I can think myself out of most anything. I can squeeze the joy out of an experience in exchange for the dry and the logical with ease. But as I’ve gotten older and more invested in holding close those things that make me feel happy, I’ve gotten better at stopping myself before all of that begins.
I’ve never been cool about music. I rarely know what’s new and hip. I’ve spent most of my life absorbing musical knowledge from those around me. It’s not that I don’t have opinions, don’t prefer some genres over others, but unlike so much of my other learning I don’t actively seek out new information. I’ve never hid in the nooks and crannies of bookstores devouring astronomically-priced music industry glossies like I often have with those centered on fashion. Instead I happily left the bulk of my education in the hands of others.
I am, and have been for more than half of my life, a Dave Matthews Band fan. For the large majority of that stretch, I’ve been a hidden and rather shameful one. I’m not immune to caring what others think of me, and I am aware of the full-throated ridicule that one gets for admitting such things outside of the east coast prep school community.
I never attended a concert, there was little interest on my part and never enough money for it anyway. No, I kept most of my enjoyment confined to my room, playing CDs that ran from 1994’s Remember Two Things to 2002’s Busted Stuff while staring plaintively at the ceiling.
My love, as love so often does, has multiple layers, but the root rests with those who introduced the music into my life. Although I have a number of issues, some unresolved, with many of the institutions of my youth, there were people in those places that I loved and who loved this quiet, awkward girl in return.
When I moved back home from New York City in 2009, I constructed an emotional life raft for myself made out of stories. I filled my time with books and films and paintings and music because they distracted me from job applications and cover letters and the failure that greeted me at every turn. The books and films were chosen almost at random and ran the gamut from histories to comedies to sweeping fantasies. But in the music I was searching for a certain type of story. It was no surprise that I returned to those Dave Matthews Band CDs and once again took to listening to them while staring plaintively at the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. It wasn’t nostalgia. I find nostalgia limiting. To yearn for a past that you can’t return to, to gild it and erase all of its problems, is an exercise in futility.
I didn’t want to return to the past, there was love there but there was also pain, but I enjoyed playfully romping through the good bits like learning how to chop down a tree in the Vermont wilderness and softly swinging in a hammock and standing on a deck as the city below is brought to stillness by seemingly endless snow. And I liked thinking of those who were near me as those events unfolded.
One day during my first extended stay at home after college, I walked into my room to find a small person asleep in my bed. My niece was splayed across it with my iPod clenched in her hand and the cord from my headphones messily draped across her chest. She had a penchant for borrowing my things, wearing my denim jacket even though it swam on her tiny frame and carrying her school books in one of my messenger bags. She would shrug her shoulders when asked why, but it can be hard for someone to admit the need to feel close to another. As I moved nearer, I began to make out the mumbled words of the song that was blasting into her poor little ears on a loop.
I laughed quietly to myself before removing the earbuds, carefully untangling the cord, and sliding the iPod out of her hand. She aimed a sleepy swat in my direction before rolling over and settling back into whatever dream she’d been having before I so callously disturbed her in my effort to protect her eardrums.
Apparently she had found yet another thing to borrow.
Tags: dave matthews band, guilty pleasures, i also have a thing for guster, music
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I find nostalgia limiting. To yearn for a past that you can’t return to, to gild it and erase all of its problems, is an exercise in futility.
I find nostalgia pretty pointless as well, but I do often think back to my younger self, especially in high school and college. I think back with concern, and exasperation, and love, and gratitude that Younger Me somehow got wise and resilient enough to make it into Current Me.
(And I try to keep in mind that Older Me will probably be looking back at 40-year-old me with the same affection and impatience.)
That same passage got me as well.
I can’t actually remember a time when I didn’t want to move away from my hometown. I finally moved away for undergrad but spent summers back home. As the years wore on, I went back less frequently. When I did, I would often go out with people who had stayed behind and they were still going to the same bars, ordering the same drinks, listening to the same music, still talking about stuff that happened in high school, and I found it an ever-more-joyless exercise. I found the outright hostility toward newness and growth and change oppressive. I had grown and changed, things and people I brought with me were new. Even if I had once belonged, I no longer did.
“I’ve never been cool about music. I rarely know what’s new and hip. I’ve spent most of my life absorbing musical knowledge from those around me. It’s not that I don’t have opinions, don’t prefer some genres over others, but unlike so much of my other learning I don’t actively seek out new information.”
YES. I’ve always wanted to found a support group for people like me, People Who Love Music but Don’t Really Care about It.
I will come to your support group. I hate trying to start new Pandora stations because trying to think of an artist I like makes a giant question mark appear over my head (and invariably the ones I can think of are like obscure soundtrack composers that they wouldn’t have). I have a public radio membership but never use the early ticket sales benefits because I don’t care about live shows. My name is logicbutton, and I am not a music geek.
I will join this as well! Baltimore has a thriving indie music scene (Future Islands, Dan Deacon, etc.), and I feel like a bit of rube on not going to live shows but.. I can never really seem to bring myself to look into the latest bands or go even though I am right here.
There is probably a 15 year old in the suburbs that is probably hating me right now.
Can our support group come up with some way to fend off the “so what kind of music are you into” question that comes up with every first date and new friend? Some way to say “I’ve mostly been listening to the same six or eight albums on repeat since about 2009 and I have no particular plans for branching out”
I fear that question more than any other in social interaction. The only good thing is that music geekery is based so heavily on obscure cred that you can make stuff up and people won’t even know.
“What kind of music are you into?”
“Well, I’ve really gotten into the… uh, the Blargles? lately.”
“Oh. I don’t know if I know them.”
“Yeah, they’re not mainstream at all, but they’re pioneering this awesome new… uh, electro-pop funkpunk hiphop garage rock sound. Like a cross between the, uh… the Diamond Jims and DJ Cool Boner? You know?”
I’m reluctant to look into new music, but I would make an exception for something called DJ Cool Boner.
YUP
I’d join your support group! I spent a mildly embarrassing fifteen minutes in a coworker’s car the other week as she flipped from song to song on her phone, asking if I’d heard it before. The answer was no to all of them because all the music I listen to is kinda old and often mildly obscure (but never in a cool way) and I haven’t been in the mood to go hunt down new artists in years.
But I do listen to music a lot. It’s just…the same music. Or internet radio that just brings random songs to me.
I might have actually just taken off my seatbelt, opened the door, and rolled into traffic in that situation.
Not gonna lie, that was something I briefly considered. That, or pulling out my iPod and stealing the stereo cable. ‘But have you heard THIS ballet score? No?’
ooo which ballet score?!
It is (the only one I have, since mostly I just go for film and tv scores) John Cale’s ballet for Nico.
I love it and I listen to it a lot when I’m writing… but I rather suspect that I’m the only person I know irl who’s familiar with it.
Was it top 40 stuff? The only thing that saves me in those situations is my tendency to regularly happy hour with some friends at a nearby gay bar. If it is a song that will get paid for on the jukebox at a mildly-seedy gay bar, I’ve at least heard it enough times to form an opinion on it.
It was… I think. Most of my radio listening comes at work and the places I work tend to tune the music either to country or to some blandly inoffensive station that mostly plays soft rock from no later than 2006. But knowing what I hear in terms of artist buzz, it had to be top 40 stuff.
I guess this means I will have to let the coworker in question drag me out to the friendly neighborhood mildly-seedy gay bar so I won’t be so behind on the earworms.
I sort of bum around music geeks and pick up by osmosis. Saves me the work of finding new stuff for myself!
Yes! Music is OK, I like music just fine…but I don’t really like going to shows, I get bored, and I just don’t really care about ferreting out music that is new and cool. When I was younger I used to dread answering the “What kind of music are you into” question because I never had an answer. And now I just say “eh…whatever, I don’t really know much about music” and it’s fine! And often by doing so I discover others likes us, the non-music geeks of the world.
I would like to join your support group. I live in Austin- music just sort of happens at me most of the time. I listen to one of the local spanish-language stations in the car most of the time because they don’t talk so damn much in the mornings (plus Juanes).
Most of my Pandora stations slowly and inevitably drift to become the same station, too.
“Most of my Pandora stations slowly and inevitably drift to become the same station, too.”
Me too. There needs to be a name for this phenomenon.
Can the first meeting be “let’s find five reasonably popular songs you can sing right away, instead of thumbing through the karaoke dictionary for an hour”?
Two posts in and my eyeballs have already turned into little hearts.
I first heard DMB while driving through Wisconsin in the middle of night when I was 14; just my older sister and I were awake, with the rest of my family sleeping in the back of the van.
I thought it was magical, and it was so cool because my sister liked it and obviously everything my sister liked was cool. While I have since moved on, I still have friends who are unabashed DMB fans, and they travel to the Gorge in George, Washington each Labor Day for the DMB concert weekend.
oh boy. I even live in the same city as Dave Matthews and upset people with my dislike of him. but oh, you and your niece, and oh, that is so lovely.
on a tangential note, I go see an astrologer sometimes, and when people roll their eyes at me about seeing an astrologer, I insist that she is just a regular person and offer “She’s a huge Dave Matthews fan!”
I loved DMB in high school! I still associate it with just driving around aimlessly, with a friend or by myself even, not wanting to go home but not wanting to go anywhere else either.
Also, I had this conversation with A Boy-
Me: Oh, yes, I like DMB too! That one line, “winter’s cold, spring rescinds” is so pretty to me.
A Boy: Um, it’s actually, “spring ERASES…”
Me: That doesn’t even SCAN!!!!
(He was right. I was unmoved.)
I started listening to DMB in high school because they were my crush’s favorite band…. oh, my misspent dirtbag youth
Can one truly be a dirtbag AND a Dave Matthews fan? I’m not saying no, I’m just saying it requires further thought.
If nothing else, *I* was the dirtbag for being all “Right on, this band I’m only pretending to have listened to is totally the best”
I eventually gave her that denim jacket, and I’ve yet to replace it.
I am such a huge nostalgic DMB fan too! My mom and I listened to DMB all the time when I was a kid and it reminds me so much of my childhood. My current roommate did the same thing with her family and now we put on “Live at Red Rocks” and assemble Ikea furniture together.
YOU GUYS! My aunt taught Dave Matthews Sunday school back in the day. He gave her a demo tape.
Wait are we not supposed to like Guster?
I love Guster with all of my heart, but sometimes admitting it can cause some side-eye.
perhaps like DMB, it is the fans? also I will never see them live because they insist on playing festivals full of those fans and their hackety sacks.
You guys, I quoted Dave in my high school commencement speech. In front of my entire class, teachers, and their families. I can never undo that.
The first concert I ever went to was Wallflowers opening for The Counting Crows when I was 16.
Samantha, first your essay on writing and now DMB…are we the same person????
I grew up in Austin, and fifteen year old me went to like four shows a week and then saw all the cool up and coming bands at SXSW. Fastforward six years later and I’ve realized that I will never again be as cool as I was at fifteen. I will never go to that many concerts, I will never be that up to date on the latest music, none of it. My default playlist right now is full of Kesha and Fall Out Boy.
Somehow, I’m okay with that.
I grew up in Austin, and fifteen year old me went to like four shows a week and then saw all the cool up and coming bands at SXSW. Fastforward six years later and I've realized that I will never again be as cool as I was at fifteen. I will never go to that many concerts, I will never be that up to date on the latest music, none of it. My default playlist right now is full of Kesha and Fall Out Boy.
Somehow, I'm okay with that.
It is possible I was such a devoted and persistent DMB fan for SO LONG precisely because a lot of people in my life so vocal about hating the band.
My love has long since mellowed, but I still know all the words to The Best of What’s Around and I will love Two Step until my heart stops beating.
It is possible I was such a devoted and persistent DMB fan for SO LONG precisely because a lot of people in my life so vocal about hating the band.
My love has long since mellowed, but I still know all the words to The Best of What's Around and I will love Two Step until my heart stops beating.
My first DMB concert was Fenway Park in Boston! What a show!