Soundtrack: An iPod Epic

This is where this particular story starts: I was listening to my iPod, and I had set it to shuffle.

I don’t necessarily like the shuffle function. I resort to it. Some folks enjoy the surprise of what’s coming next; I simply cannot choose one band over another.

I have about eleven gigs of music, and I find the variety paralyzing. Finally, I’ll choose one of the three artists that I always choose, and disgust myself with my own predictability. It’s a small, silent drama that gets played out to an audience of just one, and I prefer to skip it. So I shuffle.

The particular sequence of “random” songs I am about to relate seemed to tell a unique story. As I listened to it, I became absolutely positive that not only had my iPod gained some sort of terrifying self-awareness, but that it was playing tricks on me.

Or, here’s a simpler, more arrogant explanation: the universe was sending me a message, because I’m so important and handsome. Either way, this particular sequence of songs reminded me more than anything of the night I met a guy that I will refer to as Rafferty.

And so the story turned into a music retrospective, and an odyssey of me and Rafferty. It’s sad, creepy, and beautiful. Enjoy.

Brighton Rock (5:09) – Queen

I was ambushed. Expecting the standard lyrical, pop-genius that Queen has always provided, I was literally punched in my rat-eating face when the happy carnival intro morphed into complex progressions, power chords, and a guitar solo that would probably cause Mother Teresa to fling her bra onto the stage.

Freddie Mercury does his thing as well as ever, which makes this song evidence that he could also have been a great front man for Judas Priest. This is a song from my past that made a startling, happy reappearance; it would also be a fantastic tune to burn down a building to.

And so it goes that it was a summer between college semesters. I had ended up at a party, tagging along with a friend. And at this same party, I met this guy I had known from the third grade. I met Rafferty. And Rafferty had changed.

A lot.

Gone were the glasses, the tucked-in polo shirt, the short stature that had forced him to squint up at people. Present-day Rafferty had shoulder-length stoner hair. He seemed like the kind of guy that solved the problem of boredom by going out with a bat to set off car alarms. Apparently, he had been living on a diet of vodka and bovine growth hormone. He was huge, lively, cheerful, visibly wasted, and urging me to much of the same. I had an old new friend, and he was about to rock my face off.

Hey Mama (4:20) – Kanye West

When Kanye West forgets about how wonderful Kanye West feels Kanye West is, he really is one of the greats. And this song is a perfect example: it’s an innovative beat, and his rhymes are paced just about perfectly.

In utter defiance of the unspoken, manly rules of the genre, Kanye lays down a track about how much he loves his mom. “Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, turn one page and there’s my mommy.” It’s a great rhyme, and one of the most disgustingly cute things I’ve ever heard. This song does a great job of straddling the line that separates “what the #@%$?” and “brilliant.”

The reunion between Rafferty and I was similarly disgusting, and about just as cute. I’ve been accused many a time of exorbitant “guy love” and platonic “man crushes.” I cannot deny these accusations.

Soon, Rafferty and I were running around the party, energized by each other. We toasted one another, our third grade teacher, and recess as an educational concept. It turned out we had both hated the same kid back in third grade, and so we made a pact that if we should ever meet him, we would kick the hell out of him and throw his car keys down the sewer drain.

The song above would have been perfect background music for our antics, like when we drew an accurate map of South America onto some girl’s face, or when we fired a bottle rocket off in the kitchen. It was senseless, and easy to disapprove of, but there was something endearing to it all.

Shattered (3:47) – The Rolling Stones

The Stones have achieved that rare level of success, where even if you don’t know them, you know them.

The Stones are cool simply for being cool. They’re a Veblen good. Their talent is debatable in the sense that they aren’t terribly musically or intellectually complex. They aren’t out to change the world. They aren’t even out there to alter your reality, man. But the one thing they do incredibly well is fun and catchy.

Shattered takes you on a five-mile groove. It carries you along, rocking just enough to make you feel quietly cool for listening to it. But then it keeps going. And keeps going. If you’re alert and/or sober, this suddenly becomes distressing. Just 60 seconds ago, you were enjoying this. What happened?

Parties can betray you the same way. One minute, you’re great. The world is great. Shattering a coffee table because you were walking around with your pants around your ankles and a bucket on your head is great. Everything is great.

And then, just half a drink later, nothing is great. Columbus was wrong, the world is flat. The entire situation has become like cafeteria Jello: delicious in theory, but gross and mysteriously greasy in practice.

By three a.m., I had reached this unhappy plateau. My body was failing. We were out of trouble to find. People were going, or already gone. The spirit quailed.

“Rafferty,” I said. “We’ve hit the doldrums. We may die here. I want you to know, it has been an honor.” But Rafferty wouldn’t have it. With a glint in his eye, he suggested we get much, much more loaded. Rafferty is the sort of man that never surrenders. His spirit is indomitable, even if his ideas are terrible.

If you left him in the middle of the Mojave Desert, he might punch a cactus, die of sand poisoning, or try to marry a female rattlesnake, but he would never surrender.

Thrills in the night (4:21) – Kiss

Kiss, on every level, is a totally enjoyable, utterly questionable band. They’re clearly a rock band. But how seriously can you take a group of horrifyingly suggestive, leather-clad devil-mimes?

I can’t tell whether they want to pretend they’re stuck inside of a glass box or spank me with a riding crop. They have the speedy, reckless progression of a true metal band, but I’m never sure which gender they’re singing about. “Thrills” is a case in point: it’s got the sort of power chords that could melt a steel girder, but I almost get the feeling that Gene wants to thrill me.

This is how Rafferty began to get after a certain point. We were having the sort of conversation common to those who had hit rock-bottom: stunted sentences, made-up words, and lots of gesturing. We were doing the guy-bonding thing, but he would quickly slip in things like “Want to see my knife?” or “I think this shirt used to belong to a Jew.”

My head was swimming; was he really saying these things? Finally, he enunciated “If you were a chick, man, I’d so do you.” This was the turning point of the night. I made the command decision to wander off for a little while, but I couldn’t escape the inevitable. Things were about to get surreal.

She Said (4:33) – Ludacris

This particular song is an anthem of righteousness. Ludacris is upset with a girl for a) unfathomably not wanting to throw away her virginity, and b) not doing him, pronto. It’s really quite galling, because she has all these ideas of her own. She probably even wants to vote. The nerve.

I love hip hop as a theory, but I won’t defend it in practice. There are way too many songs like this: strident, cocksure, screwed-in-half songs that cannot possibly have a positive effect on anything. Ludacris isn’t the worst of them all, but he certainly isn’t the most morally upright. He’s unquestionably talented, but look at how he applies his talent! It’s like painting a mural in the back of a urinal.

What gets to me is the sheer anger and derision directed at the girl in this song.

So, when I tottered back into the living room, I came upon a scene of the apocalypse. Rafferty and some girl that had passed out on the sofa earlier were screaming at each other. She looked extremely small and entirely breakable in front of Rafferty; she didn’t seem to realize that she was an underweight baby kitten and he was a careening Mack truck filled with gasoline and razor blades.

I had no idea what they were fighting about. In fact, I’m not too sure that it was an actual fight, either. But I interposed my very breakable self, and calmed Rafferty down. My one saving grace, it is this: dudes with testosterone love me. Invariably. At any rate, he punched a wall and dented the plaster a little. Then we went outside.

Wrong Way (2:16) – Sublime

It’s easy to listen to too much Sublime, and quickly get tired of a pretty great, innovative band. But this song is an exception. Despite being the fall-back of every alt-rock DJ since the dawn of time, it will always stay fresh.

I love songs that tell stories. And Sublime gives you a very real sense of dusty, sunny days in the life of a disenchanted, lower-middle class screw-up. Sublime seems like the kind of group of guys that would encourage your “social” smoking habit, while you all enjoyed being unemployed together.

The song itself is about a guy who falls in love with a beautiful “fallen woman,” and tries to rescue her from her brothers and father, who double as her pimps. More to the point, the song describes how they randomly, desperately hook up in the bathroom. And that’s exactly what Rafferty did.

We had been hanging out on the hammock in the backyard, sobering up. Disaster had been averted, by me. I felt as if I had been on the Titanic, and spotted the glacier 30 minutes earlier. I was relieved, and I was ready to call it a night.

You can imagine our hero’s dismay when Rafferty stood up, and without any warning, stormed back into the house. I followed him in, offering God a simple prayer for something useful, like a sock full of quarters, or a tranquilizer gun.

I nearly bonked into his back when he stopped in the kitchen door. I couldn’t see around him, but I knew she was in there, because he called her a name that even I won’t repeat.

She stormed out of the kitchen’s other entrance; Rafferty swore and lumbered after, as graceful as a bull elephant with an inner ear problem. He grabbed her by the arm, spun her around, and suddenly, they were making out furiously. I couldn’t tell at first whether this was just an explosion of sweet sweet love, or if they were each trying to swallow the other’s head. In true romantic fashion, they ended up making their way to the bathroom; I can’t begin to imagine the sort of carnage that must have ensued.

Summertime (4:30) – Will Smith w/ DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Little known fact: Will Smith was once a legitimate hip hop artist. He wasn’t a great one, for which I’m glad. There is such a thing as being too talented.

But, he was certainly good enough for the moment, and in this particular case, he’s backed by the inimitable Jazzy Jeff, who could probably remix a CD of soothing whale songs and make it sound good.

This is a song I’ve always liked for Sundays, simply because Sundays are a day of rest for me. Not in the “mandated by the Lord” sense, but rather in the “build up my red blood cell count” sense. Will Smith talks about cruising, maxing, and basically wasting that meaty, middle part of the day when you could probably do something very productive, if you didn’t smell like whiskey and play-doh. Jazzy Jeff puts down a fluffy, chilled-out beat that doesn’t jar the nerves of exceptionally frail individuals – this is a song you can enjoy, relax with, and recuperate to. It’s an important song to have on hand.

Anyway, I sobered quickly. The alcohol had been wearing off for a while now, and hearing two people going at it as loud as enraged dinosaurs in the bathroom had about the same effect on me as dunking my head into an icy river while pouring black coffee and Red Bull into my IV drip. I may have been tired and woozy before, but now I was at least ready for a few games of chess, or maybe a track meet.

He had called her a horrible name and now… this?

I found the friend that I had come with, and woke him from his own stupor; his arm around my shoulder, we made it to the door. I had to get us both out of there. As the cold, night air hit my face, I specifically remember thinking “This is exactly what it must have felt like to escape from POW camp.”

The next day was slow. I wasn’t in pain, per se, but I certainly wasn’t running at 100% efficiency. My bones felt like they were made of pewter glass, and my muscles of Thanksgiving stuffing. My eyes were dry, and my right foot kept cramping.

I bore up under it all, because I am the stoic type. My friend and I spent most of the day hanging out on the roof of the hotel we were staying at, talking occasionally and looking at girls. Once, for a few minutes, I had the courage to go swimming, but I lacked any strength whatsoever, and just lay at the bottom of the pool for a while.

We both wore sunglasses.

This is where it ends.