Three More Things

This is the editor’s note/column I write in The Music Scene each month, and here’s July’s version.

Three Things: A Note from the Editor

1. Alphabetically listening to one’s CD collection: Do you do this? I don’t, or wouldn’t, but I’m (almost) married to an audiophile, and he’s got this thing about having the music in a certain order. Although he often goes for the thematic five-disk mix (music for the tiki party, or baseball music, for example), there are times when he slips on five disks by artists who begin with A, B, C, and so on.

For example, at the moment, we have something from the F section on the disk player: Nelly Furtado’s Whoa, Nelly; Franz Ferdinand’s You Could Have It So Much Better; The Best of Aretha Franklin; the Fugees’ The Score and Fallout Boy’s From Under the Cork Tree. Eclectic mix, yes? I randomly grabbed another five from further down the list and got some S disks, giving me music by Frank Sinatra, Sly and the Family Stone, the Spice Girls, Santana and Solas. While there are some odd birds in the mix (yes, that emo stuff and the Spice Girls came from the teenyboppers’ collections), it’s always intriguing to see what pops out on the speakers, especially when it’s on shuffle.

And it turns out that all those F-folks provided the perfect soundtrack for refinishing hardwood floors. Whodathunk it?

2. Paris Hilton: Um, who cares?

3. Summer tunes: Is there a quintessential summer song you can remember from way back when? I have a few, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer” is the summeriest of summer tunes, and I must, just once in my life, ride in a convertible and hear that song on a sultry summer night. Is that too much to ask for?

Add to my list the early hit by Squeeze, “Another Nail for My Heart.” That played on a long-gone AM radio station, call letters I can’t remember but its motto was “Anarchy on the AM.” Circa 1981, that was, I think, the best song I ever heard in my life, as I cruised down Petaluma Boulevard in my 1968 Plymouth Valiant (not too cool, but it worked). The windows wouldn’t roll up, the back seat was utterly detached from the interior, the trunk had an embarrassing habit of popping open when I went over potholes or speed bumps, and it was a roasting, smothering black inside, to match its dark Army-green exterior. The best thing about that car was the freedom of the road, and Anarchy on the AM, and that’s what I think of when I hear that not-so-old song.

What does summer sound like to you? We wanna know.

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