An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.
A famous New Yorker profile of Bill Bradley, during his Princeton basketball days, introduced the concept of a self-awareness about one's place in the world at a specific moment of time. Bradley, speaking about court command, referred to it as a "sense of where you are." It would be a better world if more people, more often, had a sense of where they are, in relation to others. And that's not a COVID thing. It's a simple acknowledgment of others.
Sometimes, having that sense of where you are is a mundane wakeup call. That concept is pretty much the essence of this random series, which finds us reminded of our place in pop culture, now and long ago, usually while shopping. It drives home the long and winding road taken by me and by a particular song.
That's a long way of saying that I recently heard two songs of my (relative) youth in two (relatively) embarrassing places: Lowe's on a Sunday morning and Supercuts late on a Tuesday afternoon. That's two middle-age moments. There comes a time when you end up at Lowe's (because you are rehabbing a house) and Supercuts (countering the sticker shock of post-COVID price hikes and staff turnover at local barbershops) in the same week. And the alt-music scene -- aging as quickly as the rest of us -- played in the background.
Just because you have a sense of where you are doesn't mean you have a clue about why, at this particular moment in time, you are there.
Date: 20 September 2020
Place: Lowe's hardware store
Song: "No Myth"
Artist: Michael Penn
Irony Matrix: 4.9 out of 10
Date: 22 September 2020
Place: Supercuts
Song: "First Day of my Life"
Artist: Bright Eyes
Irony Matrix: 4.4 out of 10
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