s seem so gregarious, I think it might be kinder to let them enjoy their morning in peace.
Moving right along.
In first grade I got a little one speaker boombox for my birthday. AM/FM/tapedeck. I’d tune it’s plastic silver knobs all over the ionosphere searching for pop, ecstasy, joy, and I’d find it. This was 1983, rap’s radio golden age and we lived in the suburbs of a city of five million. I’d listen with the little radio under the covers with me, well into the night.
I have a new music playlist of 1,130 songs, 72 hours of music. I listen to it at work during lunch while I read, and when I’m working on the computer at home or in a café. Every couple of weeks I go through the list and take out songs I’ve learned I don’t like, and move ones I like enough into my favorite songs playlist, which I listen to generally, now pushing 4,000 songs, or 250 hours of music. The idea for this every-good-song-ever playlist hit me a few years ago when I was still listening to cd’s and realized that I was spending way too much time listening to songs I knew I didn’t like. Why skip through and album to hear two or three good songs, having already given the rest a chance? I realized that there is too much good music out there to waste my time on the rest.
I try to file down the new music list, to hopefully get it under a thousand someday, but I’m doubtful. There is too much good stuff out there, and I know too many great people who are willing to fill me in with data discs full of new stuff. It’s a lot of work, rifling through all this bizarre beauty.