DAY 9: EDWARD SHARPE AND THE MAGNETIC ZEROS, ALBUM OF THE SAME NAME

Star seeds

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I’ve almost been dreading writing about this album for a couple of reasons. My feelings are complicated and hard to put into words. One day, a long time ago, Amy introduced Chris and I to this band and then a few weeks after that, Home started playing on all of the radio stations. Amy is a trendsetter. We’d sing along as we travelled down the road and play the album Up From Below on loop. The band released Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros the year after Chris died. The first song I heard off of it was Better Days.

Try to remember, that you can’t forget
Down with history, up with your head
For sweet tomorrow, she never fell from grace
We might still know sorrow but we got better days

That song along with Life is Hard falls right in place with Chris’s (and mine) life philosophy and because of that, this album became so important to me.

This is also the same year I met Michael.

Life is it, life is it, it's where it's at
It's getting skinny, getting fat
It's falling deep into a love,
It's getting crushed just like about
Life there's no love, its getting beat into the ground

I had already purchased my ticket and camping pass for the Gentlemen of Roads Tour when Michael and I met. I was so excited for this concert because Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros were part of the line up and Talaura was coming down. When I told Michael about it, he wanted to come along too. He bought a ticket and we travelled to Guthrie. On our way to Guthrie I told Michael about this band. I said “I need you to pay attention and really listen to this band. This is important to me.” He said “okay.”

And then he didn’t pay attention or listen to the band.

That was the first time I realized that things that are important to me, won’t always be important to him. That realization was a bit of a blow to my little ego. Sometimes that realization is still a little bit hard to swallow only because sometimes, in a self indulgent way, I think that what I find important he should also find equally important. Because that is what I was used to. This is a different relationship. Michael and I don’t listen to the same kinds of music. We don’t read the same kinds of books. We don’t always agree on what to watch on the television. We find common ground. When I ask Alexa to play music in the mornings, I am sure to pick an artist that I think Michael will also enjoy even if he doesn’t know the artist. We may not read the same kinds of books, but we talk to each other about the stuff we’re reading. We find stuff on the television that we both want to watch. Compromise. That’s how we are making this work.

I feel the love, I feel the love, I feel the power
It's getting weirder by the hour
The world is fucked up but I want to stay
I feel the love, I feel the love, I feel the power

This album is the gospel music in my metaphorical church. It is a church that teaches the lessons of loving kindness and dancing in the streets. It is a church that reminds it’s congregation that life is fucking hard as fuck, so celebrate dammit! We all have sorrow and sadness, but there are better days ahead. It is the bitter, wonderful sweetness of living; this mixture of sorrow and joy.

I told you my feelings were complicated.

DAY 8: NATALIE MERCHANT, LEAVE YOUR SUPPER/LEAVE YOUR SLEEP

Reach

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Just before Natalie Merchant released Leave Your Sleep, she did a TED talk about the making of the album. She took poems about childhood from the 19th and 20th century and adapted them to music. The way Natalie spins these poems into tunes is at time sad and melancholy and silly and joyful. The first song from the album, Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience, moved me to tears and I can clearly see the girl in pink riding the white horse as she sings Equestrienne. I imagine that avocado Brussels sprout ice-cream from Bleezer’s Ice-Cream has the most awful smell. The whole album is like the up and down of a carousel horse. Her Ted Talk on the two disc album is one my favorite Ted Talks. It’s a fascinating tale of how she put music to these poems and why she chose this poem or that poem, but it is all sweet because you can tell Natalie Merchant is nervous. You can hear a slight tremor and breathiness in her voice as she talks. She seems to hesitate ever so slightly as she moves around on the stage. Her voice is clear when she’s singing, but when she starts discussing the poem and the process, her demeanor changes. She seems less sure of herself.

I always had this idea of who Natalie Merchant is as a person because of her music. She left the 10,000 Maniacs because she wanted complete control over her music and she was tired of being the only girl in the band. My impression of her paints a strong, independent force of nature. I have seen Natalie Merchant in concert. I think it was the Ophelia tour. She is everything you’d hope for when going to a concert. She sounds amazing, she’s engaging and joyful to watch on stage. Most people left at the end of the concert before she could come out for the encore. Those of us who stayed, moved up to the front of the stage and when Natalie came back out on stage she made a point to great every one us. She shook hands as she moved through our small crowd and sang four more songs. I thought for a moment she was going to hug each and every one of us. The whole experience was so personal and intimate and beautiful. So years later, when I saw her TED Talk, I was surprised by her nervousness.

That’s the main reason why I chose this album as one of my top ten. Because it made her nervous to talk about it.

She had made this album that is different and unique. It is an album of vulnerability. She made herself vulnerable and in doing so, I saw this woman differently. She was proof that you can have all this talent and creativity, but still be a little fearful of what others might think of your art. As she talks, there is something in her voice that says “please like this.” which is something we all want. When you put your heart and soul into your work and then set it out there for all to see, we all want it to be met with admiration. The talk and the album moved Natalie Merchant from status of another musician I wanted to stalk as a groupie to an artist that I whole heartedly admire.

Because we’re the same.

DAY 7: THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS

Shadow selfie

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Look, I could have plucked any and all of David Bowie’s albums for this album challenge. In forcing myself to narrow it down, I chose this one because I’m pretty sure this album was my first exposure to David Bowie. At some point while riding around in the back of Randy and Katrina’s van, while staring at the road through the rusted out hole in the floor in the back, Starman, Suffragette City and Lady Stardust floated into my ears. Good Gawd, I miss that raggedy old van and how we’d play a game of Spot and Identify the Road Carcass by sitting around that rusted out hole. Every once in a while, Katrina would look back to check on us and then yell “Scooch back from the hole! You’re too close!” We’d wiggle our little cross legged bodies back and widen our circle around the hole.

I am the kind of music listener who feels like the sound of the music is just as important as the lyrics. In fact, sometimes, the lyrics can be secondary and act as an enhancer to the sound. This is probably because off-key and out of tune notes cause me physical pain. Music makes me feel things inside my body. If the music is good, the feelings are good. I dragged Michael to a Gong Bath once. That’s where you lay on the floor in a dark room while someone plays a series of gongs. You can feel the sound vibrating through the floor. At times, the experience was very relaxing. Michael started snoring at one point. But then the drumming on the gongs grew louder and more intense. I felt my whole body tense up and my breathing became shallow. Tears leaked out my eyes. I was just about to get up and leave when they finally stopped and I breathed a sigh of deep relief. The sound was too much for my body to feel.

David Bowie’s music is enhanced by his lyrics. His music makes me feel, but his lyrics are significant. They are important.

Stone love, she kneels before the grave
A brave son, who gave his life
To save the slogans
That hovers between the headstone and her eyes
For they penetrate her grieving

This country has been involved in war since 2001. Those lyrics from Soul Love are just as relevant today as they were when Bowie recorded this song in 1972. I cannot listen to the beginning of that song without seeing my sister-in-laws face. The other night, Terry practically quoted Rock n Roll Suicide to me.

Oh no, love, you're not alone
You're watching yourself, but you're too unfair
You got your head all tangled up, but if I could only make you care
Oh no, love, you're not alone

David Bowie sang to us songs of self love before we even knew we needed them. He used sound to take us on imaginary journeys into space. Bands like the Flaming Lips and Arcade Fire would not exist as we know them now without the influence of David Bowie. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars became the base line for the music I would gravitate to and seek out.

It is the music I want when I just want to lay on the floor and listen to the sounds and feel the vibrations.

DAY 6: NEKO CASE & HER BOYFRIENDS, FURNACE ROOM LULLABY

Cow

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My Dad was a country music listener. When I say ‘country music’, I’m talking about the old time country music. Grand Ole Opry country. Roy Rogers and Dale Evens country. Saturday nights were for Mom’s homemade pizza and Hee-Haw. The day he found the classic country radio station on Sirius XM, he called me to tell me all about it because he was overjoyed that this station existed. Once, well before we knew he was sick, I took Dad to see Riders in the Sky at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. You might recognize their voices from Toy Story 2 where they performed “Woody’s Round-up”. Dad was so happy to be at this concert that it leaked out of his eyes. He was the one that gave me my appreciation for good country music. He taught me all about Patsy and Loretta and Johnny and Willie. He introduced me to Minnie Pearl and cowboy campfire songs. I had an appreciation for Dad’s music, but I did not care to listen to it. It just wasn’t my go-to choice of music, particularly in my youth. There’s nothing more embarrassing or annoying than your parents’ music when you are that age.

I came across Furnace Room Lullaby the year Chris died. It’s an album of Neko Case singing twangy country songs, each one resonating in some way with my state of mind. Every word in South Dakota Way could have been written by me in the days after Chris’s passing. I felt all the aching truth of grief in that song. Then I had to have Hooper put down and Set Out Running moved to the top of my anthem list.

And if I knew heartbreak was coming, I would've set out running. Past the city houses
And the ditches on the highway.

This album stuck with me as I entered the crazy world of online dating (Guided by Wire) and into the early days of my relationship with Michael (Twist the Knife). And I am always in the Mood to Burn Bridges.

So if you have moral advice, I suggest you just tuck it all away

This album didn’t just open me up to all things Neko Case, it opened my ears to that music my Dad loved so much. My appreciation for that genre has moved beyond mere appreciation. I now tuck a few songs into a playlist and seek out new artists with that old sound, artists like Margo Price and Yola and even Kacey Musgraves. I listen to this music and I think about my Dad’s western style shirts with the pearl snaps and his bolo ties. I think about how Dad had cowboy boots that he called “work boots” and a fancy pair of cowboy boots that he called his “dress boots”. The same was true for his cowboy hats. He had one for riding his tractor and one for fancy occasions. He had a way of getting as close as he could to things he wanted to do in life. He wanted to be a pilot and when he failed the physical to become one, he became an airplane mechanic. Those cowboy clothes and his music and his red tractor were Dad’s way of being the cowboy.

And I feel like I finally understand that.

DAY 5: BELLY, STAR

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The truth is, I could write and write about albums that influenced me or that are linked to my memories. Soundtracks to life. Chris and I would spend hours listening to one CD on repeat. A few months would go by before we’d change it and move onto something new and different. I think there was a good solid three months where we listened to the soundtrack to Chess. I sang along with Elaine Page with a dream of maybe, just maybe, getting the chance to play the part of Florence. Chris and I would discuss set designs and lighting. We’d break down the production of this musical as if we were actually going to be a part of putting it all together for the public. Other times, we’d lay spooning while listening to Les Miserables, weeping together at the beautiful sadness of it all.

For a while we were obsessed with Mercury Falling, an album released by Sting our junior year in college. Our copy of In My Tribe by the Ten Thousand Maniacs was the rare copy that included their remake of Cat Stevens’ Peace Train and Chris and I both would ooh-awe-ee with Natalie as we drove down country lanes. We were constantly latching on to musical artists. While Chris was introducing me to artists like Pink Floyd, I was introducing him to the Flaming Lips. I would discover a new artist and write it down on a sticky note for Chris to find. Months later he’d start playing a CD and say “hey, I found this new band I thought you’d like.” I’d punch him the arm and tell him that I pointed that band out to him months ago. Then we’d laugh. Chris was the one to introduce me to Belly. He had their album, Star. I ended up finding every one of their albums in the used CD bin at Hasting’s. But Chris just didn’t give me this band, he gave me a key.

Chris and Traci were best friends. Best. Friends. I came along and I was an outsider. Though Traci never ever treated me like an outsider, I still felt like I was intruding on that relationship. I doubt to this day that Traci had any idea how intimidated I was by her. I thought she was so cool. I still think that. Her relationship with Chris was so important and vital for the two of them. I didn’t want to mess it up. I didn’t want to be the girlfriend that Chris would bring over that would make Traci roll her eyes in annoyance. Knowing and loving all the songs from that band was my in with Traci. I remember one time the four of us, Chris, me, Traci and her boyfriend Chris (now husband), drove to Dallas for a concert. Traci and I were in the backseat and the guys were in the front, flipping through radio stations. The radio tuned into a station that was playing Feed the Tree by Belly. Traci and I screamed from the back seat “LEAVE IT THERE!” and then proceeded to sing along and bounce around in the backseat of the car. Traci would end up being my concert buddy for concerts when Chris wasn’t interested in going. Belly was the band that started that.

At least it was for me.

DAY 4: DORIS DAY AND HOWARD KEEL, CALAMITY JANE

Day four of the album challenge coincided with the passing of Doris Day at the age of 97. I was bound to pick something by Doris Day and Calamity Jane trumped the soundtrack to Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. It was a close call. I went with Calamity Jane because it has one of my favorite actresses playing one of my favorite Historical women in a musical. It’s a trifecta of greatness.

In the summer, you're the winter, In the finger, you're the splinter. In the banquet, you're the stew, Say, I c'n do without you!

I mean, seriously.

My mom was the person to introduce me to the wonderful world of musicals. I don’t know if it was PBS or some other random channel, but Saturday and Sunday afternoons they would play old movies and musicals and I would soak them up. It was not uncommon to hear Mom belt out some random line from a musical or have the dial set in her car radio to the station that played classics. I had a very diverse musical education. This is one of the reasons why you can flip to just about any station and I will be able to sing along to the song. It’s a weird trick. Stephanie, my best friend from high school, said once that I was basically a radio.

I didn’t have access to cable channels until college, unless I was at my brothers. At his house, it was MTV all the time. Once I had my own TV with cable, I flipped between Turner Classics and AMC. Sometimes one channel would do movies with one certain actor all day. There’d be Carrie Grant day or Rock Hudson or Betty Davis movies playing all freaking day. It was awesome. My favorite days were when they played Doris Day movies all day long. I would watch them all from Lullaby of Broadway to April in Paris to The Man Who Knew Too Much to Please Don’t Eat The Daisies. She was simply lovely. She was pretty, but attainable. Serious, yet funny. Doris Day was just a joy to see on screen. I wanted to sing like Doris Day. I wanted to be as charming and graceful as Doris Day. Then you have Doris Day as Calamity Jane. I know the musical is not a true representation of history. It is historical fiction. Calamity Jane doesn’t fit the gender norms of that time. She dresses like a man, drinks and swears like a man. She shoots a gun better than most men. Calamity Jane is a feminist! She’s a woman living her life on her terms. At the same time, she just wants want we all want. She wants to be desired. She wants to be loved. She wants to be loved and desired for who she is. We’re all a little bit Calamity Jane.

To say that Doris Day will be missed is incorrect. The truth is, Mrs. Day has been out of the public eye for quite some time, well before her passing. We’ve been missing Doris Day for a while. Hearing the news of her passing at age 97 just makes me marvel at a life well-lived. She lived her life on her terms. Just like Calamity Jane.

DAY 3: STING, FIELDS OF GOLD

I was almost twenty years old when I finally lost my virginity. ‘Lost’ is a funny way to phrase that. Gave away, willingly let go of, out grew, donated. Let’s go with willingly and enthusiastically let go of my virginity. Letting go of my virginity in the back of a car with some high school boy just wasn’t an option for me. I was not desirable to high school boys. Mom brought some of my senior year pictures on her last visit. Michael was looking through them and said “Oh…you’d have been in trouble if we’d gone to the same school. I’d be all over this.” I just quietly nodded my head, but what I wanted to say was “not true.” I knew guys like him in high school and they’d be interested for about two minutes until I opened my mouth and said something truthful and honest. So while all my high school girlfriends were having sex or had had sex, I was reading books about sex.

And promoting condom use.

Then in college, I met Chris. Five years older and experienced. He’d lived a life before committing to college. And he was not enthused about being my first sexual partner. Virgins are work. There’s all these preconceived notions of what that first time will be like. Will it hurt? Will I get pregnant? Should it be super special with roses and candles and a fancy hotel room? Chris was unwilling to cause me any pain. So I willingly gave away my virginity in stages until one day, it just happened. In every one of those stages, Sting’s Fields of Gold was playing in the background. I hear any song from that album and I’m immediately transported to Chris’s dorm room. We’re laying on his twin bed, made up with his original Star Wars sheets The room is dark with just the tiniest amount of light peeking in through the window blinds. Sometimes we’re talking. Sometimes we’re silent. Sometimes we’re even laughing. That album would be playing the first time we said “I love you” to each other.

I remember one evening around the fire pit at Misti’s old house. Losing virginity stories were going around the campfire. When I told my story everyone just sort of shook their heads and Misti said something like “well done, Chris.” I recognize that my first time was not a typical first time experience for most women. I recognize that the relationship I had in general with Chris was not typical. Fortunate. I have been fortunate.

I never made promises lightly and there have been some that I've broken
But I swear in the days still left we'll walk in fields of gold
We'll walk in fields of gold

For a while, not long enough, but for longer than I should hope for, we walked in fields of gold.

DAY 2: NEIL DIAMOND, THE JAZZ SINGER

Prairie flowers

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Erica Mullin was probably one of my best friends when I was in elementary school. Her grandparents were close family friends. I suppose these people were my parents’ version of framily. Rena and Don helped take care of me when I was a super tiny baby. Don worked for Meadow Gold Dairy and brought us milk and ice cream all the time. My Mom likes to tell a story about when she was in the hospital, recovering after my traumatic entry to this world. She received a huge, beautiful bouquet of flowers. All of the nurses oohed and awed. When my mom read the card she laughed and said “it’s from my milk man.” Which every one thought was funny. Rena and Don were like surrogate grandparents. Erica, their granddaughter, was the closest thing to a cousin that I had nearby.

For a while, Rena and Don’s daughter and granddaughter lived in a house on the hill just above Rena and Don. Erica practically lived at our house because my mom would end up taking care of all of us during the day while Erica’s mom was at work. We went every where together. Roller skating, movies, bike rides. Erica had the best toys. She had the Darth Vader case holding all of the Star Wars figures and Hungry Hippo. We traded plastic charms and played dress up with Katrina’s old disco clothes. Our families camped together on what seemed like every weekend. We would take over the RV section of Walnut Grove campground on Keystone Lake with potluck meals and hikes down to the lake to swim. We would spend forever watching a giant ant colony near the playground and hours swinging as high as we possibly could go on the playground swings. That playground had a great big metal swing set. I can still hear Rena warning me that I’d gone high enough and to take it down a notch.

Sometimes we’d all ride to the lake in Erica’s mom’s car. Me, Erica, and Janel, all crammed into the front seat of her mom’s El Camino. At least, I think it was an El Camino. Was there another model of car that looked like an El Camino? I don’t know, but we’d pack ourselves into that car with the windows rolled down because the air conditioning didn’t work and the radio blaring. The air conditioning may have been on the fritz, but the eight track worked just fine. I remember flying down back country roads with the wind blowing our hair all around and all of us singing at the top of our lungs to Neil Diamond’s Coming to America. We were practically glued together from heat and sweat. I can still feel Janel’s prickly leg hairs scratching the side of my right leg. I’ve memorized the motion of pulling hair free from my face as the wind forever twisted my long hair across my cheeks and eyes and mouth. “TODAY!” we’d all shout together.

Erica and her mom moved to Tulsa while I was still in elementary school. Tulsa wasn’t really that far away but the distance and her being a year older changed us from best friends to acquaintances. We drifted apart. Don retired from Meadow Gold and he and Rena upgraded their camper. They spent the rest of his life traveling south during the winter and when Rena settled down in Oklahoma City after Don passed away, the distance changed her relationship with my mom. They sort of drifted apart as well. Any time I hear Neil Diamond singing though, I remember that space in our time line when we were all together, before the great drift.

DAY 1: THE CURE, DISINTEGRATION

Curtsy

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Somewhere around my sophomore/ junior year in high school, I discovered the band The Cure. They released the album in 1989, but it would take two years for any of it to reach my ears. That was the way of small towns. We were always behind. Movies hit the one-screen theater on Main street about a year after release. The latest fashion and trends hit us two or three years later than they did in big city areas. Music was no different. It didn’t help that I lived in a radio void. None of the local stations played the music I wanted to listen too. Late on Saturday nights, if the skies were clear and the wind was blowing at just the right speeds, I could pick up an hour or two of a college station that would play indie/alternative music. In those brief two hours, I learned about punk bands like the Police and the Ramones. I learned about another famous Elvis and the Flaming Lips. The Talking Heads and the Pixies and Echo and Bunnymen were frequently played and I soaked it all up.

A friend introduced me to the Cure. She handed me Disintegration and I took it home and copied it. God, remember coping tapes and CDs? Or recording radio stations? I did all of those things. I played that album over and over and over. I listened to that album so much that I was able to mimic a British accent. That new trick got me an important role in a short play we were doing that year. If you were to ask me now why on earth this was the only album I listened too for months and months, I could not really tell you why. Something about that music just hit a target with my teenage soul. The music alone just felt big to me, meaningful, important. It was that time in my life when I was young and ridiculous and believed I could be just like Molly Ringwald in any John Hughes movie. I wanted to be cool and wise and different, but I wanted to be just like everyone else too. If I’m honest? I still want all of those things. Pictures of You can still feel like tiny needles poking my heart, more so now then in my youth. Funny how the songs we love morph in meaning as we age.

Steven tagged me in a Facebook game to post a top ten album for ten days. When I posted my choice for Day 1, my friend Sarah commented on how she wished these games came with an explanation. Why this album, Cindy? This game isn’t easy for me. I don’t listen to music this way, albums at a time. Usually I listen to an artist, not a particular album. My current addictions are Lizzo, Yola, and Neko Case because we just saw her in concert and it was the best show I’ve seen in ages. I can’t get enough of her music right now. Andrew Bird has been playing frequently in my playlist, along with Father John Misty and Arcade Fire. The National. The soundtrack to Hamilton because I’m resigned to the fact that I will probably never get a chance to see this musical. Morrissey. Courtney Barnett. The First Aid Kit. My music is all over the place. My musical taste is undefinable. So when asked to pick my top ten albums, I struggle. I started choosing albums for their nostalgic value. Specific memories are tied to these albums and this album triggers memories of me driving along back roads to get to this or that. It reminds me of those times I felt lonely and isolated.

It was the album of my teenage angst.