During my traveling days of the first month of work I put on 3000km on my car. So somewhere between 30-45 hours worth of driving. I somehow became sick of all the music on my ipod. Like most people, I prefer specific types of music for certain activities. I almost always pick upbeat tunes over mellow, but even within that choice I have certain albums and songs that I pick for work, driving, walking, etc. For driving I enjoy having songs and/or albums that are, to me, sing-a-long albums. While I adore Fleet Foxes or Portastatic for work, I just don't feel the same about singing along to their music as I do James Blunt or Hannah Georgas. And by singing I mean hollering at the top of my lungs.
Around the two week mark I dug into my cd collection, consisting greatly of albums from my high school days.
I'm just going to put it out there right now. HUGE POP/BOY BAND FAN during those years. So a lot of my cds are, oh, YOU KNOW, Backstreet Boys, NSync, 5ive, Westlife [loved the British boy bands!] and numerous burned mixed cds from the early days of Napster filled with bubblegum pop music. So I grabbed a few classics and a few various cds. I popped in a mix cd one morning on my departure to Victoria and as I drove through Ladysmith the lyrics to one song came flooding back to me all these years later. "THIS IS SO DIRTY!" I suddenly exclaimed aloud to no one as the meaning of the lyrics sank in. And again and again I said this, because OH MY GOD how did I not turn into a skanky little thirteen year old listening to these lyrics?!
After being relatively horrified at how dirty the lyrics to some of the songs were, I began to think about how it compares to the type of music that I tend to gravitate towards now. Sure, one could say that the music I tend to listen to still has roots in the "pop" genre, but is much more rock based than anything.
One thing I am going to miss terribly about my old store is the music. Often we would throw a CD on, hit "repeat all" and forget it was playing for the next four hours. You'd forget what you were listening to but be enjoying it at the same time. Mike was always discovering new bands or introducing us to old favourites of his. [Amazingly enough I discovered The XX before he did, though not by much.] Shout Out Louds, Spoon, Chad VanGaalen... the list goes on. I've already made Vicky promise to keep me in the loop by emailing me the newest albums brought into the store.
Out of all the musical memories I have from that store, and the dance parties that Vicky and I had, I'll never forget the day that Mike put Christina Aguilera's "Candyman" on repeat for a solid half hour. He bopped his [then] headful of hair and big bushy beard along, truly enjoying the song, exclaiming how it had such a catchy beat. It still makes me giggle every time I think of it.
