trendymatt's Diaryland Diary

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K-Tel Productions is proud to present...

Every two months or so, I take all of the CDs I have in my car and apartment, spread them out in front of me on the living room floor, and select about a dozen that will stay in my car for a while. So, last night I found myself sitting on the living room floor win the middle of a mountain of every CD I own - roughly 250 at last count, selecting that perfect dozen for the countless hours I'll likely spend driving for work in the next month.

Thumbing through my selections is a disturbingly accurate account of occurrences in my life since my early teen years. From my pseudo-grunge middle school phase (Pearl Jam's Ten, Nirvana's Nevermind, Sonic Youth's Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star) to the great disco obsession of tenth grade (The Bee Gee's Saturday Night Fever soundrack, the Pure Disco, Vol. 1 compilation), to my most recent "sensitive guy with guitar accompaniment" preferences (John Mayer's Room for Squares, Howie Day's Australia, Dave Barnes's Three, Then Four) - I have a pretty diverse soundtrack to illustrate my life. While I go through times when I will obsessively listen to only one or two artists for obscene amounts of time, I found while looking through my music a handful of songs that I constantly find myself turning to that do an amazing job of conveying whatever I'm feeling at any point... or they're just too much fun not to listen to on a regular basis. Thus, I present to you:

Trendy Matt's Definitive Soundtrack, Volume 1: 1979-2004

1. Third Eye Blind, Motorcycle Drive-By: As a whole, 3EB's entire debut album is an emotional experience, but if you can manage to not want to thrash around in a perfect mix of extacy and agony while cranking this song, I don't want to know you. When Stephan Jenkins screams out "I've never been so alone/and I've never been so alive" at the end, it's the most visceral and tragic, yet oddly comforting verse I've ever listened to. This song truly makes me feel alive.

2. Opening section of Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem Mass: As the introduction to a nine-section part of the Requiem, this piece is two and a half minutes of pure exhilaration. Pure and simple. It's like audible caffeine.

3. The Refreshments, Banditos: If Alyssa and I ever take a Thelma & Louise road trip, this will be our anthem. This one has all the makings of the perfect road trip song... an infectious bass line, wailing electric guitar, perfectly scream-able lyrics; I mean, come on, "Give your I.D. card to the border guard/Now your alias says you're Captain Jean-Luc Picard/Of the United Federation of Planets/'Cause he won't speak English anyway." Bad-ass. And more fun than a barrel of monkeys on crystal meth.

4. Yello, Oh Yeah: Because I yearn to be Ferris Bueller someday.

5. Nirvana, Lake of Fire, from MTV Unplugged: Kurt Cobain was at his best in this performance, in my opinion. The gravel in his voice, the vulnerability exposed in his face in the intimate setting of the soundstage, and the tragic foreshadowing of the lyrics originally penned by The Meat Puppets... it's haunting, to say the least. I got chills when I saw the original airing of the special on MTV when I was 14, and I still feel it ten years later.

6. Vicki Lawrence, The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia: It's like a made-for-TV movie translated into a four-minute song. I swear, every time I listen to it, I think "maybe this time, the sheriff will come to his senses." And he never does. Throw in a dead dog, a broken-down truck, and more liquor and this would be the quintessential classic country & western song.

7. DaVinci's Notebook, Title of the Song: Alyssa and I are karaoke stars in my car with this one. If you haven't heard this song, it's basically a parody of boy bands, and the lyrics read like an instruction manual on how to sing any top 40 teen song, along with the gratuitous "mmm's" and "ohhh's": "Appeal for one more opportunity/Drop to my knees to elicit crowd response/Prayers to my chosen deity/Modulation and I hold a high note..."

8. Dave Matthews Band, Proudest Monkey: It's largely recognized as an endorsement of the theory of evolution. For me, the song represents my first month living away from home - definitely a more literary interpretation of the lyrics, but I've never been one to recognize symbolism unless it was brow-beaten into me in my sophomore-level literature classes. Any time I feel a major transition in my life, I find myself drawn to this song, and it makes everything alright - "I went to the city/Car horns, corners and the gritty/Now I am the proudest monkey you've ever seen." And, yeah, evolution's a pretty cool thing, too.

9. Rufus Wainwright, Hallelujah: Originally written by Leonard Cohen, this is my personal favorite version of the song. I have so many memories wrapped up in this song, tied to so many people. I find it comforting, so much that I make sure it's always somewhere in my CD changer just in case I can't go to sleep at night. Plus, I could go weak in the knees just hearing Rufus Wainwright sing the ingredients off the side of a Triscuit box. I mean, damn.

10. Sarah McLachlan, Witness: "Will we burn in heaven/Like we do down here?" Good question. This song is raw, emotional, and builds a steady crescendo from timid uncertainty to anger, then crashes back down to a reluctant understanding with few lyrics and only simple accompaniment. That speaks to me of a true artist, and Sarah's the real deal.

11. Outkast, Two Dope Boyz (in a Cadillac: This is the Outkast that I started listening to in high school - I really don't have much appreciation for their new stuff. This song brings back some of the few fond high school memories I have: late night marching band bus trips, eating way too many chocolate-covered espresso beans, cruising the strip on Saturday night in my beat-up old station wagon... damn, no wonder I wasn't popular back then (we won't even get into my love for tapered-leg jeans at the time). I was a colossal dork! But blasting this song in the student parking lot made me feel like a total pimp.

Yeah, there are more but I seriously must get some work done at the office today. An hour spent typing out a personal soundtrack is really hard to justify to the boss, you know?

11:35 am - 03.02.04

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