In a preemptive effort to keep my ears more open during 2008, I thought I’d run through some of the sounds that stuck out for me in 2007.
5. The stutter in “Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig.”
I didn’t know the name of this Jens Lekman song until I opened iTunes to write this post. I love the dude, but I wasn’t as moved by Night Falls Over Kortedala as I expected to be. Then this song pretty much changed my mind. There’s a stop and start danceable rhythm, great lyrics, and falsettos. And then at 2:16 when Jens sings the line, “my words are just c-c-c-coming out all wrong” and everything stops and starts and stops and starts and stops and starts again and you think your CD player is skipping except you’re not listening to the album on a CD player and is it possible for a computer to skip? Maybe it is, but that doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is this brilliant musician taking a moment to recognize that the sounds of language are fun and oh my, look what you can do with a consonant and now, back to dancing.
4. Iconic Modern Brokenness. Most of the moments on my list are small and contained. And it’s true even in this Fresh Air interview with actor Mark Ruffalo that runs just over 38 minutes long. Just after hearing a clip from his film “You Can Count on Me,” Ruffalo stumbles through making a statement about his (and my) generation and what he says sounds like he’s thought about it a million times but never actually uttered the words. I felt like I was in church when I heard him say the phrase “iconic modern brokenness” and all I could do was nod my head and imagine all the other listeners who would do the same in unison with me.
3. Border Radio on the radio. Nate DiMeo did several stories I loved on the radio this year but his series for American RadioWorks on the history of music on the radio did what I always hope good radio can do—tell a story, do it with humor, and teach people something when they’re not looking. So much of public radio feels like taking medicine. You know, you listen because you want to be informed, but you never really enjoy yourself. This whole series got me through many nights washing dishes at home and the chapter on border radio really slew me. And then a few months later, On the Media producer Jamie York went and did the same thing on OTM. And it was different, but just as good. Listen below.
2. A Message to Shimmy Shimmy Ya Rudy In my notebook, there are many pages devoted to sounds that hit me in the gut during this year’s Third Coast International Audio Festival. I think the most stunning being Peter Leonhard Braun describing how he reversed the sound of a rocket being fired at the end of “Bells in Europe” to create the sensation of a rocket coming towards the listener. But everyone knows that Third Coast is really about the parties. And during the sweaty, steamy afterparty at Stop Smiling HQ, the DJ (who was he Julie?) did something that completely delighted the roomful of nerds who spend their days chopping up and mixing audio. First he played the Specials, “A Message to Rudy” which had everyone on their feet screaming out the lyrics.
Which then mixed incredibly seamlessly into Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.”
Which caused everyone in the room to ooh and ahh and dance even more. And then, I don’t think I can describe what this really felt like, he brought back the Specials beat and ran it under ODB and everyone in the room covered their mouths and scrunched their foreheads or opened their eyes wide and made the noise you make when someone has just been burned bad in a game of the dozens and man I don’t know. I felt like I was in high school again, experiencing the freedom that music can bring for the first time.
1. Thunder On My Wedding Day. I wrote down that phrase and the way the letters fell together looked like a bad band name. And maybe that’s not too far considering the November Rain epicness of seeing the woman who was about to be my wife walking out of the house in her wedding gown, musicians trying to play as their music blew around in the wind, and hearing the thunder clap remarkably loud as she took her first step down the aisle. There were so many sounds that day that kept me beaming and then it was all over and we were married and it hadn’t rained on us and we were more in love than we knew we could be.
And then not more than a week later we were on the southern end of Prince Edward Island and the tide was low and we walked out onto what had to have been about 100 yards of red sand. And at the point where we met the water, the water actually lapped towards us in two directions and created a little V of ocean and good feeling. It was quiet and we watched and listened to the tiny waves lap their way closer and closer in our direction.
