Grizzly Bear – Two Weeks
There’s another, super-amazing animated unofficial video for this song out there in the intarwebz. I don’t even care. This song is so gorgeous, so fantastically arranged, it doesn’t even matter. I mean, really. I can’t take credit for the discovery of this band or this song, I have to give the credit to the Queen Mother of Blogging, Dooce. Thank you, Blessed Mother of Bloggers.
My dashboard is dusty and the morning sunshine is reflecting off of the white fuzz. I only notice because I used to keep the dark gray dash completely dust-free when I smoked in the car. The rain of the light gray ash would fall all over the car like a snow globe and I would quickly wipe it away with a hand held duster from the door pocket. Like that made a difference. Both the car and my person would stink of stale smoke no matter what I did or didn’t do.
Talking about smoking in the past tense is an unusal feeling, because it’s something that I still haven’t recognized as completed. I smoked for seven years and change. And the change came slowly. It’s been almost five months, and obviously, I’m happier and healthier and have a little more money in my pocket.
Shit has been really real lately. I don’t think there has ever been such a really real time in my life. Ever. Not the break-up with my college boyfriend. Not when Pea died. Not all those hundreds of thousands of times I sucked at life. Smoking was such a crutch. Even just breathing that way was fantastic. And there was always taking a bath and smoking, which I have been informed, is the most disgusting thing imaginable. But my GOD – I LOVED doing that. I loved smoking more than I loved drinking, and I used to LOVE drinking.
I guess all of this is to say, I’m looking forward to the future. I’m looking forward to getting better, to doing better, to feeling better, to being better. I’m waking up to a whole world I didn’t know before. I’m scared as hell and I’d rather be in bed. But I’m here.
Weezer – Only In Dreams
Seriously. Everyone can hate, but Weezer is still one of my favorite bands of all time. I stopped going to see Weezer several years ago, because I felt so incredibly old. In 1994, when Weezer’s “blue” album came out I was 12. Twelve. Twelve years old. If a 12 year old came up to me today and said they heard a great band, I’d laugh in their pre-pubscent face (I’ll make a great mother someday, huh?). But for 15 years, I have worshipped at the altar that is Weezer, making that stupid hand sign at concerts.
Now, I haven’t dug on every single thing they’ve ever put out (I’m looking at you, “green” album). But I’ll be damned if I’m not sitting at my desk at work when my office mate is out for the day, softly head banging to the upswing in “Only In Dreams” and mouthing the words.
I was uncool before uncool was cool and “Only In Dreams” was EPIC before EPIC was BEYOND!
Wilco – Reservations
When Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out, I stuck up my nose at my friend Austin, who has over-suffered my bad attitude. Truth is, Austin is really the one of the only people on Earth I should ever listen to anyway. But of course, I’m a snob. Austin made it one of his top albums of the year, an email he sends out like a Christmas greeting each year.
It took Austin and several other people to really get me going on Wilco, and even then I wasn’t sure about it. It really took “Jesus, Etc.” and a pretty awful first year after college. How tenuously I dipped my big toe into the water until two weeks ago when I was screaming at the top of my lungs during “Hummingbird” at a sold-out Wilco concert in Chicago. “Reservations” was one of those songs I was hoping to hear, but it really didn’t fit into the theme of the whole show, which was much more rocking out than this.
Built to Spill – The Weather
Built to Spill is hardly some internet secret. I’ve just been playing this song over and over through You Tube since I don’t have this album. In fact, I’m not certain that I’d ever buy a Built to Spill album. But my God! This song is beautiful.
