My Music Player, Continued

The thing about listening to music on headphones, in the middle of a crowd, is that you turn it up higher and you actually listen. I am not announcing this as though I just discovered it. I remembered the fact yesterday when I was on my way to work, listening to the New Pornographers album “Challengers” and found myself having to leave the train at my destination and then walk quickly outside to the farthest point facing north so that my tears could mingle with the rain for a while before going in to work became a possibility.

I have heard the album a few times since we bought it last year but, like they say in counselor training, had not listened so closely to it as I did yesterday, with the headphones on, turned up nice and loud to make sure everyone was drowned out, even the music player of the person next to me who was listening to House mixes and hitting me with her TNA bag while she danced.

The flip side of this emotional coin is that on the way home, after a day whose unpleasant tone had been set by the crying jag of first my son and then me, no fool, I attempted to play less emotional, less good, in a word, tunes, that I might be in an improved mood when I got to daycare to get Trombone. And so I did play Soundgarden, because Soundgarden has never made me cry except for that one time when Chris Cornell cut his hair, and so I did hear “Spoonman,” nay, listened to “Spoonman” all the way through and man. That is a wretched song. It is just awful. Who the hell thought it was OK? Don’t albums have editors?

More importantly, because this is my automatic comparison of late, how is it any better than Sharon, Lois and Bram?

Here, for your comparison, Trombone’s current favourite SLB song, “Little Sir Echo” versus “Spoonman.”

Little sir echo how do you do?
Hello! (hello)
Hello! (hello)
Little sir echo I’m awfully blue
Hello (hello)
Hello (hello)
Hello (hello)
Hello (hello)
Won’t you come over and play?
You’re a nice little fellow
I know by your voice
but you’re always so far
a-wayyyyyyyyyyy (to its credit, Trombone sings along with the “play” and “away” lines rather endearingly)

and then:

Feel the rhythm with your hands
Steal the rhythm while you can, spoonman
Speak the rhythm on your own
Speak the rhythm all alone, spoonman
Spoonman, come together with your hands
Save me, I’m together with your plan
Save me

All my friends are Indians
All my friends are brown and red, spoonman
All my friends are skeletons
They beat the rhythm with their bones,
Spoonman
Spoonman, come together with your hands
Save me, I’m together with your plan
Save me
Feel the rhythm with your hands
Steal the rhythm while you can, spoonman

(And – spoon solo!)

And lo, new internal standards in music have been set. If it isn’t better than Sharon, Lois and Bram, lyrically or musically, I’m moving on.