Month: September 2012 (Page 2 of 2)

When you really think about it, there are three different days when summer ends. If you have kids in school, there’s the first day of school. There’s the really-real end of summer, which is the date of the autumnal equinox. And then there’s today, the day after Labor Day, which has long been the traditional end of summer.

There’s an added bonus in our house today as L. goes off to her first day of 3’s class. We just got back from dropping her off and, as with her big sisters, she strolled in like it was no big deal. Contrast that to the three-year-old in front of us, who was screaming and had to be carried in by a teacher. Yikes, and sympathies to his parents.

Anyway, it seems like the perfect moment to review our summer. I promised it would be the greatest summer ever when it started. I think we did pretty well in delivering on that.

There were all the firsts for the girls.

First time in a lake, on a boat, and in an inner-tube behind a boat.

First time off a diving board.

First fish caught by M. and C..

First all-family flight.

L.’s first bee sting. OK, not exactly a fun time for anyone involved, but we’ll remember it as part of this summer.

I brewed my first batch of beer.

And then there was the non-first stuff that was still pretty great.

Our trip to Denver to visit friends and family.

Our new neighbors, who immediately became best friends for the girls.

Swimming lessons and trips to the pool.

Making s’mores.

Trips to parks, pools, and famers markets.

Lots of long weekends with friends and family.

We had two engagements in the family, which the girls were exceptionally excited about.

I snuck in a Kansas City trip and S. had some girl times.

Other than the heat, which limited some of our activities and kept us cooped up in the house more than I would have liked, it was a pretty great summer.

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To continue my recent music nostalgia jag, the fifth anniversary of me posting my favorite albums of all time list just passed. Seems like a good time to revisit the list and see if anything has changed.

As a quick refresher, here were the Top 5, Honorable Mentions, and Super Honorable Mention from August 2007.

1a – London Calling – The Clash
1b – OK Computer – Radiohead
3 – It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back – Public Enemy
4 – Revolver – The Beatles
5 – Achtung Baby – U2

HM
Paul’s Boutique – The Beastie Boys
The Rising – Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band
Vitalogy – Pearl Jam
Summer Teeth – Wilco

SHM
Purple Rain – Prince & The Revolution

Purple Rain was listed as a Super Honorable Mention because my overriding rules stated that soundtracks could not be considered. But I made an exception for it since it was a Prince album that just happened to be associated with a movie, not one of those classic 80s soundtracks that had Kenny Loggins and a host of other artists on it.

In thinking about the list, two albums I’ve listened to a lot in the last five years demand to be considered. One was released in 2008, so obviously could not have made the original list. The other was released in 2003, and while I’ve always loved it – it was my second-favorite album of the last decade – it has moved into classic status over the past five years.

The first is Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight, an album I wrote plenty about in 2008. It was my favorite album both of that year and of the decade. It’s power lies in Scott Hutchison throwing absolutely every emotion experienced after a break-up, in as honest/glorious/hideous a manner as possible, onto a single disk. Its is enormous. Even after four years it can floor me to listen to it, start-to-finish.

The second is the White Stripes’ most perfect album, Elephant. It came just as Jack and Meg were broadening their sound while still staying true to their original, minimalist aesthetic. I bought it just after we moved to Indianapolis and it served as the soundtrack for the summer of 2003.

The album begins with “Seven Nation Army,” a song that was inescapable in 2003 and remains a sports event anthem today. Things kept getting better after that. No fewer than nine of the album’s 14 tracks could be considered for the best cut. “Black Math” roars. “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” is a stunner, and my favorite cover ever. “Ball and Biscuit” might be the best song of the last 20 years. And on and on. Other than a couple tracks that might be considered throw aways by some¹, it’s a nearly perfect synthesis of blues, punk, and straight-ahead-American rock. It belongs in every self-respecting American music fan’s collection.

So where do they fit in? To add two I have to lose two, so both The Rising and Summer Teeth get bounced from the top ten and Achtung Baby slides out of the top five. My favorite albums lists for September 2012 is, then:

1a – London Calling – The Clash
1b – OK Computer – Radiohead
3 – It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back – Public Enemy
4 – The Midnight Organ Fight – Frightened Rabbit
5 – Revolver – The Beatles
6 – Elephant – The White Stripes
7 – Paul’s Boutique – The Beastie Boys
8 – Vitalogy – Pearl Jam
9 – Purple Rain – Prince & The Revolution
10 – Achtung Baby – U2

Now go listen to some music, bitches.

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On occasion a memory from the past will trigger something in my brain and I’ll fall into a deeper hole of nostalgia. That’s been the case recently concerning summer music from the 1980s.

The trigger, this time, was two separate American Top 40s I listened to on recent Sundays.¹ One was from 1984, and was loaded with Prince, Bruce, Tina, Cyndi and the Footloose soundtrack. That was one of the truly great summers ever, between some epic pop artists and the LA Olympics.

Two weeks later I heard one from 1982, this time an interesting mix of the Go-Gos, Men at Work, John Cougar and other artists I was listening to back then with others like Air Supply, America, and Elton John, all music that my mom was listening to at the time.

After much over-analysis of those songs and the memories they stirred, I decided 1982 was a hugely important musical year in my life. That was the year I officially transitioned away from most of my music being influenced by my mom and her friends to picking my own music. We still listened to a lot of the same music – another bonus of having a mother only 19 years older than me – but she was drifting away from the music of the 70s and into “lite rock” while I was discovering New Wave and harder rock. There was still a swath of mainstream pop music we both enjoyed: Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie were the most obvious examples. But ’82 was the year that common ground began to shrink rapidly and soon there would be almost no overlap in our tastes.

Which led to more over-analysis about the changes in radio over the past 30 years, most of which I’m sure I’ve written about before. While much of the music of the 1980s was pretty awful, historically speaking, it was still a golden age for pop radio. There just isn’t the variety of music represented in mainstream pop today that there was back then. Now it’s all dance/hip-hop derived music. In the 80s there was dance music, rock, all the New Wave artists, a dose of pop-country, and then the massive artists like Prince that defied easy labeling.

Was it better then? I think most people will argue the music of their pre-teen and teenage years was the best of their lives. I do think that common culture, represented by what Casey Kasim played on AT40, was better. You could go anywhere and people your age would have that common base to work from.

That said kids today have far more access to music than my generation did. They aren’t reliant on Casey or MTV to tell them what to listen to. They can go out and sample 1000 different bands from 100 different sub-genres and decide what they like on their own. They don’t have to sit and wait for the songs they like, they can get them whenever they want them.

What does it all mean? Hell, I don’t know. All I know is I’ve had these songs, and all the memories and feelings associated with them, bouncing in my head for the past few weeks. As much as I tried to find some meaning in them, I could not. So I figured maybe if I shared this experience, and overdose on 80s summer pop over the holiday weekend, I’ll be ready to start anew on Tuesday.

Happy Labor Day weekend, everyone.