"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns and watching violent videos, but nobody worries about kids listening to thousands -- literally thousands -- of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" With Rob Gordan as muse, Jean Ellen Cowgill explores how we can be our own best DJs.
Oh, Rob, ye master of the mix tape. If I had to make a top-five list of first film lines, your wise words would make the cut.
"High Fidelity" (2000) is a film that was totally ahead of its time. Back when the '00s were running this campus (and we '08s were dominating the middle school parking lot), you would have needed a dorm room crammed with CDs to have enough musical resources to create soundtracks for everything from your worst break-ups to your ex-girlfriend's dad's funeral (i.e. to compete with the likes of a Rob Gordon character). For the average '00, I'm guessing it just wasn't feasible.
Enter the iPod, Limewire, Pandora and the "abuse: song request" Blitz to your sorority, fraternity or team. Creating the perfect playlist, finding that perfect song, has never been easier.
On the other hand, Rob probably would be appalled by the slapdash way some of us throw together any group of songs above a certain tempo before we head to the gym, or take all those below a certain rhythm and thoughtlessly label it "chillaxxx." As Rob forewarned, "The making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. You're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing."
What can I say, Rob -- it's the Wal-Mart phenomenon. Greater access may inevitably lead to a lower level of craftsmanship.
Still, there are some students carrying out the Hornby gospel.
The best DJ I know on campus right now, for example, has never stood behind a rickety table in the corner of Chi Gam or Tri Kap (sorry, Rockin' Lou). No, Daisy Freund '08 is no dance party disc jockey. She's a latter-day Rob Gordon.
"I'm a lyrics junkie who gets her kicks from matching an emotion or experience to a song and having them fit perfectly," explained Daisy on www.theeyeoftheday.com, a blog where she posts her music finds.
Daisy takes her art quite seriously. "I don't mean that listening to 'Unbreak My Heart' a few times will do the trick, or that I rifle through my iTunes archives for something that's worked before," writes Freund. "No, I search, and I scrounge, and I do extensive cross-referencing lyrical hunts until I get a song that hits the spot. It has to fit with a click."
But why do we constantly crave more music? Why do sites like Pandora gain such a following, and people like Daisy maniacally search for that perfect song?
"Maybe its just as simple as knowing that someone else on this planet has experienced whatever it is you feel so alone in going through," said Daisy. "It keeps it in perspective. It keeps you from feeling like the world's biggest mess."
Agreed. Just this term, for example, someone in my life was acting uncouth. Except uncouth wasn't the right word, but I couldn't put my finger on it. What was this person doing that was so annoying?
Then Daisy sent me Kate Nash's "Dickhead." And as Kate crooned, "Stop being a dickhead" and "You're just f*cking up situations," I had a moment of complete mental clarity. The person was, in fact, being a dickhead. And here was Kate Nash, "strummin' my pain" on my iTunes.
People understood the comfort of self-recognition in art long before the first mix-tape, however. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "There is some awe mixed in the joy of our surprise when this poet, who lived in some past world, says that which lies close to my own soul." That's exactly how I felt when I listened to "Dickhead."
Emerson was talking about seeing yourself in books, of course. A scholar, he argued, should be well read without becoming a slave to the ideas of authors. With the proliferation of music on the internet, on our iPods and in our Blitz inboxes, have we become masters of finding that perfect song, or do we just throw it all into our iTunes library and call it a day?
Now I'm no music snob. My iTunes runs the gamut from quirky Regina Spektor to classic Van Morrison to oddballs like King Missile's "Detachable Penis." I wonder, however, about the term "eclectic." Whenever you ask anyone on this campus about their music preferences, they invariably shrug it off: "Oh, you know, I like a little bit of everything." Really? Are we as music-worldly as we say we are? And if so, at what point do we sacrifice quality for sheer abundance?
I suppose the best way to view the current music climate is as one of opportunity. Sure, I may end up with a lot crap on my iTunes that I never hear. But when I need to know I'm not alone, the perfect song is waiting, and these days I'll probably be able to find it.
Jean Ellen is a staff writer for The Mirror. John Cusack, sadly, is not.
