Needed: One major culture change

This is not a request, a suggestion, or a passing idea.

This is a plea. I am begging you.

For the love of anything sacred in American [and western] culture, it's time we re-examine what we hold important.

To those of you who listen to mainstream radio owned and operated by Clear Channel Communication (click here if you don't know), I beg of you one thing:

Explore your options. Listen to music that hasn't tested well in radio markets. Listen to lyrics. Learn to not only hear music, but listen to it. Feel it. 

If what you're listening to includes lyrics about chains, jewelry, women and cars, I blame you just as much as producers for killing one of the few things we should actually be proud of: culture. OUR music: blues, jazz, rock and roll, bebop, swing, and all the fusions that come along with what used to be a beautiful process of natural artistic evolution.

Here is my challenge to you:

1) Listen to public radio. If you live in Minneapolis-St. Paul, try 89.3 The Current (or stream it online). This is a station that plays something that resembles music. Real, natural, organic music.

2) Explore America's history. Begin to take pride in more than our pride. Have you ever wondered what we've actually given the world other than a higher per-capita ego? We have a rich history which created so many new genres that have spread all over the world. 

Before you listen to that synthetically-produced crap again, get a healthy dose of real American music.

Here's the prescription. You need to take a listen to these. Seriously:

• Muddy Waters
• Howlin' Wolf
• Mississippi John Hurt
• Woody Guthrie
• Chuck Berry
• Sam Cooke
• Wilco
• Bob Dylan
• North Mississippi All-Stars
• Ryan Adams
• Lucinda Williams
• Jimi Hendrix... and not just the ones you know-- find some deep tracks
• Johnny Cash (you think you like "country"? this is country)
• George Gershwin
• Dizzie Gillespie
• Hank Williams (the real one, not the third)

Again... let me suggest that you listen to some of the music of all the artists listed above. If you find something you like, do a little digging. 

Be a committed participant in culture.

If you find, after listening to all of this, that you simply don't like any of it, then fine. 

Return to your commercial radio. 

Return to being a music consumer rather than a music fan.

Return to allowing one of the major contributions of America slowly get flushed by vocoders, producers as artists, and money-driven "art".

Northstar Line! Yes!

It's about damn time.

And all of a sudden, Fridley is actually a part of the city. I am so thrilled that we are breaking ground on building more commuter rails.

Again.

Life's Soundtrack: A Few Musical Nuggets

Music has played many roles in my life: it has most often provided me a meditative space within myself to interpret, reflect upon and detoxify myself from a messy reality. It has both sparked the flame of friendships and fed the fire of deep, intense relationships.

In many ways, some combination of melodies, harmonies and snippets of lyrical phrases have shaped my life and continue to provide some context for how I see it happening.

That being said, I want to share with you a short list of some of the albums that I absolutely identify with and have trouble separating from who I am at the very core.

1. The Beatles - “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

“Sgt Pepper” was the first album I bought with my own money. I had just gotten my first CD player boombox for Christmas, and had a gift certificate to spend at Sam Goody. I had no idea where to start, and per my mom’s suggestion, this is the one I blindly purchased.

I popped it in my player hit play, and I kid you not, I did not take it out for well over a year. In my mind, after hearing it, I did not need any new music. Ever. To some extent, I still believe that.

The Beatles have taken me on so many journeys in my mind since that first listen. I learned how to interpret lyrics from this album. I mourned the loss of Lennon while listening to the song “A Day in the Life” on repeat for about a week. I learned how to have an intimate relationship with music. I am forever grateful to my mom and to the Beatles for this album.

2. Barenaked Ladies - “Gordon”

I was introduced to Barenaked Ladies’ “Gordon” in about 1994, I believe. I was seven years old. There isn’t a bad track on the whole damn thing. BNL means more to me than I know how to write in short— they are fantastic, you need to listen to this album again if you haven’t recently.

Starting with “Gordon”, Barenaked Ladies taught me how to be goofy while remaining genuine. They are masters of the art.

3. k.d. Lang - “Ingenue”

Have you heard this, one chapter of the soundtrack of my childhood? As long as I have had the ability to distinguish voices from each other, k.d.’s voice has been in my head. Some of my very favorite memories take place in our living room, yellow with artificial light. Brynn and I danced and sang along to Ingenue in our P.J.s. We used to do this quite a bit, actually, and I now realize that this album provided us some great memories which we’ll always look back on, almost with some jealousy for our younger selves.

Also, k.d. Lang was on Pee Wee Herman’s Christmas special when we was really little. That was awesome.

4. Lucinda Williams - “World Without Tears”

Brieanna gave this one to me a couple years back during a period of time that was fairly difficult for both of us. She had driven down to the Twin Cities from Cloquet on a damp, cloudy autumn afternoon and gave me this CD to listen to. As that winter progressed, we talked almost every night on the phone— her from northern Minnesota, me from my dark, cold bedroom in our rental house in SE Minneapolis. There were a number of mornings I woke up with my ear to the receiver of my cell phone, all tangled up in a sea of blankets after falling asleep singing “People Talkin’” to each other a few hours before.

I cannot hear Lucinda Williams anymore without thinking fondly of that time of my life, talking with Brieanna. I hope to have more conversations like those. In the meanwhile, I’ll keep listening to this album.

5. Guster - “Keep it Together”

The fine gentlemen of Guster are some of my best friends. They are not aware of this, but they are. Since I was in high school, their music has spoken to me in a very real way. The song “Come Downstairs and Say Hello” hits me in a weirdly sentimental and nostalgic way each time I hear the first guitar line noodling through my head.

This album reminds me a lot of my freshman year of college. I’m sure my roommate Matt got really sick of it toward the end of the year. Obviously not too much though— he agreed to live with me for 2 years after that!

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I will perhaps share some more of my favorites at another time, but for now, this list of 5 has been fun to discuss with you. What are your favorites? Which albums stick out in your mind as ones that really shaped you as a person?