Usually the car radio is tuned to NHPR. But there are plenty of places in the state where the reception is a bit sketchy. The other day I was heading up I-93 to Lincoln and the Kanc, and it goes to fuzz. I hit Scan and, a few stations later, I hear these familiar lyrics:
I have forever always tried / to stay clean and constantly baptized...That's Pain Lies on the Riverside, the first track from Mental Jewelry by Live, who was a favorite band of mine back in high school and early college. I heard that track many, many times coming out from my CD player. Of course, being a CD player, I usually heard the whole album start to finish - an experience less frequent in these days of playlists.
When the song had finished on the radio and I reflected a bit on it, I realized that the album came out in 1991, meaning that it's more than twenty years old! Now, I grew up listening mostly to my parents' music; I'm down with the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkle, Creedence Clearwater, The Who, and so on. That was old music when I was young, and I understood it as such. To think that the music that was new and fresh in my youth - the whole Alternative and Seattle Grunge scene - is now pretty old in its own right is a bit of a revelation. If he were alive today, Kurt Cobain would have recently celebrated his 47th birthday. What does that say about me?
What came next on that station? Alanis Morisette's "You Oughta Know." I could still could sing along. Cripes.
1 comment:
Listening to a whole album from start to finish was even more common when we listened to music on tape. Yes, I said it. TAPE.
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