You’re in the Matrix right, and big Morph is telling you he can upload data to your brain to expert you up in any field you want. What would your first choice? For me, #1 would be a tie between filmmaking and music creating. As a naturally untalented artist, I’m jealous of anyone who learned and stuck to an artform from childhood. I’ve always had an urge to try things that interest me. From getting into martial arts because of Bruce Lee movies to trying to draw comic books. Unfortunately for adult me, child me was severely average at everything, liked too many things and had the drive of a bulldog in the hot sun. Now I’m in the midst of turning my writing and directing passion into my career, so that’s good. But can’t help looking back on those chances to learn music as the main misstep of those most malleable years.
However, one thing I was very, very good at, was watching and listening. You might call me a savant of the settee. A hero of headphones. I’ve always been someone who people can get a recommendation from because I consume so much. Starting with my parents playing what they liked, to me abusing the radio, to then going to HMV and randomly buying CDs based on the covers, to the naughty downloads on LimeWire. When I got to teen age, I began an obsession with genre. Labelling every song in Windows Media Player with the specific sub-genre that I found on Wikipedia was a daily (weird as fuck) ritual. Searching and downloading every. single. possible. artist that fit in that sub-genre. Older me is always looking for new and old works that might speak to me, regardless of what I already like. But back then it was all about finding the next version of what I already liked. So these sub-cultures I got into, became imprinted to a specific time of my life.
These days there are new artists emerging in every genre so fast that Spotify’s Release Radar can barely keep up. We don’t listen to music on repeat like we used to. We don’t have a finite number of CDs or a limited iTunes library. Most of us have access to almost every single song that was ever made. We may have a song on repeat for a while, but usually it gets lost in the growing playlists.
But when that track comes on that you forgot about, it comes with its own memories. It reminds you of the time you went on a cross country drive, or a holiday, or that time you tied up a police officer after your heist went awry and you danced around him with a razor. You know, the good times.
So I came up with an idea which I hope people will replicate. A timeline of songs that came into my purview at a significant moment in time. Or songs that remind me of a milestone or transition for me.
This won’t be a timeline of releases (though that will occur at times) but songs that retrospectively represent an important milestone or transition. And, maybe, will get you thinking about your own.
Going to split it into three posts for brevity: Childhood, Teenage, Adulthood.
Simon X. Frederick's Scripts and Stuff 