AV Club: Music we can’t listen to anymore

[TVC15]

http://www.avclub.com/articles/music-we-cant-listen-to-anymore,25461/2/

Another great AV Club article.

And this one's for Malek:

So it’s high school, and socially, I’m a fuck-up. Like, so deep I’m not sure where the fuck-up ends and I begin. I get good grades, some of my teachers can stand me, but by and large I’m just this weird ball of energy that laughs too loud, spasms if you make fun of him, and takes too many goddamn naps. Oh, and I’m obsessed with dating—like, to the point where it’s the only thing I ever talk about, to the point where if women everywhere were capable of filing one huge restraining order just to get me to Shut. The Fuck. Up about it, I’d have fines that would make my college loans look like Mother Teresa’s bar tab. I keep striking out, but there’s this one girl? I don’t even fucking know. She’s beautiful, and she’s smart, and she’s into me, and I don’t really get why. We spend a day together, ’cause I offered to help her with her algebra homework, and it’s like I’m actually talking and listening to someone, which is something I’ve seen other people do, but have never been much good at myself. At one point, we help her parents make supper, and I burn my hand on the stove, and it hurts, but it’s like a normal thing. Like I’m on a TV show. At the end of the day, she drives me home, and we listen to the Beatles’ Abbey Road, and one song comes on and she laughs and says it’s her favorite, and now I think it’s kind of my favorite too. Goofy as hell, but what’s wrong with goofy? Everything’s perfect. I’m a real live boy. A week later, I see the girl dating some guy, and my stomach just disappears for a while. I ask her about it, and she gets confused why I’m not happy for her. We never really work as friends again. I grow up, I get over it, I became a better person, etc. But it doesn’t ever really go away. So now I’m maybe the only person in the fucking universe who breaks down whenever he hears “Octopus’s Garden.”

This one is also awesome:

Mine has nothing to do with love, but everything to do with the hormonal hell that was 7th grade. The year was 1994, and I was in gym class, running laps (part of one of those Illinois Presidential Fitness type deals), when Green Day’s “Basket Case” came on the radio. For whatever reason, I really didn’t know much about music at the time—it had a lot to do with the fact that I had heard REM’s “Losing My Religion” on some station earlier in the year and, from then on out, only listened in the hopes that I’d catch that song again and stop the madness. But whatever, the song came on, and a bunch of “cool” kids (who weren’t really that cool, but it didn’t take a lot to best the scorekeeper for the boys’ basketball team) said out loud, “Oh, I love this song!” To which I, of course, replied, “Yeah, me too.” Suddenly, all eyes turned on me—while still jogging, so this was no small feat. “Yeah?” one said. “Sing it for us.” To this day, I still don’t understand why I was required to go through that trial, when all the other supposed song-lovers got away scot-free, but so it was. I started: “Doooo you have the schmumm / to listen to me whrmumm / ahum… mnmnm… mmm…” That was it. I was instantly (much more of) an outcast; as Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie would say, “I got hurt feelings,” and they linger to this day. Later that year, though, one of those same kids sold me his old copy of Secret Of Evermore for Super Nintendo, then proceeded to make fun of me for playing videogames. So perhaps there never really was a way to win them over.

[Diunx]

The last time I got depressed because of a woman I started listening Enrique Bunbury's "El Tiempo de las Cerezas" a lot, now there are certain songs on that album that I can't listen to because I start to get kinda down.

[Human Snorenado]

Fortunately (I guess?) all of my exes were big Tori Amos fans- as a result I've been to more Tori Amos concerts than a straight man ought to have gone to.  Anyway, the point is that I can't listen to Tori Amos songs anymore without thinking about how fucking insane women are, and it's now a litmus test where if a woman still actively listens to her music I will not go out with them.  Petty but useful.  Then again, I guess it's a bit of a downer since the women I'm predisposed to liking generally seem to be big Tori Amos fans. 

[TVC15]

Personally I can't listen to Electroshock Blues by the Eels because it reminds me of him dying.  It's already a depressing album for the most part, so no big loss.  A pity the Eels never did anything as good as it, since the act is now effectively lost to me.

[ToxicAdam]

The first time I did ecstasy was with an ex-girlfriend, we listened to Mazzy Star all night, drank wine and screwed. Pretty much the perfect night. So, I try to avoid listening to it anymore.


 

[BlueTsunami]

Past girlfriend + three George Michael songs (Daddy Figure, Careless Whisper and One More Try)

This was in early 2000 too

[GilloD]

The Hold Steady- Boys and Girls in America basically saved from my falling apart entirely, but still soundtracked my lowest lows, a lot of drinking and a shitload of drugs. I can't go near it now.

[Robo]

This one is also awesome:

Mine has nothing to do with love, but everything to do with the hormonal hell that was 7th grade. The year was 1994, and I was in gym class, running laps (part of one of those Illinois Presidential Fitness type deals), when Green Day’s “Basket Case” came on the radio. For whatever reason, I really didn’t know much about music at the time—it had a lot to do with the fact that I had heard REM’s “Losing My Religion” on some station earlier in the year and, from then on out, only listened in the hopes that I’d catch that song again and stop the madness. But whatever, the song came on, and a bunch of “cool” kids (who weren’t really that cool, but it didn’t take a lot to best the scorekeeper for the boys’ basketball team) said out loud, “Oh, I love this song!” To which I, of course, replied, “Yeah, me too.” Suddenly, all eyes turned on me—while still jogging, so this was no small feat. “Yeah?” one said. “Sing it for us.” To this day, I still don’t understand why I was required to go through that trial, when all the other supposed song-lovers got away scot-free, but so it was. I started: “Doooo you have the schmumm / to listen to me whrmumm / ahum… mnmnm… mmm…” That was it. I was instantly (much more of) an outcast; as Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie would say, “I got hurt feelings,” and they linger to this day. Later that year, though, one of those same kids sold me his old copy of Secret Of Evermore for Super Nintendo, then proceeded to make fun of me for playing videogames. So perhaps there never really was a way to win them over.

I had an experience almost exactly like this one at about the same age (maybe even younger) during a camping trip with my best friend, who was three years older than me, and a bunch of his friends, but it was some Salt n Pepa song that I got called out on.  The outcome is the same; I got hurt feelings and sulked in my tent for the remainder of the trip.

[tehjaybo]

[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

Mine.  My ex and I discovered Daft Punk together, and we watched Interstella 5555 together over and over.  We kind of designated each other as two of the characters from the movie, her the bassist chick, and me the dude that drives the big phallic-guitar ship.  So anyway, stupid me thinks he's found his one and only at the ripe old age of 17.  I think that nothing can be wrong in the world, because I'm with her.  She was perfect, we had such similar interests, aside from one place that I used to volunteer.  I mean, she liked it, but she would rather hang out somewhere else.  So this place, well there were a lot of people that didn't like it, but it was a haven for people like me (the social outcasts) to hang out, and to feel at home and safe.  Well, the administration of the larger campus decided that it was time to close it, because it was spending too much money (when in actuality it was making more money than any of the other projects combined).  So, I spend my every waking second trying to fight for the place.  I nearly never left.  Well, as you can't spend time in two places at once, she and I started to drift apart, without socially awkward me realizing what I was doing.  We talked less and less, and finally I started to wonder what was going on.  Well, she calls me one night to break up with me.  I try my best to be cool about it, I mean what was I going to say, no?  If it made her happy, that's what I wanted to happen.  Later I found out that she had cheated on me.  I spent the next two or three years of my life not really trusting women, and just being completely avoidant of relationships or anything even similar.  Since then, she and I have started talking again.  She is happily married to someone I knew from high school.  We're good friends.  I understand that she had her reasons, and I understand that what happened can't be changed, so I can only strive to move on.  But she will always be my blue bassist, and I will always have a place in my heart for her, and for that reason, I can't listen to "Digital Love" anymore.

[Reb]

If I ever get out of my current depression, I'll probably have to get rid of my entire music collection. With exception of the Zombies I guess.

[Robo]

the zombies

that's almost enough to pull me out of my hip-hop kick.

[Phoenix Dark]

what hip hop, out of interest

mention Lil Wayne and you die

[Robo]

I've just been dabbling with a lot of the stuff mentioned in the hip-hop thread here and elsewhere to find out what I like, which at this point I think I have a pretty good understanding of: MF DOOM, Souls of Mischief, Roots, Black Star, Gang Starr, Kool Keith, ATCQ, just to name a few.

[Phoenix Dark]

*high five*

[Robo]

PD approved

[Eric P]

PD approved

check out K'naan if you can.

[Robo]

Will do.

[TakingBackSunday]

Do the Roots have a new album?

[cubicle47b]

VAST - Flames

My girlfriend of a little over two years and I had been having serious issues for about a year, in part because of how possessive I was, but we were still together.  Practically living together, actually.  Anyway, one day she bought the album this was on and we listened to it for the first time in the dark in her living room, both completely absorbed.  Halfway through this song she started crying and it wasn't hard to figure out why.  She simply didn't feel that passion for me anymore.  We didn't break up until at least 4 months later (I wouldn't let go) but it was just a shell of a relationship at that point and every time that song came on (we commuted an hour and a half each day together so we listened to a lot of music) I was reminded of that moment and it really tore me up.

[Phoenix Dark]

Do the Roots have a new album?

Yea, it's called Rising Down