Crush? Yeah, I’d like to crush their little - Aaaaah, iPod to the rescue…

I’m currently in one of those periods where I feel the need for new music. I rarely keep up with the new releases every week, I just enjoy what I’ve got for long stretches of time, punctuated by flash shopping sprees and synchronicity of people like Sam or Bob or Ryan giving me new music. So recent pickups/givetos have been: Camera Obscura, Snow Patrol, Joshua Radin, Hard-Fi, Cut Chemist, Jurassic 5, Sam dubbed me The Pipettes (very fun stuff, conjuring up images of The Shirelles and The B-52s), Gnarls Barkley, Augustana, and I finally got around to picking up Jon Brion’s soundtrack for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. All great stuff, and many playlists have been spawned. But as always, I find myself going back to old standards, little mini-soundtracks for moods and moments I’m in. That is, I’ve found the best way that having an iPod differs from all the other portable listening devices I’ve used over the years (and I started off in 1982 with a huge mono Radio Shack cassette recorder in a backpack and those headphones half the size of your head) is that you can instantly dial up the perfect song to fit your emotional state. Or, more poignantly, you can call up a song to defeat or counteract an emotional state you find yourself in and no longer want to feel.

This is the essence of Philip K. Dick’s device The Penfield Mood Organ, as described at the beginning of his novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? There is a device, a dial, right by your bed at the beginning of the day, and you can dial up specific emotions you’d like to feel: confidence to get you through the day, venom to get you through an argument, calm acceptance that everything is going to be alright. Whatever it is you want or need to feel, or whatever it is that you are already feeling and don’t want to anymore, it’s all possible with The Penfield Mood Organ. I saw this starting to come true in the late 80’s with the advent of the CD player (especially the multiple CD jukeboxes), people being able to skip right to a specific track that reminded them of some breakup, or another track that reminded them why they broke up with that no-good loser in the first place. Now that has been expanded by the emergence of MP3 and MP4 technology - people are quite literally walking around with every piece of music they own right on their hip, and they can instantaneously call up “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” or the techno remix of “Believe” or something from Mozart’s Requiem. Dick wasn’t talking about affecting emotions through music, but it’s the same result nontheless. And it gives even more personal meaning to the fact that I chose The Penfield Mood Organ as a professional alias under which to record my own electro-hip-hop instrumental music.

Anyway, treatise over with, I may now proceed to describe what I’ve been crushing on recently. I guess the reason I brought up the whole “affecting emotions” thing is because even though I seek out new music in order to instill new emotional experiences in my life, more often than not I call upon old standards to get me through the day. Escpecially since now I’m in such a routine - get up, get ready, go to work on the T, work, get a slurpee, go home on the T, watch the Sox lose, fall asleep to some random DVD commentary. When my day consists of such repetition, I can fall into habits of finding certain songs that fit well into specific portions of that day. I may find them by accident or go looking for them frantically, but once found, they become part of my daily soundtrack. I guess we’ve all got our own soundtracks going nowadays, don’t we? And it certainly can vary depending on mood, but that pre-supposes a change in mood to begin with. Recently I’ve been in rotten moods more often than not, either stemming from the combination of heat and packed trains, or the way summer vacation brings all the nuts, foreign and domestic, into my store, or the fact that I’d really rather be in Nantucket right now. So That’s When I Reach For My Revolv-ing selection of songs. I guess others might reach for a bong or a brew, but music has always been the drug of choice for me. Not quite as social as some other drugs, in fact it’s kind of isolating in an opiate kind of way, but whatever works.

What’s been working for me recently have been a very small group of songs, played over and over at high volume at different specific parts of the day. Some new songs that I keep revisiting have been: “Come Back Margaret” by Camera Obscura, a wonderful melodic anthem with sprinkles of Dion’s “Runaway” and the whole Phil Spector girl group movement. “What’s The Altitude?” by Cut Chemist & Hymnal, a jump-out-of-your-seat powerful hip-hop track that is set to a fast twangy guitar loop that sets all of Hymnal’s vocals to a swingy catchy half-time, backed by a beat that makes you blink every time the snare bashes you in the back of the head with a sonic baseball bat. “Everything’ll Be Alright (Will’s Lullaby)” by Joshua Radin, a Simon & Garfunkel-meet-Nick Drake kind of soothing breathy bit of emotional down comforter on a cold night. (Rudi, check out Joshua Radin, I think you as a Paul Simon fan will find much to enjoy)

But the song I’ve recently been calling up most often, that immediately sends me off into my own internal stereo world where I float sublimely through Harvard Square tourists in various stages of deodorant breakdown, is Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner.” I remember this song from waaaaay back, but for some reason never owned a copy until fairly recently. It is fast becoming one of my favorite songs. And if my personal Penfield Mood Organ had emotional labels instead of track listings, this would top the heading of “Songs That Get You From Work To The T Without Punching Anyone In The Face.” It is a raw, powerful, fun, simple song, but it always takes me out of whatever crap I’m going through or thinking of, and transports me into my own little minimovie where I’m the badass untouchable action star being filmed in slow motion by Peckinpah or Woo, and rather than trudge through Harvard Square with my head down, I stride with my head up and eyes bright, shoving past all those that apparently think it’s called a sideSTAND instead of a sideWALK.

Download: Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, “Roadrunner” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)