Thundersnow, ho!

Oh Big City snow, I'm so over you. It's hard to believe that I'm in my third year living in this place. I remember when I first started this blog we were still deciding whether to stay in Richmond or move. Hell, we were considering moving southwest instead of northeast. And now it's just another day of snow boots. Not that Northern VA has fared any better. (Worse, actually, from what I hear.)

But tonight is the night of the D Plan show, and we've got an old friend from college coming in to town for the weekend, and pretty much the entire city has declared it a snow day despite the fact that classes aren't cancelled and offices aren't closed. It's just an air of festivity.

I'm doing some pro bono work for an immigration attorney that I know through my extracurriculars. (Note to aspiring law students: law review and moot court aren't the only extracurriculars out there. Volunteering leads to leads!) So I should probably pull on the snow boots, wrangle up the dog-horse and make my way over to the coffee shop and get down to business before my friend's train gets in. Wahoo!

The JE Guide to Life gets rich!

And sometimes that music drifts through my car
On a spring night when anything is possible
And I close my eyes and I nod my head
And I wonder how you been and I count to a hundred and ten
Because you’ll always be my hero, even if I never see you again
- The Dismemberment Plan, "Back and Forth"

On Thursday, the Dismemberment Plan is playing in the Big City. One of my favorite bands from my late teens and early twenties, the Plan was awesome, danceable indie rock of the kind that cannot be described, merely listened to. Or maybe I just am not the one to describe. But listen, seriously, I promise you'll like it.

Anyway, they are playing here on Thursday, after having played a couple of big reunion shows in their (and my) hometown of DC. Although I eschew reunion shows as a hard and firm rule (including, and especially, my most teen-angsty favorite band of all time, the Smashing Pumpkins) this is The One True Exception. Even six years ago, when they apparently played a 2005 reunion show as a benefit in DC, I didn't have the heart to come out and dance on the Dismemberment Plan stage again. But now is a different time. I am a different me.

I am, of course, the person I am today because of everything that I was in the time leading up to this moment. I once heard that people change their fundamental personalities every 10 years. Not that I believe it, but I see the general point. We evolve and grow as people, and it should be that way. But do we owe anything to our former selves? Do I owe it to my 20-year old self to go out to a concert on a Thursday night and dance along to music that moved me so fervently 10 years ago, but that I rarely listen to anymore? (Although when I do, I am still transported to that happy place at the side of the main stage at the Black Cat wearing a Salvation Army t-shirt and bright pink hat.)

Am I driven to see the Dismemberment Plan out of some allegiance or some desperate reach for my younger self, or is this something that almost-30 year old me wants to do for herself? The reason I don't usually go to reunion concerts is because I'm usually interested in letting bygones stay that way. In this case, I think I'm doing this for the me of Now. And I don't think I'm the only one.

In reading Facebook posts and Tweets and all sorts of other social media updates I've been watching my friends that are still in the DC area going through their own Dismemberment Plan revivals. Hell, just reading band interviews it's been pretty clear that the band is deliberately reliving its past from a very different place. Everyone in the band has "real jobs" and nobody is trying (as of yet... supposedly) to turn this into a new career. Just like all my college friends and I have moved on in our lives from that time when we would drive up on school nights, park somewhere on 14th St. and wolf down seitan burgers at Food For Thought before the first band came on stage, getting back to the dorms at somewhere past 2 am to stumble into bedrooms darkened by our already sleeping roommates.

It's a different place in life for all of us. Some of my friends are parents. Some of them are highly specialized and extremely well-paid careerists. Some are both. Some live in communal houses in the city, work day jobs in social services and play in bands at night. Some teach high schoolers, college kids. Some are working behind bars or counters. Some have supported their parents through the end of life. Who knows where we'll be in another ten years. We're just getting through our twenties.

So I guess this D Plan show is kind of a reunion of sorts. Even though I'm not getting to go with all the same people I used to dance with, and even though my self-consciousness will probably be uncomfortably palpable, I am looking forward to reconnecting with a feeling that isn't (yet) anchored in age. The joy of possibility. I was about 19 or 20 when I went to see a Plan show with my friend K, a decidedly anti-scenester (that's what we used to call hipsters) non-indie-rock loving friend who simply agreed to accompany me, probably out of boredom. At the end of the night, even he was smiling at the unselfconsciousness of the dancing, the fun and excitement that radiated from the band, the music and the audience. If this show fails to replicate that moment, I won't be surprised. But that's okay, because when I turn on my iPod and listen to The City, I feel thrilled for who I was at the beginning of my twenties, and excited for what my thirties are going to be. In a way, maybe, it's letting go of the past and acknowledging that even this moment is the brink of a new era. Who knows how I'll look back on it. Right now, I'm just feeling ready to embrace it.

We exhaust ourselves trying to get there.
- The Dismemberment Plan, "Back and Forth"

Country music & me

I guess I go through phases. I was definitely one of those kids who grew up proudly declaring that I like "all kinds of music...except country and rap." Can anyone guess what two kinds of music I immediately scan the radio for when I'm in a car? And in particular, I listen to a lot of country lately. Usually, I come home from wherever I've spent the day, open up my radio laptop to either K95 or, especially on commercial-free Tuesdays, 98.7 WMZQ. The Big (Northern) City doesn't have a real country station... there's one that occasionally comes in on the car radio if I'm in the southwest corridor of the city, but don't expect to find someone who admits to listening to it. I couldn't even tell you the call letters.

K95 is the station I listened to when we were in Richmond. Even though I succumbed to enjoying country music well before then, it wasn't until Richmond that I discovered the healing principles of Nashville nostalgia. Mostly because they didn't play any of the good hip-hop I'd gotten used to in Durham, I switched to Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw and Billy Currington on my afternoon commute. When we finally decided to leave Richmond for bulldozed pastures, I was surprised to suddenly realize how ubiquitous that southern musical twang really was down in the capital of the Confederacy. You'd walk into a 7-11 and it would be playing in the background. On a hot day, step into a local BBQ joint for a limeaid and it was crooning from the outdoor speakers. City festivals? State fairs? Children's Day at the museum? K95 was there.

So yeah, I listen to it a lot these days, because it reminds me of home. And because it's just so damn fun to sing along to. Don't believe me? Click here. Or here. Or here. And I even enjoy the commercials, which may be a little sick, I know.

On a completely different note, I came home from work today feeling emotionally draining, with that lingering sick feeling that comes from having heard or seen something very disturbing. I sense that I'm going to have to spend some time working through the internal distress of being exposed to some triggering situations. But now's not the time to write about that. Especially after spending 5 minutes having fun looking for country karaoke on youtube!

Let it be known...

I just watched the video for Miranda Lambert's new single, "The House That Built Me," and I have tears streaming down my face. Literally. WTH. I like the song, and I like the video (it apparently has real home footage from her childhood), but I wasn't expecting the reaction I had. Oh, hormones!

Anyway, here's the video if you want to watch:

No No No Si Si Si

Want to know how to ruin a perfectly good date? Easy! Go to a Mexican restaurant where there are televisions in every corner blaring reggaeton music videos, and allow your eyes to stray back to the gyrating dancers every time your date takes a bite of food.

Want to know how to ruin a perfectly productive morning? Easy! Go to YouTube and look for all the reggaeton videos you saw last night on your date to the Mexican restaurant so you can post links on your blog.

Want to guess who'd rather be perreando than studying? Easy! :)

The prozac buzz

I have a new date to look forward to: May 9th.

That's the day that Young@Heart comes to Richmond, according to Fox Searchlight's website for the movie. T and I saw the preview for the movie on Saturday, when we went to see Bajo La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon). Young@Heart is a documentary about a choir of elderly men and women who sing rock and roll cover songs. The trailer looks amazing!

On another musical note, I heard a song on my way to work this morning that I waited 4 years to hear.

Back when I lived on Charlotte Street, my roommate TL told me about a country song she'd heard on the radio that made her cry. According to her description, the song's narrator described growing up along a red dirt road, where he and his girlfriend got pregnant, decided to have an abortion, and then broke up shortly thereafter.

This description confused me when I heard the song I was sure she was talking about, "Red Dirt Road". The lyrics were nice enough, but pretty uninspiring and certainly not tear-inducing:

It's where I drank my first beer
It's where I found Jesus
It's where I wrecked my first car
I tore it all to pieces
I learned the path to heaven
Is full of sinners and believers
I learned that happiness on Earth
Ain't just for high achievers
I've learned; I've come to know
That there's life at both ends
Of that red dirt road

For four years, every time I heard that song on country radio, and it's a pretty ubiquitous song, I've wondered about how TL got a storyline about abortion from the song, and how the couple broke up, if in the song he sings, "I lost Mary, but I got her back again."

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, I heard another song, for the first time, called "Red Rag Top" and I realized I'd been wrong all along. I'm writing about this song now because I heard it again on the radio on the way to work today and, like TL, I was pretty moved both times I heard it.

So, here are the lyrics, and you can Limewire or iTunes it for yourself to decide if you like it or not:

I was twenty and she was eighteen,
We were just as wild as we were green,
in the ways of the world
She picked me up in that red rag top,
We were free of the folks and hiding from the cops,
On a summer night runnin’ all the red lights
We parked way out in a clearin’in a grove and the night
Was hot as a coal burnin’ stove,
We were cookin’ the gas we were had to last

In the back of that red rag top
She said please don’t stop...

Well the very first time her mother met me,
Her green eyed girl was a mother to be for 2 weeks
I was out of a job and she was in school,
Life was fast and the world was cruel
We were young and wild, we decided not to have a child
So we did what we did and we tried to forget
And we swore up and down there would be no regrets
In the morning light,
But on the way home that night

On the back of that red rag top
She said please don’t stop..
Lovin’ me

We took one more trip around the sun,
It was all make believe in the end,
No I can’t say where she is today,
I can’t remember who I was, back then
Well you do what you do and you pay for your sins,
And there’s no such thing as what might’ve
Been, that’s a waste of time; drive you outta your mind
I was stopped at a red light just yesterday beside a young girl
In a cabriolet and her eyes
Were green
I was in an old scene

I was back in that red rag top
On the day she stopped
Loving me