Music Day

Today will be a largely unaccomplished day, in the scheme of things. I plan to only get a few things done -- tidy up a little, chop up vegetables for quick'n'easy salad prep during the next three or four days, walk to the store, and do the music piracy thing, download a few songs for the first time in ages.

See, when it comes to the internet, I've been using it since long before it was "the internet". I never would have gotten into it had my brother not been a technogeek, but he was, and I did. It's only natural then that I was using Napster long before anyone heard about it. Back in the day, I downloaded thousands and thousands of songs off Napster. Probably never even listened to half of them, but I had 'em.

Music was huge for me once. I was that chick that wanted to work in a record store more than anything. (Never happened. Bookstore and photo labs, yes. Records, no. There's the story about my friendship with a couple CBC disc jockeys up in the Yukon who opened Grizzly Discs. I'd order obscure music I found in indie record mags, and they'd give me 15% off if they could listen to it before I picked it up. Good old days.)

Thing is, I've always been a big believer in the notion that, at our cores, we're still tribal. We'd like to be primal. It's why we get off so much when we get that rare great bloody movie, like Fight Club or Die Hard or any random superhero flick. It's why nothing gets the pulse racing like live music (of any kind) when the bass tones and pounding drums can get you inside where not much else succeeds in reaching. Or so I like to think. It's also why sports are such a big thing. No matter how civilized we get, there'll always be something gained vicariously through being a spectator at a real good thrashing. Whether it's throwing Christians to the lions in the bad old Roman days or a balls-all-out bench-clearing hockey brawl, it beats the shit out of slowing down for a glimpse at a roadside accident.

Music's the big thing, though. It's so portable and constantly accessible in this day and age. It's the linchpin to so many of our experiences. It moves us at funerals, elevates us in romance, bonds us socially, soothes us in difficult times.

So it's been bothering me for some time now that I should be so long removed from my pirate roots. That whole period of transition between the age of Napster and the inconsistency of the Gnutella network was what turned me off. It was so frustrating and unfulfilling. Bittorrent was intimidating to me. I went out with a geek who was good at it, and then it lost its fearsome nature, but I was still confounded by Apple.

See, I'm lazy when it comes to technology. My iPOD was bought from a Mac store at the same time as I was buying my iBOOK. It's formatted for Mac. I'm now wired to the web via a PC, so I'm always being lazy and avoiding having to go back and re-configure my Mac for the web so I can download the latest iTunes and format my fucking iPOD for PC. You can't imagine how much this irks me. For months now I have been procrastinating.

Today that all changes. I shall finally update. I'm sick to DEATH of the music on my iPOD right now. I want new music because I feel like I'm in a new place in my life. Listening to all the old shit on my player is just keeping me in this old, tired frame of mind. Music's always been like the cheap and impermanent equivalent to a tattoo: It's kind of an indelible way to commemorate an era of one's life.

• My summer in the Yukon: The Gin Blossoms.
• My summer of reckoning; "it was all right to be angry": Green Day & Nirvana.
• The epic girls-only road trip & the year that followed: Depeche Mode & OMD.
• Taking the Coast by storm/three weeks in Cali: The RHCP, Pearl Jam, Moby, and the Doors.
• Beer is Good, Summer is Here: The Hip.
  
• The Ace in the Hole/Go-to Good Mood: Butthole Surfers.
• Remembrance of all things past: Pink Floyd, U2.
• Start of something new: BRMC, the Kills.

And there are many more, obviously.

So what do you notice? Nothing newer than a decade ago, really, 'cept a couple. It's like I hit Offspring and pushed the pause button on anything new forever. Fucking sad, really. The only new shit was three years ago. 'sup with that?

So today I'm downloading, and later I format the fucker. Time to get some new shit on the go. This is a good thing. Next to download: Tom Waits and Elvis Costello. Waits is trusted, Elvis is an attempt to broaden my horizon. Whatever, man. Time for something different. Oh, yeah, and the Pixies.