Fast Times: WVUM's High School Music Picks - Andie

Alright, here is the sitch, muchachos. I really don’t consider myself my own person before I turned fifteen. Of course, I had inklings of a personality and I definitely had specific preferences, but I was not yet a full person. Its arguable whether I am a full person now because we are ever changing and never fully complete and yada yada yada, but at the very least, I think I’ve started to come into my personality. 

Why fifteen? Here’s why.

 My friend and I were waddling through New York when we decided to say fuck it, “Let’s walk to Brooklyn”. Of course, we chose to do so by crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. It was summer, so the tourists were packed tighter than a sardine can. Note that they were all on the pedestrian side which is three, maybe four feet wide. And don’t you dare think about crossing into the bike lane because if you get into the bike lane then a bike person will either yell at you until your ear drum pops, or it would be death by bicycle. Point is, it was loud, it was hot, and there were too many people to enjoy anything. There was a moment where we escaped the crowd and found respite in a nook overlooking the highway and water. This is where I’m a bit unsure of what happened. Essentially, when I rested my hand on the rail, I felt an energy pass through me so strong that I had visions of every person that had crossed the bridge. All the lovers that had proposed and embraced each other, all the people who contemplated jumping, all the bikers who had yelled at pedestrians. I felt so overwhelmed with pure emotion I whipped my hand off the rail and started to cry. Once I got a grip, we entered the massive hoard of people yet again and kept walking. We entered Brooklyn, and I felt exposed to the all the pain, all the joy, all the anger the world had to offer. I became vulnerable and open. That’s the exact moment that I credit with waking me up and becoming a person. It was truly surreal, and I have no possible explanation for what happened.

Gosh, I sound like those spiritual whosits that go on and on about who knows what. Point is, from that moment, I started to relish the things I had ignored. Let me clarify, it not like I was like “wow, I’ve been blessed and now I must live my life differently than ever before because I’ve been blessed, and this is a blessing and now im blessed.” No. That is not what happened. The best way I can put it is the feeling you get when you put on glasses for the first time and realize that those green blobs that shake in the wind are trees. And those trees have leaves. And those leaves are of different colors, textures, and shapes. That’s what it felt like. Like I could finally see, feel, and appreciate the world around me for what it was. And it is breathtaking to say the least. 

How all of this relates to music: Before I turned fifteen, music was just something that would play in the background that was my life. It never meant anything beyond the noise it produced which all sounded the same to me. So, why listen to music at all? 

Post B.B. (Brooklyn Bridge) music became something else entirely. It was the sonic expression of life, a new medium that I had never explored. But I had to start from scratch. I went from no music to rapidly consuming songs like a starving animal. Here are a couple of playlists for you to get the idea: 

Pre B.B.

Post B.B.

Now if we’re maneuvering through the title wave that is my change in music taste, I’ll break it up through my discovery of genres:

Post B.B., the first song I listened to was Hideaway by Jacob Collier and hence started my everlasting love affair with jazz. If you haven’t listened to Hideaway before, I recommend listening to it immediately in a room with no light and a good set of headphones. From Jacob Collier, I eased my way into jazz by starting off with some swing; Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman were my go tos. Then Chet Baker showed up with his smooth romantic voice. That’s when I got hip to jazz voice and started listening to the greats like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. The big kicker was my first listen to George Gershwin’s full opera, Porgy and Bess, which exposed me to a world of jazz. I cannot count the number of versions of Summertime I have heard in the past three years. And they’re all so amazing!

If you’re just starting to get into jazz, here is my beginners’ playlist that I used to listen to a lot. Looking at it now, half of it isn’t jazz, but who was I to know? I was a baby, just a little high school sophomore. 

In junior year, a lot of my music started to come from the movies and books I would read. For a while I was obsessed with Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity and it’s filled to the brim with amazing artists and albums. That’s what got me interested in pop and a bunch of sad music from the 80s and 90s. I was so into High Fidelity that I scouted and wrote down every song, lyric, album, artist, whatever that I could find in the book and made a playlist from it.

  And this book came right on time because 2017-2018 is when I started to get really, brutally sad. Part of this sadness was due to the discovery of boys and heartbreak as well as dealing with the never-ending pressures related to school and worst of all having to live with a lunatic. So, Hornby’s main character Rob and I were like two peas in a pod. Listening to the sentimental pop music that helped us through our misery. Rob (aka Hornby) made a good point though: “Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"- Rob” 

My favorite artists were The Smiths, Joni Mitchell, and Elvis Costello. But if I were to choose one song that defined that period of my life it would be These Days performed by Nico.

Towards the end of junior year and beginning of senior year I was introduced to punk in the best way possible: by a xeroxed copy-paper zine I found on a shelf at a record store. Terminal Punk: Punk Philosophy totally changed my view of the genre. I used to think it was all about destruction and anarchism and people spitting into the faces of the audience. V. Vale, the author of the zine, made it clear to me that punk began as a way of life for a people that felt rejected by their society and then manifested itself into music. Doc Martens, before they became iconic for their meaty grunge look, were first a tool for those that had no choice but to walk everywhere they went because they couldn’t afford transportation otherwise. The ratty clothes didn’t start as a style thing until Richard Hell started tearing holes in his shirts and closing them up with safety pins. Punk was a movement for the kids that couldn’t afford to do shit but repatch their ripped pants for the thousandth time and break the empty beer bottles in their alleyways. The Punk philosophy was to do everything yourself because no one else is going to care what happens to you either way. Really, the term “punk” was coined by PUNK, a magazine three fellas started in New Jersey where their first issue waged a war against disco and briefly mentioned the raw power of The Ramones. 

With all that in mind, punk music started to have more meaning to me. I started to understand a little bit more about what these kids were trying to say. They were being outrageous because they didn’t think anyone was listening. They said and did what no one else was willing to do because why not? So, my journey began with the Velvet Underground and then the Stooges (Iggy Pop became my idol for a bit). I dabbled in the New York Dolls and Suicidal Tendencies. Richard Hell was super cool too, so I was listening to Television and Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Then I discovered Brit Punk and I listened to Don’t Mind the Bollocks over and over again. The first album I ever bought that was mine, like really mine, was London Calling. I moved into more modern punk etc with Le Tigre, Bikini Kill, Anti-Flag, Nirvana and more. Reading became important for me too because it was an essential aspect of punk philosophy. Part of being a punk is being well-informed. Informed about what the hell is happening in the world, the country, the city, and most importantly your community because then, at the very least, you could have something real to make fun of. Books like The Color of Law and Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance were very impactful. If you want to wade into the punk pool, I suggest reading Please Kill Me: The Oral History of Punk.

The end of senior year hit the second wave of jazz where the music became more serious to me. Not that I didn’t still love Chet Baker, but listening to complete jazz albums instead of individual songs made a huge difference. This time too, I was more interested in the complexities of the music rather than finding a tune that I liked. Personally, the moments of improvisation were the most enjoyable parts. Of course, it is ironic because by recording the sessions the improvisation no longer felt improvised anymore. They were my favorite parts that I could whistle right back to you. Some of my favorite albums at the time were Oscar Peterson Trio Plus One, The Thing To Do, and Undercurrent. Skating in Central Park by Bill Evans remains one of my top five songs of all time. Of course, there is a lot for me still to learn about jazz, but the way I got into it was recognizing how complex it was. These musicians were pulling out beauty from their souls and manifesting it into music. Beyond that, there are so many rules that have to be followed whilst they come up with everything in the moment. It’s insane what happening in their brains and how they non-verbally coordinate their thoughts with the band’s other personnel. I would do my best to explain the process of improvisation as a non-jazz musician, but I simply could not do it justice. 

That being said while I love listening to these albums, there is no substitute for experiencing jazz in person. I know it’s quite difficult to go to live shows now, but UM has one of the best Jazz programs in the country AND they have free concerts almost weekly. What I’m trying to say is that we got some of the best in our own backyard and the only ones listening to them are in the MSJ program. 

Some honourable mentions from my years as a high school student:

Andrew Bird – The Mysterious Production of Eggs (album)

C4Trío – Dejala Bailar

Mac Miller – Swimming (album)

Beabadobee – Lice (album) 

The Soundtracks of Rushmore and Clueless

What I’ve come to realize through this process is that everybody gets to the music they listen to in different ways and it means different things to them. I like to learn from my music and learn about the music I’m listening to. Others prefer music that helps them escape and there are those just looking for something to dance to. There is a whole world out there and music is being released every second. There is no way to listen to it all, but it sure is fun trying!

P.S. Here is the only photo I have of myself on the Brooklyn Bridge. Enjoy.