blue lights are shining all over me

I Just Called To Say I Love You-Stevie Wonder

People knock his 80's stuff--most famously in the movie High Fidelity, where Jack Black throws somebody out of a record store where he works for requesting the soundtrack to The Women In Red. And this isn't his greatest track. However, I just heard it on the radio and its a tribute to his genius. Sometimes it's an artists B-sides that flesh out the picture of an artists capabilities. This isn't a b-side, but in light of his more "important" work, it might as well be.

That said, there are few artists that can do joyful and sweet like Stevie Wonder. Joyful...Bjork, Outkast, Kate Bush? Not many. This, its a minor key love song, I mean, he just called to say he loved you. He doesn't Celine Dion the person to death...he just tells it like it is. Yeah, its Lite FM. Its still good.

Beau Mot Plage-Isolee

There are some tracks I won't bother describing. OK, it sounds like jazz fucked techno with a flute solo. Trust me, you just gotta hear it. Fucking brilliant. You are insane if you don't seek this out to listen to. Loudly. With the lights out. If you dig it, well then, you are welcome. If not, well then, you are wrong.

What Led Me To This Town?-The Jayhawks

This one comes with a story. I have 2 actual sisters. Then I have Angie, who lived behind me. I've known her since I was 8, she was 7. We weren't always best friends. Like brother and sister, we often fought. I hit her once with a stick. In the leg. Hard. I mention this because undoubtably she would mention it. Yeah, well she and her friends made fun of me for dancing gay. Which I wasn't. In retrospect, now that I know what dancing gay is, I wasn't. Trust me on that one.

Mostly we got along famously. She was the first person I smoked a cigarette with. Capri's. I was the first person she got drunk with. And music...we both loved music from the get go--it was something we always had in common, something we could always talk about. I remember she had a Blondie record at the age of 11 (lest you think she is impossibly cool, I believe she owned an Air Supply record as well, the one with the balloon on the cover) and playing reggae when we laid out. Every week, I'd write down the Top 40 every week off the radio and bring it over to her house. We would then go over it. What songs we liked, what songs we didn't, what songs we were surprised charted so poorly, so highly. Its not like we knew everything about each other...she thought I was straight until I was 21. I thought she was still a virgin at 20. I wasn't. She wasn't. We both should have known. I dug the Pet Shop Boys, ABBA and Madonna. She dated super hot guys and loved "Slow Hand" by the Pointer Sisters. And back then that song was very very controversial.

And we had our own language. You hear that alot...childhood friends who have their own language. Our language, well, we spoke "dolphin". No yeah seriously, we spent an entire evening in her pool trying to communicate by making "dolphin" noises. We always bring this up when we get together...we always make fun of how young and dorky we were when doing this. Uh yeah, we were 16 when we began to speak "dolphin". Well, fuck it, its a language that you tend to develop a propensity for later in life.

So Angie made me a mixtape. A couple of years back. She's kinda more into alt-country than me. Alt-country is this weird kinda catch all genre. Wilco, Son Volt. People who tell you they like alt-country want to fuck Ryan Adams. I'd leave it that.

So this song. She made me this tape...couple of tapes actually. And this song...passed me by a good 3 or 4 times. I just never got into it.

So one night I get on a bus from NY to Providence. We leave at 5 PM Friday evening. Its raining. And there's an accident. I usually love to drive at night. There's something about it. But not this night. And of course the bus is packed and hot and loud and annoying etc etc. Lurches forward 4 feet, stops, lurches another 4 feet. You've been there, everybody in NY has a bus horror story. The people who don't are the Republicans.

I have my headphones on and this tape is in. And somehow, even with all the lurching and noise, I fall asleep. Music still on.

And then I wake up. And its totally dark. And totally quiet. All I can hear is the sound of the bus moving and the rain.

And this song. I wake up to a female chorus singing "blue lights are shining over my life." It sounds like angels. I thought it was almost impossibly beautiful. The song is about getting older and realizing you haven't turned out exactly how you thought you would. Its insanely beautiful....best part....female chorus sings "can you keep it a secret, I'm in love with you." Then he sings..."what happened to this boy, ah such a lovely mother's son" and then the chorus.

It was just one of those moments that you recognize how much music means to your life. The equivalent of seeing an amazing view....people who aren't into music never get that...it's like "whats the big deal?". These are the people who camp. They only get that "moment" by living outside and hiking 6 miles up a mountain to see an actual view. They go "wow" by climbing the mountain, we go "wow" by putting on a Sonic Youth record. We're smarter.

When we were kids, I always thought Angie was way cooler than me. Well, either I was wrong or something happened. Because I am now waaaaaayyyyy cooler than her. Especially on music...she always tells me I'm the man in the know.

Except for this...this song, she gave me this.

Hold The Line-Toto

I read that a DJ that I really like plays this at parties. Of course its in Norway, which has a much higher "irony" intelligence than us. However, I get it. Generally, Toto is way more than kinda cheesy. However, this his reminds me of "More Than Feeling" by Boston...it sounds amazing coming out of radio. And it features a piano solo. It'd probably rock a dance floor. Plus you can make that cool horn/V thing with your hand to it.