Certain situations call for certain tunes. Habits are often slightly embarrassing.
- I only ever listen to one of two albums in my car: Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker or Neil Young’s On the Beach.
- That’s actually a lie. I just repeatedly listen to the burned CD probably stuck in the deck that has my faves from Heartbreaker & On the Beach.
- That’s a lie, too. I almost always just listen to “Come Pick Me Up” & “Ambulance Blues.”
- I have an iTunes playlist called “malleable shapes,” which is also the title of my terrible self-published poetry chapbook on unrequited/imagined relationships. It’s largely comprised of Elliott Smith bootlegs.
- My apartment’s most-oft-spun LP by far is a Mamma Cass compilation, to be listened whilst getting ready to go somewhere I really don’t want to. Because, when you have to get up early on a Saturday for a menial job you hate, it just feels good to be told you gotta make your own kind of music.
- If you see me listening to an iPod and walking to class, chances are extremely good that the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet is playing. When I was in second grade, I had my mom buy me it on cassette because I had heard “Lovefool” on the radio as she drove me to Catholic school once, and because I had heard somewhere that it also had Radiohead. I’ve loved Thom Yorke – who is just a few days older than my dad – since I was 8 years old.
- When I don’t know what to listen to, I usually just pop on OK Computer. Because I’m lame like that.