soundtrack of my life

there are certain albums that i associate very strongly with the exact time of my life when i listened to them the most. where i was, what i was going through emotionally, who i was hanging around with, perhaps what i was reading.

i remember being sixteen and in florida on vacation, listening to under the pink over and over and over again. i had it on tape and while sunbathing i would listen to one side, then flip the tape over and flip myself over. i fell in love with that album, fell hard. it was just the perfect expression of angst, beauty and obtuse lyrics, perfect for a sixteen year old in her own head.

the summer after freshman year of college i lived in utah with my boyfriend and we each brought maybe fifteen cds with us and were pretty sick of them. our friends there were cowboys, mormons and navajos and what those groups have in common is a love of country music and ac/dc. understand that we were a good four hours from the nearest wal-mart, let alone a decent record store. so one day my boyfriend's tooth broke in half and we had to borrow a car and drive the four hours into town to find a dentist. we bought two cds that blew my mind, one was odelay by beck, which i think most people can agree was mind-blowing in 1996. the second was 12 golden country greats by ween, which was just perfect because i was so immersed in and fed up with country music and ween nailed it spot-on with their usual dose of irony.

white ladder by david grey reminds me of the grove street apartment in san francisco. i remember the day corby brought it over, he had found this gem that was going to change our lives, which it kind of did for a while. those were the days when we were four girls and many other various and sundry couch crashers, boyfriends and out of town guests populating our two bedroom. we were innocent and hedonistic, and we listened to that album alot. also from that time period, the first dealership cd and stan getz's bossa nova disc.

while traveling in southeast asia with ange it seemed like the only cd anybody owned was big calm by morcheeba. the disc had already been out and overplayed for what felt like years, suddenly the song 'over and over' was like a record skipping, playing out of the sound systems of every single last bar and restaurant. one time in laos we opened the bar's 3-disc changer and realized that two of the cds inside were big calm. i'm still sick of those songs. also from that trip, the first gorillaz album.

then there are the sad memories, the songs i shared with people i loved, albums i can't really listen to anymore. these include stories from the city by pj harvey, that cornershop one and practically anything by sebadoh.

i get the feeling that when i look back on that month in madrid when wrote a novel, i will think of the hour of the bewilderbeast by badly drawn boy. i remember this album from when it came out, i had it downloaded from good old napster on my work computer in san francisco. recently i have rediscovered it, and for some reason it is the perfect writing music, it is the ideal blend of melodiousness and edginess. sometimes it sounds like belle and sebastian and sometimes it sounds like the dandy warhols. it is just backgroundy enough to allow my mind to not concentrate on the lyrics yet i find myself typing in rhythm to the beats. i think i've listened to it fifty times in the past two weeks.

today's question: what music do you think of when you think of me?