Small Man's Food of Love

1. Total amount of music files on your computer:
Not a lot. My old Compaq desktop PC, which I owned in the glory days of Napster, had plenty of music on it. I had a long playlist in Winamp that I left on shuffle all the time, and it would cycle through the Doors and Japanese and French pop music very cheerfully. My present computer just has a little legal music I bought off iTunes, including the song Portions for Foxes by Rilo Kiley. I haven't felt the need to acquire much music here in Seattle, since I can listen to our great local radio station KEXP pretty much 24 hours a day (and you can too, if you're reading this, through Internet streaming!).

2. Last CD you bought:
One of the artists KEXP plays a lot is Nick Cave. I was actually introduced to Nick Cave through a good friend of mine who happens to be Australian too, but I found out about his new double album The Lyre of Orpheus / Abbatoir Blues through KEXP, which has been playing tracks from it regularly. Anyway a while ago I bought the CD, although I haven't listened to it as much as I planned, mostly because I just leave my radio on and still hear songs from it often enough.

3. Song you last listened to before reading this message?
This is hard to pinpoint exactly, but it was probably one of the songs on this playlist that I listened to before going to sleep.

4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you:
I'm pretty fickle with music. I was passionately attached to some of my old records, some of which I lost through various moves, and many of which I lost through the mendacity and deception of my friend Nathan. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Band used to cheer me up a lot, for instance, but I lost the record and it wouldn't feel quite right to get it on CD. One song I used to love was the Doors' End of the Night, which I do have on CD now, but haven't listened to for ages. I am also a big fan of the Japanese girl singer Aiko, who does melodramatic songs about love and breaking up; at the beginning of one song called Power of Love she shouts "ay ay ay," a barbaric yelp of sheer happiness that I find incredibly comforting to listen to. More recently, I was listening a lot to U2's Miracle Drug and to the aforementioned Portions for Foxes by Rilo Kiley. In my early teenage years I mainly listened to classical music, however. Another casualty of the loss of all those records has been classical music; I had gotten a ton of great early twentieth century records from a big sale at my high school library, and I haven't really made any effort even to begin to replace that collection. I don't feel like classical music is entirely out of my life, though. For one thing, I have been reading about it often lately on the excellent blog of Alex Ross, New Yorker music critic. Also, a couple months ago I was sitting in a cafe when I heard this amazing piece played over the loudspeaker. I don't think I had ever heard it before, but for a moment it seemed not only to be the expression of my own sadness, but also to relate all the sadness of the present to the past and to fit it all together in one lovely frame. It turned out to be Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto, perhaps the next CD that I will acquire.


5. Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
For the time being I will pass on this, even if it exposes me to getting hit by a truck or whatever other hideous punishment afflicts one for defaulting on a chain letter. There aren't any family bloggers left . . .