My 20s in Music, Part 1

Welp, here we are closing out the 2000s. I was born on January 1, 1980 so the decade we’re wrapping contains my twenties almost precisely. A lot of stuff happened. College, post-college, post-post-college. As I’m entering my 30s and what I think we can safely describe as post-post-post-college, I’d like to revisit my 20s in music. As we all know, listening to music is magical and mysterious and has the ability to transport us back through time and space and allows us to somehow relive the emotional memory of specific instances of our pasts. Rather than list the records that I think were the “best of” the 2000s, I’d like to simply take an emotional journey through this personally important decade. For each year of the decade, I will be selecting an album that was released that year and has in some way become a milemarker for me. I hope to spin these out over the next few weeks.

So, here goes:

2000

Coldplay – Parachutes

I imagine I might take some flack for this one and this is a tough one to admit to. I would not consider myself a Coldplay “fan”. In fact, I sort of dislike them severely. But, my disdain is built on top of the monumental dissappointment I feel with every record they’ve put out since their debut. With Parachutes, they made a quiet and subtle and elegant and sad promise that is broken with each monumental, stadium-sized, piano-fueled epic they write.

I discovered this record while living in London. “Yellow” had just become a huge hit and had not yet crossed the pond and I felt like an insider, a real cool London-living expat, when I picked up the CD. “Yellow” has now become the YMCA of the Coldplay ouvre; so overplayed that it can longer be heard as a “piece of music”, just some assemblage of words and sounds that seems to have always existed. However, if I can step back and listen to it again with fresh ears, the appeal of the song is apparent and I think it holds up beautifully. The slow, chugging verses, the soaring chorus, the elegaic bridge.

When I listen to the album now, I’m taken back to the streets of London. One of my favorite activities was wandering the streets at night, listening to music. Putting the album on my DiscMan for the first time, I was expecting more “Yellowy” brit-poppy goodness. To my surprise, the record begins with the spare “Don’t Panic”. Clean guitars strum over a driving but gentle snare and hi-hat drum part the never deviates. Chris Martin proclaiming unsentimentally that “we live in a beautiful world”. For a lonely and broken hearted kid in a strange city, this was a welcome reminder.

Other Contenders:

Richard Ashcroft - Alone With Everybody

Another one with connections to my time in London. I was a fan of the Verve and Ashcroft had just dropped his solo debut when I was over there. It’s fundamentally different than his stuff with The Verve and is in part a reaction to that. His lyrics have never been better (“I spent the night looking for my insides in a hotel room waiting for you”) and his voice has never sounded cooler.

Radiohead – Kid A

There is no sound on any album ever that has made my ears feel as good…like physically as the opening arpeggios of “Everything In It’s Right Place”. It’s like this weird warm, soothing sensation. And the rest of the album ain’t half bad either.

The Anniversary – Designing a Nervous Breakdown

I just listened to this one again recently and…wow. This album is packed with so many memories for me. Most involve getting crushed at the front of the pit at the Palladium, separated from my friends by a mass of sweaty emo kids but somehow hooking up with RJ again just in time to shout “I’ll march slowly and I’ll never forget how the music stopped or the feel of your breath!”

Hot Rod Circuit – If It’s Cool With Me, It’s Cool With You

After my junior year ended, I was going to act as an usher for commencement. This meant that I was allowed to live in my dorm for the two weeks or so between the end of classes and the ceremony. My buddy RJ stayed with me. It was the summer. We had no jobs. No responsibilities. Little to do besides bounce a rubber ball back and forth in our hallway and listen to music. This period of time is also known as “best time of life”. This album (specifically “The Power of Vitamins”) brings me right back there. Since then, I’ve had many memories with RJ and my brother and Bulldog and our friends at HRC (RIP) shows shouting out these songs.