Fighting Tiger

Lately a lot of my new music has been discovered via Library 10, mp3 blogs and mix CDs received from near and far. I’ve also started a regular regime of listening to the 13.3GB of undiscovered songs lurking in my ITunes collection from marathon downloading sessions and the 300 CDs I ripped before leaving Australia. As a result, I can highly recommend Dumas, Smoosh, Bishop Allen, The Doves, Rachel’s, Johnny Cash, Feist, Regina Spektor, Lovage, Sufjan Stevens, Peter Bjorn & John, Emiliana Torrini, Against Me!, Mason Jennings, Whiskey Smile, Le Man Avec Les Lunettes, Magyar Posse, Willy Mason, and Chikinki.

But I also spend most of my waking time at the bar which, as I don’t have a working MP3 player, usually limits my music listening to the never changing songs on the work computer. And it means that artists I’ve previously written off as “too commercial” or “too daggy” have been given careful, repeated listenings and I’ve grown to love them.

Songs by bands like Coldplay, Jet, Gnarls Barkley, The Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crowded House, Men At Work, The Cardigans, Tom Jones, Jack Johnson, Icehouse, Kubb and Powderfinger had to be my breakup songs. Over the summer, those were the songs I listened to again and again, alongside the tracks by Jens Lekman, Fiona Apple and Spoon, which were stuck on my phone’s memory card for 3 months straight.

As a teenager I had a desire to “pre-know” things before they were cool. I wanted the songs I liked to be all mine and for them to fit a certain indie credibility. While I loved, loved, loved the songs for the music and words that they were, I did edit what I chose to listen to, based on what I felt to be appropriate for a weird kid such as myself.

Of course, if I was resistant to shaping a public identity using genre and popularity based musical signs, I wouldn’t be writing this post, displaying a Last.fm playlist or blogging a music meme.

Now though, more than ever, I am far more relaxed now about what music I let myself listen and relate to. I’m open to listening for the connection between any song and the moment that I’m experiencing.

Some of the connections and the meanings that can be drawn are just plain obvious and heartbreaking.

Today I let myself look at Dan’s blog for the first time since September. Following the recent loss of his camera, inevitable discussions about items left in storage at my parents’ houses had to be taken care of. That little bit of email contact meant that I felt relaxed and brave enough to have a peek, just enough to know where in the world he happened to be.

The track that shuffled into sound while I was reading? The Special Two by Missy Higgins, a song guaranteed to break my heart every time I listen to it.

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[There's this moment in Neil Finn's She Will Have Her Way just before he sings "Still No End In Sight...". Those moments are in the final chords of Bad Girls Of The Bible's 88 Keys, in Soul Coughing's True Dreams Of Wichita and it's there as Buck 65 intones "'cause when it comes to rockin' something fierce, mmm do i" in 463. Those moments of tension are why I listen to music].