I’ve been thinking a lot about loss lately. It’s as if anything that can be had can be lost and eventually it all is.
From parents to siblings, friends, girlfriends/boyfriends, pets, money, memories, waistlines, hairlines, teeth…you name it. They all go. We live in anticipation of goodbyes.
There’s a thread however that runs through all of these that doesn’t depart. If it had a name I’d give it one, but it’s certainly an intangible—a faint buzz perhaps when the pieces are coming together, a hint of sunnier climates or of possibilities yet to materialize that summon a sad spirit in the sweetest ways. The first breeze through an open window maybe.
At the record fair last week I was tempted to repurchase a record or seven to re-conjure a sweetness that arose in and around a LP once adored. Frankly, I was in a room full of people doing the same thing, some having not yet danced with Miles Davis or Bootsy Collins or whomever.
My shelves of records are just like that too—bookmarks of all things lost, the last remnant of the butterfly net of years.
Last week I railed on the old, corporate guard that doesn’t realize that the paradigms have shifted especially in the barren wasteland that’s contemporary terrestrial radio. We may have gotten accustomed to its loss but why work to underscore its inevitability?
For me, the human element’s all but gone from radio and while satellite radio may have removed much of the commercials, it’s as stale as can be. What good are ‘deep cuts’ without any human relevance behind the music?
So, if you lug your own box of records to the radio station, sit down with a story or seven and cue up a new old favorite, you might have the makings of pretty compelling radio. See, tales of loss set to music we all have in common whether you can dance to ‘em or not.
If you stoke it, the fire stays lit. Before it gets lost, anyway.
ELO – Can’t Get It Out of My Head (Mp3)
Cliff Richard – We Don’t Talk Anymore (Mp3)
Graham Parker – You Can’t Be Too Strong (Mp3)
Phil Lynott – Talk In ’79 (Mp3)
Steely Dan – Dirty Work (Mp3)
