Music Write-Ups
How do you know Chris Earley? Through Peter Prato
How many MP3s do you have on your hard drive? 10-50
I’ve had a hell of a year. Its been the best of times and the worst of times. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but I’m glad that in a few days I will get a crack at a new one. Throughout this wild year this Song O The Day thing has been to me as arm floaties are to an uncoordinated toddler pushed out into the deep end. I love music and love to write but, until Chris started SOTD, I hadn’t found a public forum that I felt comfortable with. The freedom it allowed and the encouraging, positive community that has developed around it made it a special experience. Writing for this site has been truly cathartic. And having a website to log on to every day and get a new song and a new perspective has been very cool.
So I’d just like to say a big huge thank you (!) to Chris and Darius for their ideas and efforts and a regular sized thank you to everyone who contributed and commented and a cheers to the people who simply read and listened.
I’m moving to San Rafael tomorrow. I have a lot on my plate in the coming year. I’m going to finish my MA in political science and apply to law school. After that I’m going to move to England for about six months, while I wait to hear back from law school, so I can spend time with my family. Over Christmas I had a chance to see my nine-month-old nephew for a few days and it made me want to see him and the rest of my family a lot more frequently. I miss my sister, her husband, my nephew, my aunts and uncles and cousins very much. I’m looking forward to being in close proximity to them for a little while. My point is, I will be busy in the new year and beyond, but I really want to continue to do something along the lines of Song O The Day. At some point I will start a music blog in a similar vein and I would like to have a bunch of contributors. When that happens I hope that some (or all??) of you will want to contribute, but if one of you starts something like this before I do and wants some outside contribution please let me know.
In the mean time I will be in Marin for most of 2008. If anyone wants to hang out you can reach me at wordjunkie@gmail.com. Don’t hesitate to shoot me an email.
Happy New Years everbody!
All the best,
Dave
PS - This is my new favorite band. You can check them out at www.thevirgins.net.
My Jewish boss has a strong and unapologetic affinity for Christmas music. The soft sounds celebrating Baby Jesus, Santa Claus, snow and tinsel waft innocently from his office during the holiday season. He sings it in the hallways. He probably even mind-hums “White Christmas” while worshiping in temple.
I find it totally awesome, but I wonder what Jewish God would think about it. What about Christian God? Does it give them hope for world peace? Does it make them vaguely uncomfortable, like some handsome, corn-fed, Midwestern tourist who unknowingly wanders into the Castro? “Golly, everyone’s so darn nice here….wait a second.” Does it make them feel angry and betrayed? “I know its his decision, but what about my feelings? I thought we had an understanding. How could he do this to me?! Fuck answering his prayers, I’m not even gonna listen to them from now on!” What about Muhammad, David Koresh, Buddha, Joseph Smith and the Dalai Lama? What about Jimi Hendrix and the other Gods of rock guitar? Do they have an opinion about my boss’ heretical taste in music?
This kind of quasi-religious miscegenation can’t sit well with the folks on high. For them, spirituality is a zero-sum game. You can’t pick and choose your beliefs and customs, from the various sales racks of religion, like your life is some sort of spiritual Walmart. “Sweetie, put back that Christian shame. We can’t afford that. Go get your dad a six pack of True Self. Oh, yeah, Billy wants 5 wives and Aunt Hilda would love that Eric Clapton box set.” It doesn’t work like that. Straight to hell with you! Its a shame really, because my boss is a genuinely good person who probably doesn’t deserve to burn in eternal hellfire, but, as they say, “them’s the rules.”
I know one thing for sure. Santa Clause doesn’t give a shit. That slave-driving capitalist asshole believes in nothing but milk, cookies and commerce.
-Dave Murphy
I’m moving out of San Francisco at the end of the year.
I’ve lived here for five years. I grew up just up the road, but didn’t really know the city when I left for San Diego ten years ago. Since I’ve moved back I’ve gotten to know this place intimately. I’ve reconnected with people I thought I’d never know again. I’ve met a countless number of cool new folks, some of whom have become great friends. I’ve continued and solidified friendships that started elsewhere. I’ve loved and lost a couple times over.
Unsurprisingly, I’ve been doing a great deal of reflecting since I decided it was time to leave.
I’ve thought about this fine city. I’ve thought about its energy, its no-holds-barred debauchery, its beauty and intelligence and openness, its arrogance and filth and self-indulgent tomfoolery. I’ve thought about how remarkable it is that this all exists in a 49 square mile peninsula.
I’ve thought about the people in my life and how those people, and the experiences I’ve shared with them, have shaped my character. I’ve realized that if I have anything to offer it is because I’ve been exposed to a wide variety of inspirational madmen (and madwomen). and I’ve thought about how much fun it has been getting to know these people and how lucky I am to have them around.
Mostly though, I’ve thought about our dance. I’ve thought about the things we do in our younger years, during our twenties and thirties, to define our place in the world and make sense of this chaos. I’ve seen what happens when we try to balance survival with happiness; success with fulfillment; self-interest with altruism. I’ve lived it here in San Francisco. I’ve watched the people close to me struggle with these dichotomies of modern living, while I’ve struggle alongside. And I’ve been touched by the byproducts of these efforts. By the way people handle victories and set backs. By the alliances formed and fractured. By love blossomed and hearts broken. By birth and death. This is life, and its wonderful and painful and unavoidable and it happens everywhere, but it happened to me here in San Francisco.
This city has a life force of its own fueled by the collective spirit of its residents. Freaks and businessmen alike are welcome. People gather at the end of the day for a drink and a laugh. We tend to get along alright.
This city is an endless parade, a heroine needle and a passionate protest. Its a costume party, a town hall meeting, and a schizophrenic bum. Its a three day bender, a social conscience and a sexual revolution. Its the wild west. Its the golden gate. Its the city.
It’s totally fucking nuts, but I feel comfortable here. This song does a pretty good job of describing my life outside of work and school over the last five years. Moreover, it’s a simple and powerful description of our dance through youth and passion. Plus, it just fucking rocks. So this song is dedicated to San Francisco, and to its residents, and especially to those residents that have danced with me through the last five years. It’s been a really good time.
-Dave Murphy
I can appreciate attempts at pushing musical boundaries, but thank God Andre3000 decided to start rapping again. He is featured on my two favorite hip hop tracks this year (this and Walk it Out) and on both tracks he steals the show.
This is not to say the UGK can’t compete. This double album has an absolutely rediculous amount of featured artist, but the thing that strikes me most is that, despite all of these hip hop heavyweights, UGK still shine in their own right. Its sick throughout.
On his verse in International Players Anthem, Andre3000 manages to do something seemingly impossible in hip hop these days. He comes off as a player who still has the capacity for love. Its an amazing sentiment, and even if you’re not a player or a pimp, you can connect with it. Hookups, dating, relationships can take a toll on you. They can harden you. You get to a point where it seems easier to not care about anyone than to put yourself out there at risk of getting torn up by yet another failed relationship. But Andre3000 says, “keep your heart.” Its good advice, because when you meet someone who’s worthy of it, you’ll be glad you did.
-Dave Murphy
I don’t agree with a lot of shit that rappers espouse. Some of it is downright despicable. Killing people sucks. Selling drugs creates a butterfly effect of addiction and pain that ripples throughout all socioeconomic divides. Making and spending money because you think it makes you worth something (in the nonmonetary sense) is crude, superficial and just plain silly. But people are raised in and live in realities which give them little to no options. We are a country that emphasizes material wealth as a definite component of overall value. If you are raised with no opportunities then you do what you can to live the dream.
And all of us eat it up. Songs about these brutal or superficial endeavors, if they’re dope, sell like hot cakes in a sunday morning diner. So what gives? We love dirty money when its got a charming rags to riches story behind it. Gangster rap tunes, just like gangster movies, are super entertaining. So many of us want to be tony montana, or jay-z, or at least live vicariously through them by being entertained by their tales, that we have turned bad people into icons.
When people get on the pulpit and condem these individuals they might as well be screaming into a vacuum. Is it the racketeer that’s the problem or is it the racket? As long as there is a large desparity in wealth, as long as there are haves and have nots, as long as there are rules or loopholes that can be exploited, then these things will go on.
So hate all you want and scream into the vacuum. Or focus on these rules, focus on these socioeconomic divides, focus on what creates these monsters and perhaps shit will change. In the mean time I’m gonna let these songs entertain the hell out of me.
-Dave Murphy
I know a kid whose friend’s dad works in the industry that make things happen and he told me that there’s a room where fat old men sit around smoking the finest cigars and drinking the finest single malt scotch cut with a few drops of the tears of the unfortunate, which they horde and store in pricelss crystal decanters in armed bunkers under their summer estates. They gorge themselves with rich meats and say things like, “I wonder what all the poor people are doing right now,” and then they laugh heartily and slap eachother on the back. They idly place bets of global concequence with no personal reprocusions, while they buy and sell the souls of their countrymen. But, that kid also told me that those fat men have bad relationships with their daughters and, semi-frequently, wake up to the sounds of their own screams.
A few weeks ago I attended a party. It was lavish and packed to the gills with gamers and young hot shots. The professional atheletes. The musicians. The perfects. They were all there. By chance, I hung out pretty much all night with the host and we really hit it off. We popped bottles of pricey champagne and sprayed it all over half-dressed aspiring models/actresses while they danced for us. We told stories about where we came from and how, in our hearts and souls, we could never stray from our roots, while we ate sushi served by midgets in tuxedos under a cabana made of solid platinum. It was a blast. Then towards the end of the night, my host, and new best friend, started to get a little melancholy. I asked him what was up. He told me that being him isn’t as easy as it looks. He revealed to me that wearing 30lbs of gold, white gold, platinum and diamonds around your neck gives you back problems and can lead to paranoia. I told him that i was not aware of that and that I felt really bad for him. Then he told me that, sometimes, when the night is over and the entourage has left and the cocain is finished and all the blow jobs have been given, that he cries himself to sleep while he wonders if he’s being used.
One generation makes it, the next spends it and acts like they earned it, and the next goes to therapy because their mom was too busy with her book club and valium addiction to give them a sense of self worth. And every news program has an in depth ten minute segment, in between important stories about some rich young skank’s fancy back yard and an expose on how this new sexual position is way fuckin better than those other ones, that ernestly cuts to the core of our cultural degradation and make us go “hmmm.” I for one am extremely glad that those segments are made. Its like the news is our conscience and its going, “Take a good look at yourself America. Is this what you want? Are you proud of yourself?” And America’s like, “Hell-fuckin’-yeah! But i’d look even hotter with a new set of tits.”
-Dave Murphy
Life is change. The only thing you can be sure of is that it, whatever the hell it is, will never be the same. The present is a beautiful illusion. A creation of man.
But, the person takes time to catch up to, and make sense of, all this change. We set up rules and structures in order to impede change, because consistency is comfortable. Your brain stays for a while to hang the curtains and feed the pets, while your heart and soul move along. And these rules and structures are what makes change seem so surprising and sudden, when really its just the way of things. For so long everything seems set and decided upon and then all of a sudden you realize your situation is untenable. These rules and structures are but a poorly built damn against the rising waters of life. When the damn breaks, you reflect on its structure, and realize that it was made to be breached. Its a fixed game, a revelation in progress.
In a slow-motion instant, your person catches up to the change. The steps and necessary adjustment, while perhaps ominous, seem so obvious. Why didn’t you notice that things were headed in this direction? All the signs were there. Each brick in this shoddy damn represents a rule made, a structure imposed, a feeling ignored; in order tie a bow around chaos and ship it off to your closest friends and relatives just in time for the holidays.
Maybe it means its time for a new job. Maybe it means its time for a new adventure. Maybe it means its time to regain your connection with your spiritual self. Maybe it just means looking at the same set of circumstances in a whole new way. You replace one perspective with another, because the old one just doesn’t work anymore. It can be painful. It can be scary. It can be exciting and rejuvinating and transcendant. It can be ordinary and boring. But whatever it means and however it feels you know that you can’t keep it at bay any longer. The dam breaks. The river valley floods in a violent torrent. The water settles. A new landscape is formed.
The new landscape is nice. It feels better, more comfortable than the old one, but there’s something about it that makes you uneasy. Its just a little too wild. Perhaps a dam is in order.
-Dave Murphy
I made a trip out to New York City for a few days, shortly after i graduated college. It was the winter of 2001 and my friends Dave, Joe and Danny were living in a shitty studio apartment in the East Villiage.
The whole place was about the size of an office conference room, but far from it in almost every other possible aspect. Joe had purchased a loft bed from Ikea and was defenitely the most established in the sleeping department. It was like a bunk bed without the bottom bunk. Dave slept on a single person mattress on the floor, at the boarders of which he had tacked bed sheets to the sealing so as to make a private little navy blue cave that he could hole up in when things became overwhelming. The only thing between danny and the hard wood floor was a half inflated, camping air matress, but at some point Danny came home to Joe having sex with his girlfriend on his air matress and, well, that was the end of the air matress. Danny slept on the floor for the rest of their stay.
They didn’t really have anything other than books, cds and whatever they found on the street. When I showed up they had a shopping cart in the kitchen area which was really just one corner of the rectangular room. The place was a total mess; buzzing with excitement and drenched in whiskey. And all of that was just fine. We stayed up all night drinking and talking and listening to music. And we walked fucking everywhere. That was pretty much our routine. Drink a lot, talk a lot, smoke the occaisional cigarette, and the whole time there was music. Then wait until it was well past midnight and set out on foot to traverse the city. I don’t remember being tired, but maybe it was just cause going to sleep meant laying down on the hard wood floor.
One of their neighbors was a pretty, rather large girl with a sharp wit and a dramatic flare. The only reason I bring her up is because, while I was there, she said one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. “If Frank Lloyd Wright were alive today I’d let him suck my tits.”
One of the records we listened to was Rain Dogs and for several reasons it made an impression on me. It moved me so much that I felt slightly silly for not yet knowing about it. I told Dave I thought it was amazing and he gave it to me. It remains one of my all time favorites.
Since I can’t write up an entire album I chose this song. I feel like it sums up the energy and recklessness of that time, and that apartment, in that city. We were desheveled and poor and drunk and feeling really lucky to be there and to be alive. And I felt like since we are alive, and since we are going to die, why not make the most of this madness and let the chips fall where they may. Let us fall out of the window with confetti in our hair.
-Dave Murphy
I wake up groggy in the morning. Every morning. I shower and shave and brush my teeth. I dress. I walk down my stairs, out the door and to my train station. I sit staring at my reflection in the dark window of my train and try not to fall asleep. Why am I always so tired? I take the escalator up to the street and walk into my building. I take the elevator up to my floor. I pour coffee and water and sit down at my desk. The caffeine gives me a rush of energy and the water eases my hangover. I have ambitions of wealth and greatness. I feel lost.
I work all day. Every day. In between my vocational duties I scan the internet to read about interesting things and interesting people. The machines between myself and those things, between myself and those people, make all of it sexy. The machines make me long for something different. The people I don’t know and the things I can’t have make me wish I was someone else. They make me wish I was smarter and more attractive and had wealthy parents. I want expensive gadgets. I desperately wish that I had something interesting to say to someone beautiful. For lunch I have a sandwich and a diet coke. I feel anxious in the mid afternoon. I blame it on the caffeine and I blame it on the hangover and I blame it on myself for not being good enough to overcome my own addictions and downfalls.
I leave work and get a small burst of energy knowing that I’m done for 12-15 hours. I walk out of my building and down to my train station. Bodies rush past me at great speeds and create a peripheral blur. Where are they going? What do they know?
The television told me what to tell my doctor. It’s not my fault or my responsibility. When I get home I do my drugs. The drugs make me feel good and seperate me from my bills and my mundane job and my anxiety. I call my freinds to do drugs with me. I don’t want to be alone. Being alone makes me feel like I don’t matter. I want to get high and wasted and I want to matter.
At the bar we talk about things. We joke and complain and compliment eachother on our small victories. We drink to excess. My friends are funny and they like me. Its not enough. We talk about our plans for wealth and greatness. I’m high and wasted and it feels good. This cigarette in my mouth is the best one I’ve had. I don’t want the night to end. I don’t want a new day to begin.
I want to fuck a stranger. It will make me feel good and seperate me from my bills and my mundane job and my anxiety. When I cum I don’t think about what I’m not and what I don’t have. If I fuck someone regularly they will learn that I’m not the person I want to be; that I’m not the person they really want. This girl next to me is perfect. I like her alright, but not too much. I won’t have to see her again. Later, I can talk about it with my friends. I can tell them what it was like and revel in my conquest. Eventually I’d like to fuck someone that matters.
I look up and smile at her and then at my friends. I order more drinks and do more drugs. I know that I’m going to be groggy in the morning, but I don’t care. Nothing matters.
-Dave Murphy
A write up in two parts
Part One:
Jimi Hendrix was the first of my dad’s music that made an impact on me. I remember other notables that I grew to appreciate, but with Jimi I was immediately awe struck.
I think I was 12 or 13 the first time I sat and listened to one of his albums. I’m sure I had heard his music before that, but i wasn’t self aware enough or aware enough in general to digest it properly or give it a second thought. I think at that age I started to understand that there was a world outside of my own needs and desires. That realization started when I was a young teenager, but the process of fully appreciating that concept continues today. Music has always been a big part of expanding my world view, examining my own values and their roots, and forcing me to accept the absurdity of perspective.
I spent the next 5 years or so secretely (or so I thought) pilfering my dad’s music collection. The music I stole from him is the foundation of my current collection and provided the trajectory for my current tastes. I did it slowly so as not to arouse suspiscion. I would borrow a cd and then just keep it. I thought I was pretty sly. My first target was a Jimi Hendrix compilation. I know that the album is king, but as far as compilations go this one was pretty awesome. It had all of the classics.
This song became an instant favorite of mine. I don’t remember why I liked it so much at the time, but if i was going to guess based on why I still like it so much I would say it was related to the its themes of impermanence and disappointment. It felt real and honest.
Of course, my dad knew I was stealing his music. He just let me believe that I was clever and watched while I cherry picked through his collection. So this song is for him, and for him being a big part of my musical influence by letting me think I was pulling a fast one on him. He’s a really good guy.
Part Two:
Last week I was waiting for a friend of mine for a happy hour drink. I got there early, ordered a beer and sat in the corner in front of a TV. While I was sitting there a fellow by the name of Mick sat at the table next to me and started making conversation. He was scruffy, a little bit drunk, and sort of stammered when he talked. We talked about girls, and mescaline, and parks, and how he was sort of drifting. He liked to cheers and give high fives. I liked him pretty much instantly.
At one point my friend asked Mick and myself what our favorite song was, prefacing the question with the disclaimer that he knew it was an impossible question. “Castles Made of Sand” immediatley sprang into my head. The reason I love the song is as much about its place in my life and its connection to my dad as it is about the song itself. We each shared a little bit about our favorites and our reason’s for picking them and then moved on to other subjects.
Like I said, the reason I was there was to hang out with a friend of mine. Soon after my friend joined us I could tell that Mick, while affable, was going to distract from our hang-out time. Plus he didn’t have money and I had already bought him a beer and he had indicated that he was going wherever we were that evening. So I told my buddy that I wanted to move on without Mick.
When we told Mick that we were going our seperate ways the dissapointment and hurt were written on his face. We seperately made up something about how we had obligations and couldn’t continue drinking, which was not true, or not completely true. Mick was lonely and he liked us and we lied to him and he knew it. I felt really bad about it. And while reflecting on the experience I couldn’t help but think about this song and how our fleeting friendship with Mick was a castle made of sand. And from his reaction to our hasty departure I could tell that Mick had seen a lot of sand castles washed away by the ebb and flow of life. So this song is mostly for my dad, but its also a little bit for mick, because mick was nice and liked to cheers and give high fives.
-Dave Murphy