Do Something New, Day 50: Discover Music I Love That Is Not Embarrassing

On this episode of The Good Ol’ Days, we reflect on a time when purchasing music meant acquiring something that you could hold in your hands.

A gleaming black vinyl record whose grooves your fingers wanted to trace.

A plastic cassette through which you could see the magnetic film just waiting to unwind its melodies.

A shiny CD that would cast prisms on your dashboard as the sun hit it.

But–forgive my lack of sentiment–I don’t really miss them …. and certainly not the eight track cassettes that I believe are at least 21 percent of the reason I had no hope of ever being one of the “cool kids.” (As for the other 79 percent, please refer to my fourth-grade school picture. I won’t post it here in order to protect my parents, whom many of you would feel compelled to report to social services for buying such a pair of glasses for a child and then allowing her to wear them among that most malicious species of humanoids known as 10-year-old girls.)

While the eight-track player had already begun its descent into obsolescence even before I was born, I found my mother’s stowed away in our basement when I was 8 or 9 and, thrilled to have a stereo of my very own, spent my formative elementary school years listening to it in my room. Of course, music was no longer produced in the eight-track format, so my selection of music was limited to the cartridges that were in the bottom of the dusty box in which I had discovered the player. So while my classmates were air guitaring to November Rain and Every Rose Has its Thorn, I was coming up with choreography to What’s New Pussycat?

It explains so much.

And now we live in the age of digital music. And I think it’s glorious.

I never again have to feel that pit in my stomach as I watch a friend or—even worse–a potential love interest wander over to my CD tower to take a look and, undoubtedly, deem me an unworthy human being based on the albums resting on those shelves.

Perhaps due to the fact that my introduction to popular music was courtesy of a man who paid to have his chest hair insured, I don’t have what I would call good taste in music. Or what anyone would call good taste in music, actually.

And now my iPod is the keeper of my shameful musical secrets.

But as much as I’m a fan of the digital music revolution, I do miss one thing about those days of yore when music assumed a tangible form:

Burned CDs – also known as the currency of high school romance and angst.

How do teenagers express their feelings for one another without mixed CDs? Without a Memorex CD-R and a Sharpie, how do they say, “I’ll love you forever … or until I make out with another girl at prom and then eventually realize I prefer kissing men and come out to you when you find me buying make-up in the grocery store.” Hypothetically speaking …

It has been years since anyone has made a mixed CD for me. (Please do not focus on that as evidence of a lackluster romantic life. There are so many other more compelling pieces of evidence that I’d be happy to point out.)

Then a few days ago I was the delightfully surprised recipient of not one but two CD-Rs, complete with Sharpie labeling and all. As soon as I saw one was called “For Jill,” I popped it into my computer. And I discovered that listening to a hand-crafted compilation is just as awesome for 30-year-old Jill as it was for 16-year-old Jill.

I remember it well: Barricaded in my room. Door shut. Lights off. Lying on my bed, eyes closed, waiting anxiously for the next track. And the next track. And the next track. Trying to read meaning into each selection as a curiously appealing mélange of scents permeated the air, courtesy of the 17 candles covering my dresser, their flames dancing on my giant Leonardo DiCaprio poster.

But enough about Tuesday night.

In all my excitement about the mixed CD, I neglected to take a listen to the other CD that accompanied it.

Then tonight, as I was throwing piles of crap from my table on the floor so I could make room to eat my Cinnamon Toast Crunch dinner tidying up a bit, I discovered the overlooked disc – “The Long Walk Back” by Just Off Turner.

Funny. That’s where I used to live. On Sixth … just off Turner.

Just two songs in, and I realized I really dig Just Off Turner.

Perhaps I should start seeking out more music with connections to my address.

In honor of my college apartment, is there a band called Next to the Cocaine and Strippers, um, I mean, Phi Gamma Delta House?

And relative to my current residence, anyone know of a group called Down the Hall from the Man Who Appears To Be Harboring a 13-Piece Mariachi Band that Only Can Practice between Midnight and 4 A.M.? (So rude. How is a person supposed to listen to her Tom Jones: Greatest Hits over that?)

Tonight I discovered a new band that I actually need not be ashamed to acknowledge loving.

I did something new.

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Tags: Digital audio, postaday2011