Double dating musical nostalgia

“Double dating” is a concept my wife and I have talked about for a while; it’s where a piece of media — usually a movie or TV show — exhibits elements of two distinct time periods. Most commonly it results from the art being set in a particular time period, but unintentionally carrying distinctive elements of its own time period as well, which don’t really become apparent until much later. Think “Happy Days.” It’s set in the ’50s, but there are definitely elements (like hair styles) that are more characteristic of the ’70s era when the show was actually produced.

Over the past year or so, I’ve been having a lot of the same feelings towards the music of Com Truise. I discovered Com Truise (stage name of musician and graphic designer Seth Haley) around 2012 when his In Decay album was released. I immediately latched onto the hazy nostalgia it evoked for my early ’80s childhood and the exciting technologies of that era.

I listened to a lot of Com Truise from about 2012 to 2014. And now when I listen to this music, I have a different kind of nostalgia. I still feel that pull to my ’80s childhood, but I also have much more distinctive memories from the early 2010s to associate with the music as well. I had a lot of good things going on in those years. My business was relatively new and growing, my kids were in school and starting to have their own distinctive personalities, and I was just generally enjoying a lot of what was going on in the world because things seemed to be pointing in a positive direction.

I’ve lost a lot of that optimism over the past 8 years though. In a nutshell, it’s not so easy as a white person to ignore all of the terrible things other white people do in the world. And even as a light has been shone upon these transgressions, the worst among us are doubling down on bad behavior and destructive attitudes. Plus we have the increasingly frequent climate change-related disasters that only the most stubborn or brainwashed can continue to deny.

But there have been more personal struggles as well: aging (and then eventually dying) parents, the difficulties of adolescence for our kids, my own aging body, the souring of some aspects of my business (*cough* Gutenberg *cough*). There have been plenty of good things too though, especially around my involvement in music. But overall, I would give the past several years a negative score.

All of that does make me nostalgic for the halcyon days of the early 2010s, and that’s a period I strongly associate with the music of Com Truise.

Happy 70th birthday to Geddy Lee of Rush!

I got seriously into Rush in late 1988, as a freshman in high school. But several years later — 2003, I think — when this 1984 tour film was finally released on DVD, I realized that I had seen it on TV (only once) circa 1985, presumably either on MTV or HBO, and had been completely enthralled with it as an 11-year-old. But since I never saw Rush again on TV, or heard them on the radio, I kind of forgot they existed until a friend (re)introduced me to them in high school, with a cassette tape of the then-new A Show of Hands concert album.

My jaw dropped the first time I watched this Grace Under Pressure Tour DVD, because I knew I had seen it before. Specifically, it was the video intro to “The Weapon” by Joe Flaherty as his SCTV vampire character “Count Floyd” that triggered the memory. Wow!

Geddy Lee was the reason I picked up the electric bass as a sophomore in high school. Happy birthday!

Chick Corea on the 8’s

After 30+ years, I’m trying to give this album another chance. (It’s not on Apple Music so I had to find it on YouTube.) I bought this album in high school after I joined jazz band and wanted to learn more about the genre. But I really did NOT like it, so I sold the CD, and haven’t heard it since.

I remember liking Chick Corea’s playing and John Patitucci’s bass, but I thought the synth tones were cheesy, the snare drum was mixed way too loud (I still think that), and I didn’t really care for either Frank Gambale’s guitar or Eric Marienthal’s sax.

Listening now… well, I think it’s much better than I remember it being, even if some of it does sound like it should be playing on the Weather Channel’s “Local on the 8’s.”

Radiohead albums as a timeline of my work history

I’m in a Radiohead mood today, listening to A Moon Shaped Pool, and I decided to kill some time (a.k.a. distract myself from work) by looking for a “listicle” ranking their albums, to see if I agreed with it. Here’s what I found. Pretty good. I would swap the positions of Amnesiac and Pablo Honey, and probably knock The Bends down to fifth (moving A Moon Shaped Pool and In Rainbows up by one each). Honestly I have barely listened to Pablo Honey (ever) or King of Limbs (beyond about a month after its release)… and I haven’t really listened to Hail to the Thief since In Rainbows came out.

It’s also hard for me to process the fact that they only have 9 studio albums… back in the early 2000s when I listened to them a lot there were a handful of EPs, extended singles, a live album, etc. that made their catalog seem a lot bigger.

(Also yes I did notice the author got the release year of Pablo Honey wrong… it was 1993, not 1995!)

I can tell when some of these were released by the mental image I have of where I was when I was listening to them.

Pablo Honey (1993) and The Bends (1995) — I didn’t really listen to Radiohead in the ’90s, but I remember these being on the periphery of my awareness in college.

OK Computer (1997) — I first heard this one in a friend’s studio apartment in Loring Park, Minneapolis shortly after it was released, and now I was paying attention to these guys. (We were living in California at the time, but I spent the night hanging out with some college friends when I came back to visit my family in Minnesota.)

Kid A (2000) — I remember first talking about it with my bandmates (one of whom was a coworker at my job at the time) at a rehearsal in our drummer’s basement in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis.

Amnesiac (2001) — I was working from home for the first few months after we moved to Atlanta, and I listened to this sitting in my basement workspace.

Hail to the Thief (2003) — Another basement… this time I was working for a travel industry startup with a terrible early 2000s tech startup name (and long-since defunct), and my desk was in the basement of a converted house in the northern Atlanta suburbs.

In Rainbows (2007) — The first pay-what-you-want album! I splurged for the big vinyl-plus-CD-plus-coffee-table-book set. I most associate it with my home office in the back bedroom of our first house in Minneapolis.

The King of Limbs (2011) — My wife was teaching at the University of Minnesota when this came out, and I was already self-employed at that point. I would meet up with her on campus for lunch once a week, and on those days I would generally just hang around somewhere on campus with my laptop working. I always associate this album with sitting in the open area on the lower level of the then-brand-new Bruininks Hall.

A Moon Shaped Pool (2016) — Another one I immediately purchased on vinyl. This was spinning frequently in the storefront studio space I was renting at the time in the East Nokomis area of Minneapolis.

Oh yeah… since that listicle I linked to will probably be as dead as my old travel industry tech startup’s website when I want to look back on this in 10 or 20 years (eek), here’s my ranking as of right now:

9. The King of Limbs
8. Pablo Honey
7. Amnesiac
6. Hail to the Thief
5. The Bends
4. A Moon Shaped Pool
3. In Rainbows
2. OK Computer
1. Kid A

Solid Gold Countdown ’82

Last week my wife tipped me off to this amazing artifact on YouTube, the broadcast by Pittsburgh’s channel 11 of the special Solid Gold Countdown ’82, which is… just… well… I can’t even put it into words. We watched the whole thing.

There is so much to unpack here. If you didn’t live through 1982, this will feel like it’s from another planet. As for me, it feels like going home.

But, I just have to say… of everything in here, the little nugget that has stayed with me for days after watching it is the commercial for a local car dealership, offering the low low interest rate of…

11.9%