Jordan’s Two Songs

Monday, June 9th, 2008 • Horrorthon Posts

My anxiety in this case is that my taste is so shallow that I’m just posting tracks that everyone else on Horrorthon not only has heard before but considers to be the most mainstream, freshman year “get over it” obvious music they’ve ever heard. I spent some time poring over my iTunes library but in the end I decided to go with my first instincts.

Primitive Radio Gods
“Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand”

I still remember the first time I heard this, in the back seat of a Honda Accord on a rainy day, stopped along a country road beside a fruit and vegetable stand with the radio going and the driver out buying a bag of apples. 1996; not a particularly good time in my life, and the flattened out, hallucinogenic melancholia of this track made it stick in my head like chewing gum; apparently I’m not the only one who experienced this effect. When Napster first appeared (years before iTunes and legal mp3 downloads) and I had my first computer that could actually burn real music CDs (!!!) this was the very first track on the very first mix disc I made.

Dream Academy
“Life in a Northern Town”

From my college years, which was a strange time for music, mostly bad, when a lot of video-based innovation led to the popularity of a lot of questionable material, but (like most people my age) I can’t see past the nostalgia factor and I become like a grandparent grooving on some unspeakable big band crap as if it’s any good. Actually, the eighties were a time of major failure in all the arts except music, it could be argued: I like to say that everyone did their worst work in the eighties (Garry Trudeau, Stephen King, Woody Allen, everyone) but it’s not really true. Like television after Twin Peaks, the immediate post-MTV era encouraged a vibe of experimentation and cultural schizophenia very different from the crisply-defined guitar-rock and superband and new-wave that immediately preceded that time, and (if you overlook the preponderance of strange haircuts, mopey brits, and shamelessly bad synth) you can find some real gems, like this.