Albums of Our Lives
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Albums of Our Lives: Death Cab For Cutie’s Transatlanticism
When I heard Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism it was the first time I remember seeing sounds, understanding stories told to me set to music.
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Albums of Our Lives: The Counting Crows’ August and Everything After
A few days before we left a life in New York, my then-husband drove home drunk from a bar in the Bronx
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Albums of Our Lives: Hole’s Celebrity Skin
1. The car I drove when I was 20 smelled like rain. When it stormed, the passenger side floor filled with a puddle so deep I’d have to bail it out with a folded floor mat. When I drove faster…
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Songs of Our Lives: Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “The Inflated Tear”
I decided that I had to write a book about him. I would track down everyone who knew him while they were still alive, I would collect their stories of him in the hopes of preserving Rashaan’s legacy.
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Albums of Our Lives: Moxy Früvous’s Bargainville
What did I turn to when I needed to channel my frustration with this corporatized Republican state against which I could only kick my small angry feet? The music of Gen-Xers from another country.
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Albums of Our Lives: Dan Zanes’ Rocket Ship Beach
Our music collection was unassailable until I became pregnant with my first daughter.
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Albums of Our Lives: Linda Ronstadt’s Heart Like a Wheel
The cover was a black and white close-up of a woman, her hair windswept, her name scrawled above her in a font usually reserved for truck stops: Linda Ronstadt. I’d retrieved the album and its torn shell of Columbia Record…
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Albums of our Lives: Rufus Wainwright’s Poses
If I had written a list of pros and cons, I might have seen how moving to Austin from Seattle with a boyfriend who had just kicked heroin, and with stripping as my only job prospect, was not a recipe…
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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: STEVE EARLE’S GUITAR TOWN
Before someone spilled Hi-C on it during a hot Iowa summer and my car window fixed sunlight into its silky black innards, warping Steve Earle’s voice into that of a sexually beleaguered chipmunk, that tape drove me through a lot.
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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: BOB DYLAN’S BLONDE ON BLONDE
The album was the warm yellow window of someone else’s house as you walk by on a cold night. Listening to it was the feeling you get when you look into this stranger’s window and wish you lived there.
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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: TO THE EXTREME BY VANILLA ICE
We all had braces. When we smiled or laughed, we flashed steel and colored rubber bands. We shared a language.
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Albums of Our Lives: Songs: Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Co.
The news of Jason Molina’s death came to me in a storm. I was about to teach a class when I saw the first posts announcing that he was gone.