Guest DJ Me

I have been listening regularly to the KCRW Guest DJ Project installments as they come out every week, and enjoying them immensly. If you haven't had the pleasure, check it out! You can get them as free podcasts on iTunes or listen on KCRW's website. Basically they get people who are considered cultural icons and ask them to pick a handful of songs they love, or that have some special meaning to them, and they talk about why they like this music or why the song is special to them in some way. It's a really hard thing to do if you're a music lover, select 4 or 5 songs that you find the most important in your life out of all the hundreds of songs you love dearly. I've especially enjoyed the sessions with Janeane Garofalo, Jason Schwartzman, Matthew McConaughey, and Jeff "The Dude" Dowd (as in the REAL Big Lebowski).

Today, David took me to the apple store and got me an iPhone to my great excitement! Especially cause I've never had an iPod and never planned on really getting myself one, so besides having an awesome new phone, I finally have an iPod in a way! Tonight I've been going through old CDs and picking out what to download to my new Tiny Phone, and it's inspired me to make my own playlist! I've got over 2,000 songs on my laptop right now, and it's not even all the music I own, so picking out 5 songs is a bit of a trick. So I'm focusing on the time in my life when I bought my first little CD collection that I played to death, on repeat in my bedroom for hours and hours, when I didn't have any real responsibilites in life and unlimited time to squander. That's right, Jr High - High School. Back when I memorized the names of all the songs on the CD, and spent a good hour picking which one to spend my $$ on, and it was a huge event at the used record store.

It would be nice if I could play the songs for you, but oh well, it's just a blog :) Maybe you can find them and listen for free on YouTube, or hear clips for free on iTunes.


1. Silent All These Years - Tori Amos
I listened to this song maybe 5 thousand times, until the disc barely plays now. I don't know, it just fit me perfectly at that time of my life where I felt like I was this dreamy little person trying to form a unique personality seprate from my family and the friends who knew me for so long that there were no more suprises. I wanted to be curious, grown up, lovely, and elegant as the music felt, and I wanted be be like the strange pronuciation that she sung words with, changing them into something at once mysterious but familiar. I loved the lyrics, "But what if I'm a mermaid in these jeans of his with her name still on it" - pleasingly visual and letting you create your own story because the words are so open to interpritation.


2. Thief - Belly
Eventually this song got put on the Tank Girl Soundtrack, but I try not to let that ruin it for me. I think this originally appealed to me just cause it's very pretty and melodic, and breaks into a nice strong ending, but it became an anthem to be because of these lyrics, "Because of you I came, because of you I leave." Sung over and over and growing in steangth as the sound fills out. I think I those formative years in a small town made me starving for interesting experiences and intense friendships, but it also slammed you up the wall with dissapointment in people. (I'm not talking about my good friends that I still keep in contact with now from home - I'm talking about people I never spoke to again after I moved away.) The song isn't bitter though, and that's why I like it; for me it was about getting dumped or used or dissapointed in someone but walking away still liking yourself and not losing your self esteem that was so so so fragile back then.

3. 1979 - The Smashing Pumpkins
Yeah, I'm talking about when Billy hair. I think I was nostalgic for this song the first time I heard it. The Smashing Pumpkins where a great, in fact, I really miss Melancholy and the Infinate Sadness. It was so epic and romantic; also, Adore was a great album. This particular song though was all good feeling, that careless 90's feeling of my teenage years, just driving no where in cars with your friends for hours, with no where really to go, hand out the window feeling the wind, just desperately wishing we had somewhere cool to be, somewhere where something was happening. Parties, night swimming, parking lots and music, great great times.

4.Blue - Joni Mitchell
"Blue- songs are like tatoos" do I need to say more? This is a song that's grown with me, and I have a million new heartaches to go with it since then, but even at 16 I felt connected to the pain and stipped down aching of this song, even if I had no real context for it yet :) Oh, the booding poetry I wrote. So so terrible. But this song, so so beautiful.


5. Round Here - Counting Crows
I'm talking about the live version of this song on the 2 disc collection. It's just so emotional and honest and pleasingly dramatic in an authentically sad way. It felt like it was about wandering aimlessly and hurting for your friends and not knowing where you were headed, but shaped to the environment you occupied, even if you didn't like it. It made me feel connected where I felt disconnected and I liked that.

Funny, looking back, I listened to so much sad sad music at one of the easiest times of my life. Now that life is harder, goes by faster, and I have to do things I don't want to and have a minimal amount of my own pleasure time to hear some music - I now listen to the happiest warmest things I can find. I just realized that and it cracks me up.