We return to the Re-Listening Project, where I am forever trying to keep up with what is in my car’s CD player. What’s in my car’s CD player is the entirety of my CD collection. Well, not all at once, that’d be a spectacular device. We’re surely decades away from having the technology to put hundred and hundreds and a few more hundred CDs on one simple machine.
But I can load several at a time in my car, and what I’m currently doing is listening to all of these old circles of plastic, in order. It’s a fun thing to do. And some of it is fun to write about. These aren’t reviews, but fun of memories, and a few good licks.
And this is the first record that, on this go around of the Re-Listening Project, that I’ve listened to twice. It got dismissed as mediocre at the time, but “Friction, Baby” has aged well as Better Than Ezra’s sophomore effort.
I listen to Tom Drummond’s bass line as much as anything.
But, first, Kevin Griffin’s post-alternative lyrics. This is 1996. I was 19 and, true to pop form, there’s a little something in there for most everyone or most any mood.
But that rhythm section, man, that still demands your attention a quarter century later.
I worked with someone during high school and college and the album title became a salutation and a closing because we both liked the record. She was from Vestavia, and, yes, this album is that suburban. I don’t know if I ever asked her what her favorite song on this was.
Do you ever wonder when the last time someone listened to something was? And how, after a long time away from it, if their impression had gone in some different way than your own? Perceptions are funny, inconsistent and perfectly valid that way. Anyway, there’s a nice mandolin on here, too. As I said, a little something for every mood.
Perhaps, in the long reach of life, you wonder why you did a thing, or spent so much time around a person or people. Maybe that’s why she’s unfriended me. (A fate worse than meh!) Maybe that’s why you stopped listening to a record you used to enjoy. That and other albums and other priorities. But it’s nice to go back and see what still works, and what you hear differently. Somewhere in all of that you get to decide what to lean into, and what deserves a cringe.
Anyway, we used this track on my college radio morning show. (Speaking of cringe!) Open mics, talking to the post and signing off for the day.
Top of the world, I guess.
I’m certain that I picked up this next album as a station giveaway. Probably it was the cover art that intrigued me. If anything, I’d heard one song on the thing. Probably something we played at the campus station. I don’t remember this getting a lot of commercial airplay, but as another sophomore album it got a lot of play from me in late 1996 and definitely 1997.
It’s Melissa Ferrick’s “Willing to Wait.” Ferrick is still touring. Still making music, and also teaching the craft, these days at Northeastern University. And while this is Ferrick’s second record, consider this. This is a career that started as a 21-year-old woman, opening for Morrisey. That’s ridiculous, but none too big for the Cracker Jack Kid. It’s honest, simple, complex, ragged, truthful, vulnerable, aggressive, and not at all a radio-friendly record. Which is probably how I came to see it on the giveaway table. But critics, and Ferrick’s fans, liked it. If any of those adjectives appeal to you, there’s something for you here.
This is the “Cracker Jack Kid” song, for the reference above.
I had this idea, listening to this record this time: what would this song, and it’s specific themes, feel like if a male did it?
Oh, and we didn’t cover this, but this album is full of intriguing instrumentation.
And some yodeling, or at least a fun little run of scat.
There was a girl — I was in college, so of course there was a girl — and this isn’t the song that I attached to that breakup, but this record was in heavy rotation at the time, and there’s this lyric here, about remembering the color of a doorknob, it sticks with you.
I lived in a two-floor apartment during the time I was listening to this a lot and also feeling that particular breakup. (I was the wrong religion, basically.) The downstairs was a cinderblock building. But the upstairs was simply two sheets of wood paneling. I could hear when my neighbor signed on to AOL. I could hear when she had mail. And, perhaps worse, when she didn’t.
Only now, thinking of how I sat on my stairs and learned one of the louder songs on this CD, have I thought about what music my neighbor heard for three years on her side of the wall.
Oh, look! A live version of one of the songs!
Someone played the stripped down version of their work is always so interesting.
And, just for perspective, that girl? The cheerleader grew into a woman who became a teacher, pretty perfect for her, I think. Her oldest kid is older, today, than we were back then. The last song on Ferrick’s record is titled “Time Flies.”
No kidding.
It was a bronze-colored doorknob, by the way.
