Life Soundtrack

I’ve been rather opposed to starting a blog but I had an idea today that got me motivated to post something. Hopefully this experience will get me more comfortable with writing.

You would think I might post about my travels in this blog. But that would be preposterous. While I have seen and done some fun and exciting stuff while out on the road, being away from friends and family has been pretty hard and I would rather not dwell on it. So while I’ve been encouraged to post about my road experiences I’m gonna try to stay away from those. But they might creep into my posts from time to time…

SO as I was driving up to Pittsburgh for work today I was obviously listening to music in the car. Who can drive a long way in silence? Too much time with your own thoughts if you ask me. And my car is super loud so I needed something to drown it out. Anyway, I stumbled upon some music that I hadn’t listened too in a long time and it made me think about a concept that I always seem to come back to with music. There are just some songs, bands and albums that when I hear them invoke a wave of memories from the time and place I experienced them. It’s always stunning to me how quickly I can be thrown out of my “time” and transported to another place through music, I’m pretty sure its the closest thing to time travel I will ever get to experience. People, places, sights, smells, emotions all come back in a rush just because of a few notes or words. So while I was driving I tried to make myself time travel by thinking back over my life and associate music with it use that music to remind me of times in my life and what I was doing and how I felt. After zoning out on the road for a while doing this (Sorry Mom, at least I was wearing my seatbelt!) I realized I might have stumbled on my first motivation to write in a blog.

I tried to force myself to follow a few guidelines, because even as much as I dislike rules and procedure for procedure sake, it does organize things. I tried to break down each year into the four seasons and pick out one song, artist or album that really represents that time in the each particular year for me. Granted this didn’t happen all the time, sometimes I had more then 4 things a year and sometimes fewer.

Without further ado, the list so far:

P.S. please don’t judge me, sometimes in my life I had (and have) really crappy musical tastes but I’ll try to be as honest as I can be.

2009: PDA-Interpol, This Modern Love-Bloc Party, In Rainbows-Radiohead, I’m On a Boat-Incredibad feat. T-Pain

2008: Zip City-Drive By Truckers, Heretic Pride-The Mountain Goats, Only By the Night-Kings of Leon, Narrow Stairs-Death Cab for Cutie

2007: Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. II: No World For Tomorrow-Coheed and Cambria, Break My Heart Tonight-Reckless Kelly, Mudhouse-Bob Schneider, Plans-Death Cab for Cutie

2006: Ágætis Byrjun-Sigur Rós, The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!-Sufjan Stevens, One Year Later-The Get Up Kids, Clarity-Jimmy Eat World, Rebels, Rouges and Sworn Brothers-Lucero, Honestly-Cartel, The Sporting Life-The Decemberists

2005: They’re Only Chasing Safety-Underoath, Everything Went Numb-Street Light Manifesto, Sink Florida Sink-Against Me!, Young Forever-Aberfeldy Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. I: From Fear Through the Eyes Of Madness-Coheed and Cambria

2004: War All the Time-Thursday, Weak’s End-Emery, Faded from Winter-Iron and Wine (But both The Creek Drank the Cradle and Our Endless Numbered Days pretty much sum up 2004)

2003: Set this Circus Down-Tim McGraw, Meteora Evolver-311, Deftones-The Deftones The Artist in the Ambulance-Thrice

2002: Bleed American-Jimmy Eat World, Grassroots-311, By The Way-Red Hot Chili Peppers, Morning View-Incubus, Ten Rounds with Jose Cuervo-Tracy Byrd, Toxicity-System of A Down

2001: Hybrid Theory-Linkin Park, White Pony-Deftones, Fungus Amongus-Incubus, Relationship of Command-At the Drive In, Science-Incubus

2000: Stunt-Bare Naked Ladies, Californication-Red Hot Chili Peppers, Significant Other-Limp Bizkit The Chemicals Between Us-Bush, Make Yourself-Incubus, Enema of the State-Blink 182

1999: 14:51-Sugar Ray, Astro Lounge-Smash Mouth, Soundsystem-311, Drive In, Drive Out-DMB

1998: Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too-New Radicals, Prolonging the Magic-Cake, Faith-Limp Bizkit

OK wow things are really getting hazy now….

Think I’m gonna leave it here. Don’t think I can go much further back. For the most part the songs and albums are marked chronologically from Jan to Dec in that year.

I feel really pompous (and for a few embarrassed…….whatever TRL was awesome back in the day don’t even pretend you didn’t watch it) listing all these bands and songs. Hopefully you won’t judge me as trying to build up my indie cred, or for my youthful indiscretions and forays into crappy music. My hope is that you will recognize some of these (if you are reading this you most likely are my friend and hopefully we have SOME of the same music tastes…) and that they might bring you back to times in your own lives and cause you to time travel and make you think about your own Life Soundtrack.

Also, you should read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Time Travel is so cool.

OK that’s all for now, hopefully something else soon will motivate me to write in here, or else it could just become another useless internet page. And god knows there are enough of those.