Music Write-Ups
How do you know Chris Earley?
How many MP3s do you have on your hard drive?
Good (+) and bad (-) signs:
+ She sits next to you or across from you when you’re hanging out in a group
- She says she’s busy
+ She asks how tall you are
- She doesn’t think you know the difference between Central and South America
+ She kisses you
- You should have kissed her a while before that
+ She puts on boots (not the hiking kind)
- You don’t totally know the difference between Central and South America, from a country by country perspective. (But hey, you know and isthmus is involved.)
+/- She wants an open relationship
+ Music has a more profound effect on you
- She didn’t call back for a couple days
+ You noticed that she didn’t call back for a couple days
- She noticed that you noticed that she didn’t call back for a couple days
+ You clean your apartment
- She doesn’t see your apartment, and she didn’t clean her place
+ She has self respect
- You do too, but it didn’t come across
+/- It’s over
-Jordan Blackman
This song isn’t really about young love or virginity or fucked up families. Well, OK, it is. But a song is really about what it does, and what this song does is hail our hibernating souls. I don’t know how, but I know that an accordion seems to be playing a decisive role.
Not to say your soul is hibernating. It may be frolicking gleefully in a thicket. Perhaps you lost sight of it in there as it was over-buttering a crust of bread. Mine tends to whir at a progressively slower pace without regular doses of music, and sometimes I forget my medication.
But am I saying too much? Is describing a song’s emotional impact like giving away a movie’s ending? A joke’s punchline? A meal’s effect on the digestive system?
Terra introduced me to Neutral Milk Hotel in 2003. We were in her Explorer on our way to see Pearl Jam. At the time we were in a band together, the Dead Leaves. The NMH record (ITAOTS) quickly became a favorite of mine, and the Dead Leaves briefly covered another song from this record, but that’s another song for another day and will remain undisclosed.
I used to play the CD (remember those?) at work in Calabasas, and my boss couldn’t stand it. In particular, he hated the second song on the record, which is called “The King of Carrot Flowers Parts 2 & 3.” I guess that should be another song for another day too, but it’s nearly the same song, titularly speaking, and I’d have to be a pathetic creature to do three NMH Song o the Day write ups, so fuck it.
The point is, it’s cool how music can remind you of the veracity of clichés that you might not be able to feed off when dressed in pure prose. Of course, those clichés might be pure bullshit too. Music is great at selling bullshit.
With this track, there can be no such worry. It’s the truth: when you were young you were the king of carrot flowers– and when I listen to this song the carrot flower king inside stirs.
The other point is that we ended up listening to a lot of 50 Cent at work, which is cool.
-Jordan Blackman