Sand Through A Screen

Today's a music post.

Earlier this week, mysteriously my hard drive (yet unnamed) lost all of it's music, and thus so did I. So after burning every CD in reach, I set out to undergo the Herculean labor of reconstruction the rest from torrents. The day I began, Demonoid, my preferred service went down for maintenance (which may or may not be code for 'the Swiss are sueing us') and the depth of my task took on further magnitude.

Luckily, a reliable source was not as difficult to find as I had originally imagined it would be. Which left, for the first phase, only the cataloging of past library from the circumstantial evidence of a rarely used last.fm account and and studied recollections of several afternoons.

When this was accomplished I began the yet-incomplete Phase Two; actual downloading from this list of compiled music.

A task that could not be done in a silence lacking lyrics and rhythm (in fact many facets of life I encounter are like this). For the interrem, I investigated a bit, and concluded that downloading Songbird would be acceptable. So far it has been. I acquire small bits of music at a time (500 MB is small now!) and then transfer them into a folder that Songbird recursively scans.

This has meant that (despite many crashes as Songbirds library doubles or triples in size) I have been confined to listening to a few artists. The ones at the top of the list. The one I remember most fondly. Often...the ones I haven't listened to much recently.

Come with me as I experience the nostalgia and excellence that's sustaining me through this Reconstruction Era.

Gregg Gillis blows me away. I can actually lose myself dancing to him. I can't tell you how reliving that is. His music lets me to, paraphrase Joseph Campbell, " hear the music as poetry instead of in terms of prose", as it were. Wasteland defeated.

Hot Fuss changed my life. It was one of the first albums of modern music, one specifically I discovered independently that connected to me on innumerable levels. Consequently the sounds that came with it introduced me to a whole new side of rock. Don't worry though, not a The Killer's cheerleader, and they're not the next Springsteen.

M.Ward describes the mythic struggle of fear against freedom and the inevitable victory of maturity. This song shakes me with both sorrow and hope.

"And I said
What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart
and how can a man like me remain in the light
and if life is really as short as they say
then why is the night so long
and then the sun went down
and he sang for me this song

See I once was a young fool like you
afraid to do the things
that I knew I had to do
So I played an escapade just like you
I played an escapade just like you"

Float On is an anthem of our era. "Shit happens, but that's okay." Historians will discuss this song's importance. To me it's important that it's chord progression marched my ears straight to Heaven.

More later.