Be Less Boring

There are certain albums and artists that, when I first heard them, I immediately connected with them on some instinctive, emotional level.  A few of those artists and albums include The Violent Femmes first album, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, and the Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session.  All three of those albums would rank among my top 50 favorite albums of all time and all of them are albums that brought me to the edge of my seat instantly the first time I heard them.  They all became favorites the very first time I heard them.

That's a rare thing for me.  Quite often I've bought albums on recommendations from friends only to think they sucked on first listen.  Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow album was like that.  I bought it, gave it a listen, thought it was boring, put it on a shelf and forgot about it for months.  At some point I decided to give it another shot and I liked it.  As I listened to it more and more, I came to really like and appreciate it.  There have been quite a few albums like that over the years and I'd hazard a guess that, with unfamiliar music--meaning artists and songs I've never heard before--my first reaction is often negative.  I've observed this same behavior in other people and I'm aware of it, so I make it a point to give anything I don't like on first listen a second or third chance to make an impression. 

What's more interesting about the Femmes, Phair, and Junkies albums mentioned above is the first listen made such an impression on me that I remember where I was and who I was with the very first time I heard them.  In some cases I'd just met those people for the first time that day but they ended up having some interesting connections in my life.

The first time I heard the Violent Femmes was at a dinner party when I first moved to Maine for college.  I was a transfar student, so I didn't have to live on campus, so a friend from high school--I'll call him Ken for the purposes of this story--and I got an apartment in Old Town. That first day we went to the local department store to pick up some household items we needed.  Outside the store was a friend of Ken's, I'll call him John, who was the lawnmower salesman on duty.  It was the first time I met John and he invited us both over to the house he was sharing with a bunch of other students for a dinner party.  We accepted and later made our way out to an old farmhouse that was kind of in the middle of nowhere for a fine dinner party with plenty of food. 

At some point after dinner, while the rest of us sat in the kitchen talking and drinking wine, John went into the living room to change albums. When the first notes of "Blister in the Sun" hit my ears, I perked up.  Soon I was on my feet in the living room to find out who that band was. I'd never heard the Violent Femmes before, but ended up picking up that album as soon as I could after that. That night alone was enough to make sure I remember John, but it wouldn't be the last time I met him.

At some point that same summer, Ken acquired the Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session CD.   The first time I heard Margo Timmins start into "Blue Moon Revisited" I had to ask who that was.  I probably listened to that CD a couple hundred times that summer.  Since then I've acquired nearly every CD the Cowboy Junkies have ever put out and got to see them in concert a couple of years ago.  There's just something about their special mix of melancholy country blues that really moves me.

Fast forward a couple of semesters and I had a new housemate, we'll call her Sue.  Sue is the type of person who can walk into a room full of strangers and walk out an hour later having made friends with almost everyone.  She was always involved in various activities and meeting various people.  One time she came home and told me about a really cool guy she'd met at some student organization she was getting involved in.  As the days went buy and she spent more time with that group, she kept talking more and more about that same guy.  I don't think it was two weeks after they met before they were dating.  I asked his name and she said, "John." 

Now, really, what are the chances that some guy I met once at a party almost a year earlier would be the same John my new roommate was talking about?  John (and his real name) are amazingly common names and there were over 10,000 students on that campus.  But, of course, it was the very same John who had turned me onto the Violent Femmes.  By that point Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever album was out and John was always playing that.  I still can't listen to "Running Down a Dream" without thinking of a pep rally he was the organizer of.

Fast forward a few years and we were all out of school and I was back in New Hampshire.  I went to a New Year's party at Ken and his future (ex-)wife's new apartment in Exeter.  It was a bitteryly cold night, as New Years Eve so often is in New Hampshire.  Dinner and drinks were flowing, music was playing, and I was drifting from conversation to conversation around the room.  Then Liz Phair came out of the speakers. Once again, I was on the edge of my seat.  Then I was up to find out who she was.  Within days I was hitting Bull Moose Music looking for a copy of "Exile in Guyville."  But, that wasn't the only musical experience from that same night that left an impression on me. 

Somewhere around 2:30 a.m., while we were all sacked out in varous places around the apartment, sleeping and sobering up after a festive evening, somebody came stomping in from outside, waking me up.  It turned out to be future (ex-)wife's brother.  He'd spent a chilly New Year's Eve standing outside some stadium hoping to get tickets to see Phish who were playing inside.  He didn't get tickets but apparently had fun anyway, then hitchhiked home.  While I was familiar with Phish at that point, I hadn't listened to much of their stuff but, I figured if they were good enough to make people stand outside on a fridged New England night, missing other festivities in a vain hope for some miracle tickets, then there must be something very interesting about them.  So, I sought out some of their CDs, as well. 

Flash forward a decade and a half and I'm still in touch with Ken, Sue, and John and I still think about them every time listen to those songs and the memories they're associated with.

I'm sure there are plenty of other albums I've heard over the years that have had similar affects one me but I can't remember them all right now.   Two artists that have recently had that affect on me were The Gits and The Black Keys.   Sadly, The Gits are long gone, having lost their lead singer to a brutal rape and murder, but the Black Keys are still making some great music.

I realize that my connection to and interest in music is a lot deeper than most people, but I often wonder if anyone else has had this same experience where you hear something for the first time and it just stops you in your tracks and makes you say, "Woah, what's that?"  Anyone?