dexys midnight runners - "reminisce (part two)" (from the don't stand me down lp, import available for purchase here.)

yeah, i thought i'd reminisce once more.

i've started to think about the spring of 1997.

when i began this thing, i credited artists who changed the way i listen to music, transforming it always into an ecstatic experience. now, i'd like to thank the people whom i've "met" (and met) since i became active on the internet over eight years ago, people who've changed how i listen to music and what i listen to. a few also have, happily, had an equal effect on the life i live outside of music:

mark bartlam, marcello carlin, robin carmody, sean carruthers, sterling clover, michael daddino, nick dastoor, tom ewing, tim finney, jess harvell, geir hongro, thomas inskeep, maura johnston, ally kearney, andy kellman, nicole kessler, josh kortbein, mitch lastnamewithheld, persinthia lawdro, michaelangelo matos, brian mcdonald, glenn mcdonald, joe mcglinchey, jimmy the mod, ethan padgett, matthew perpetua, dan perry, ned raggett, mark sinker, kris srinivasan, sundar subramanian, ricky t, otis wheeler, wilson & alroy--and jesus (no, not to thank!), i hope i didn't leave anyone out.

this was, quite literally, my first foray into the world of alternative. (an aside: before looking back, i always thought that mark day's post was written by tom ewing, and i thought mark day was taking the piss--so, before i got to know him, i had a secret grudge against ewing.) do people still use usenet? for non-binaries purposes? those were times, such as i'll always remember. as much as i enjoyed ilx and a few select message boards, nothing quite matched the exchanges--or the characters!--i encountered on alt.music.alternative, a centralized forum that all comers had access to, now left to die in a pile of spam and x-posting.

enough old man musing. what i haven't discussed is my conversion to "white" music--not the xtc album, but that too would come eventually. this occurred largely b/c of the results of another road trip, this one undertaken as an adult w/ friends. my friends, it should be noted, have uniformly pretty awful taste in music; just the other night, they were reliving the "greatest concert ever," a creed show (my best friend's wife related again how she cried when scott stapp brought out his son during "arms wide open.") i did however have one friend w/ ... interesting taste; of course, to even things out, he was by far the quirkiest of the lot, a guy i haven't heard from since he picked up and left one new year's eve several years ago, claiming that he was "tired" of all of us, and moved to california.

enter hendrix and elton john. of course, for every great artist he liked, there was a guess who--or the little river band. still, those first two artists provided a gateway into what would follow, mostly classic rock and blue-eyed soul. an easy psychoanalysis would say that i traded in one form of unpopular music amongst my peer group--these were still times when one could be called all kinds of neat epithets for enjoying rap; now it's the types who would have done the namecalling who do the most listening--for two more--and w/ my soon-to-be appreciation of britpop and -rock, another one. (yes, i longed to be the moody outsider, but i couldn't do entirely w/ some degree of popularity.)

massive attack, i read about in vibe. from what i heard, they were into all of the things i was into at the time: rap, funk, soul, reggae, plus a little rock 'n' roll. explorations in this vein would also lead to successful findings (portishead) and less successful ones (hooverphonic, gus gus, morcheeba, &c). they still hold up quite well, i think.

none of this is particularly elucidating, i realize. as i crafted that list above, my mind was flooded w/ thoughts (and threads) and the route navigated to get to this point in listening taste seems far less interesting than the people encountered along the road; the dexys song--a descendent of "coney island baby," a forebear of billy bragg's "walk away renee"--only amplifies the mood, one i naturally tend to drift into as night falls. i hope you've encountered similar folk in your life; i hope, if you're one of the above folk, that tonight you're warm and safe, as you are in my memory.