Magic Jewball

Who was the first New Wave artist? Was it Talking Heads? Blondie? Gary Numan? The Human League? Devo? As you can probably tell from the title of this post, I disagree with all those choices. Yes, I would argue that it was The Cars. The Cars are kind of an odd thing. As I’ve mentioned, I listened to the premiere New Wave radio station east of the Mississippi and they never played The Cars. In fact, the only station playing them in the late 70’s were the rock stations (WPLJ and WNEW, boy am I dating myself). But I never thought of The Cars as a rock band and in fact I have proof to back this statement up. When I was in 6th Grade (that’s when I was 10), we had to do a presentation in front of the class on our favorite hobby. I (duh!) did mine on music. I used a cassette recorder to play various kinds of rock music and label them helpfully for the class. I remember little of it except that I used Baba O’Riley to illustrate rock and that I used The Cars to represent New Wave.

See, all the things I consider hallmarks of the New Wave sound are present in The Cars’ music: cool synth lines, chilly and distant vocals, a certain phrasing. Their 1978 self-titled debut album is what I believe to be one of the greatest first albums in rock history. Arguably, they never topped it. But personally, I loved the second record best for this one song, which, through all the Joy Division and Depeche Mode I adore, is still the quintessential New Wave song to me. When I dug it up this week to listen to for the first time in many years, I still knew every single word. No, it isn’t the one from the Circuit City commercial or the one that will forever remind you of Phoebe Cates taking off her bathing suit top in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, although those are good too. No, it’s this one, the one where the late Benjamin Orr sounds like he’s in a freezer and the synth sounds like a snake flicking its tongue at you.

Napster:
The Cars - Candy-0

Streaming audio available on the iPod Song of the Week page.

I was going to hold off on this post for a little while but you know what motivates me: Amazon and iTunes gift certificates! So I figure I’ll just time it a bit earlier and if I don’t win one, hey, I was going to do this post next month anyway. But Randa Clay, this designer who does awesome themes (not the one I’m using, but you know I’m monogamous with my theme) is running a contest to base a post on a popular advertising slogan and one of the ones in her list of suggestions is what I’ve been calling this post in my mind all the time I’ve been planning it. We’ll see if you can guess what it is.

So you all have total recall and remember that last Summer I said I walked home through the park several times a week. As I walked along, people would whiz right past me. People who were running. The same thought would always occur to me: I want to be a runner! It seemed an impossible dream. I’m so not an athlete. I never played on any teams or did any extra-curricular sports. I know, this seems odd since I love sports but I didn’t so much as a kid and as an adult I became the sort of fan that sits at Yankee Stadium with a hot dog and largass soda. I hated the gym and only did it for health, never enjoyment. Although I’m a fast New York walker, I couldn’t really run more than a block without getting winded. And I never did that unless I was late for work. See? I’m motivated by that as well as free schwag.

I’d actually never run on purpose in public and I was kind of afraid to. I feared I ran like Phoebe in Friends (see picture). I imagined people sitting on benches in Riverside Park pointing and laughing. This was easy to picture as I once did that, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m not sure what was the biggest thing holding me back: the thought that I would look funny or the fact that I just physically was incapable of doing it. Then I found the Couch to 5k program. I prefer Couch to Fridge, but that didn’t feel like as much of an accomplishment. C to 5k starts really small, like with 60 seconds of running. This may not sound like a lot but it is when you get tired walking up the big stairway at the subway station. So I got a Nike+ thingy for my iPod and put together a playlist of alternating 60 second (running) and 90 second (walking) snippets. I got cute clothes that would make me want to run. And then I just went. And then I just started running. The song was New Order’s “Everything’s Gone Green” which has a slow intro and then builds to a sort of technotronic beat. It’s the song I always used to bike to at the gym. When I hear it now, I still think of its place at the front of my Week 1 playlist and the feeling I felt that day: “I’m running!” I used to walk/run in the evening, and the song that proceeded that one was “Slow Jam,” with its line: “The early evening mist, looked beautiful to me, it was sweeter than a kiss, I wish you all could see”… well, even then I thought of this post and I wished you all could see.

Running wasn’t like the gym. The gym sucked, staring at the wall or other people, thinking about them, wondering what they thought of you. Looking at your watch. Is this enough yet? Running was movement to music as the river and the trees and the bridge and the sun streaked by. Like dancing and flying at the same time, but with ugly sneakers.

But it was slow going. There are nine weeks to the program and I repeated all of them several times. It was sort of like “Couch to 5k via the scenic route” for me. In the middle I got really sick and had to abandon running for nearly three months. When that was over, it was like 20 degrees but I went back anyway. Sometimes, I dreamed of running. That’s when I started to think about actually doing a 5k. Could I really run over three miles with no stopping? I don’t know! But I can try. Due to that whole perfect recall thing as well as the fact that you read every single comment, you will remember that I said I don’t like doing “athons” because I felt bad asking my friends for money. I think people should give to causes they believe in, not necessarily say, “I support you,” through a donation to my favorite charity. But when my friend Meesh told me she was forming a small team to do the Philly Komen 5k for Breast Cancer Research and it would be really low-key because all the participants also do other Komen runs, I considered it. And then I found out it was on Mother’s Day. Even though my Mom died of BC, I’ve never really been a pink ribbon sort of person. But this felt right. I’m not a Mom so I haven’t gotten to celebrate Mother’s Day in a few years (unless you count going to Ikea because it’s totally empty that day). Now I will. But I still put Meesh off for a while. Just the same as it always had, this phrase popped into my head. OK, I hate that it’s from an advertising campaign, but come on, it works. Have you guessed it yet? Yes. Just.Do.It. That’s been my running theme (and hey, the Nike+ has been my running companion all this time). And so, I signed up for the Komen 5k. I’m still not there yet but I’m working on it! I know the unleashed dogs of Riverside Park admire my progress as I flee from them in terror.

I’m not putting up a link to my Komen page yet because I will probably do a Hamantaschen bake sale (raspberry and Nutella flavors) for Purim which is next week. Along with that, in case Komen isn’t your favorite charity (and you know mine is Doctors Without Borders but they didn’t have a race), I might also do the Station Family Fund since we did DWB last time. That way you have a choice! But I’ll put up the link then. If you’re in the Philadelphia area and want to escape from your mother or children, feel free to come see me race! I’ll be the one running like Phoebe.

I just wanted to dedicate this post to my friend-by-Internet, Linda/Liidi, who has been my running inspiration and advisor and just lost her beloved Dad. May all the good stuff Linda sends to others return right back to her.

Title is the way I misheard a lyric from:
New Order - Slow Jam

Dear Eliot Spitzer,

Love,
The Music Industry

Not on Napster: Liz Torres - (What Goes Around, Comes Around) Payback Is A Bitch

And now, for the “little thinking involved” Friday post. This is for me, really. I find it hard to think on Fridays.

I almost went past this on Craigslist Missed Connections. And then I looked back. Awesome! Even if you’re not a regular reader of MC, you have seen enough on J-Ball to know that this is really every ad on there.

I’m pretty sure this was for me.

Title comes from:
Lionel Richie - Hello

This is going to be an interactive post. Pencils ready? OK. You know how on Sex and the City, Carrie always sat in front of her laptop and thought, “I began to wonder…?” I’m doing that right now!

Let’s back up a little. In my office at work is a giant duratran of Nirvana from the Nevermind era. (A duratran is the big square poster that goes in the lightbox display of a store - it’s made of a special material that lets the light show through). I don’t have it up so much because I’m a huge Nirvana fan, because I’m not, although I have all their CD’s and I still like them. It’s more because, well, I work in the music business and it reminds me of somewhere near the start of my career when I worked in a record store and Nirvana was shockingly getting bigger and bigger. I remember being amazed that the label would spring for the cost of the duratrans (they’re pricey) and reserving the space (even pricier) for a band like that when there were Mariah Careys about. And I remember when I bought Nevermind, I bought it on cassette because I only knew the one song they were playing on WHFS and I was afraid to use all my hard-to-find college dollars on the spendy CD. We only got one copy in the store. One! That’s what a small release it was. The reason I recall this is because the case was cracked and since we only had one, I had to switch the plastic cassette-case with one from a promotional copy of something else.

So why is this relevant now? The other day, I was sitting waiting for the subway (I got one of six seats - this is bad, it means I just missed the previous train) and standing right near me was a tween boy, like 12 or 13, with a backpack sporting a Nirvana patch. This is the part where I began to wonder. Can this boy ever really know and love Nirvana? Who has the better fan experience? The person who witnessed the whole mad scene, the sea change in the sort of music that was popular, the bitter end? Or the kid who was born after it ended and discovers them after it’s all over? And I ask this question from the other side too, because I consider myself a big Beatles fan but they broke up before I was born and I missed the mania, the screaming, the “oh my God the new single is out, he got married, they’re going to appear on Ed Sullivan” part of things. Can it ever be the same for me? Plus, I already knew it was this huge cultural happening before I started. I came to the music knowing it had changed the world.

But on the other hand, the music comes to me untainted, without any extraneous stuff. It’s just music, not lunchboxes, not gossip, not visuals. It’s a finished work, like seeing the TV season on DVD over one weekend rather than eagerly awaiting the next episode after the cliffhanger. I never had to worry about what Yoko would do to the Beatles, it was already done if there was anything to be done. The same as how this kid probably doesn’t worry what effect wacky Courtney Love will have on Nirvana’s output. The same as the young’uns in my office who think I bought the duratran on eBay. When I say it was from my store, the store in which I worked, and I took it home at the end of its run in the lightbox, they get that “gosh, Grandma, tell me more!” look on their faces.

By the way, I’m not comparing Nirvana and the Beatles, they’re just examples.

Anyway, this is the kind of thing that goes through my head when I’m waiting for the train and trying to ignore the whistling Spanish guitar-playing busker. The punchline, by the way, is that this boy was actually standing apart from his family (just like young Becca on vacation with her family!) and was a French tourist. So he wouldn’t have experienced “Nirvana changes American music” up close even if he’d been born years earlier.

And now, for the interactive part. Please make your feelings known in the comments. Can the kids ever be as big fans as the people who lived through the band’s heyday and watched it all develop and explode? Or is it easier to love the music when it’s only that, music, and not caught in a whirlwind of hype? If you’re not a music fan, don’t feel left out! You can talk about your lunchbox or Ed Sullivan.

Well, obviously the title comes from Stairway to Heaven, and Led Zeppelin are another group who already were legendary, had a member die, and broke up before I was aware but this post isn’t about them.

This is my favorite Nirvana song. If you can’t feel the line, “I’m not like them but I can pretend,” then you haven’t been a teenager.

Nirvana - Dumb