All at Once the Ghosts Come Back

Here it is, Friday night, and I find myself almost overwhelmed by nostalgia. And of course, it's the music that's doing it to me, but I'm the one who picked the music.

I played Queen's "Under Pressure" tonight for Trevor, who, freshman year of college, used to come back from his last class on Friday afternoon and play it at tremendous volume, so loud that posters would fall from the walls, while he danced like a spastic top around our dorm room with an infectiousness that was impossible to resist.

I played the Chris Isaak Mosh Song, otherwise known as "Go Walking Down There," for Craig, who used to come home to find me bouncing around like my own spastic top to it in the living room of our rented house in Sydney, and who would join in without hesitation, because my man Dino, he's got rhythm.

I played "So Lonely" by the Police for Frank from sophomore year, who introduced me to the glory of their early stuff, and who insisted that I looked exactly like Stuart Copeland.

I played "In a Big Country" by Big Country, 'cause sometimes you need a little Big Country.

I played "California" by Low, off their new, great album, THE GREAT DESTROYER. Low's been staying true to their name and laying low, but they'll explode this year, and they'll only have this album to blame. Buy it. It's fantastic.

I played Interpol's "Next Exit" 'cause I ain't going to the town, I'm going to the city.

U2's "One" needs no explanation, nor does the live version of "With or Without You" from RATTLE & HUM. "Stay / Faraway, So Close," live from Dublin, is so great a track it makes me want to weep. I will see them play Madison Square Garden this year, come hell or high water. And then I'll have a Guinness or ten down on the Lower East Side with mates I haven't seen in far too long, and life will be complete.

I'd forgotten how good Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" was.

"I gather speed from you fucking with me." Great lyric. Pearl Jam's "Rearview Mirror."

I could only find the album version of Hunters & Collectors' "Throw Your Arms Around Me," which pales in comparison to the live acoustic version that somebody played for me at a party at Coogee Beach in Sydney, and which managed to find its way onto every mix tape I made the following year. Smokie's "Who the Fuck is Alice," condemned to an inexplicably unlabeled mix tape done in April of 1996 that is now buried in a shoebox of similarly unlabeled mix tapes from the same period, tragically remains lost.

My favorite version of Counting Crows' "Round Here" is an eleven-minute-long opus from a concert at a club in Paris. Yes, I know the idea of eleven minutes of Counting Crows makes makes all you hip indie self-aware music fans cringe, but I don't give a damn. I love Counting Crows, and "Round Here" makes it into my top five without a sweat.

Dave Matthews' "41" I played for myself, and I sat back and thought about the times I would listen to CRASH (borrowed from a terrifically understanding roommate, the aforementioned Dino) on the bus across the Sydney Harbor Bridge to AFTRS, the famed Australian School of Film, Television, and Radio, where I would sit in the library and soak up the atmosphere and read everything about screenwriting I could get my hands on. And I thought about running across that same bridge with a friend, singing at the top of our lungs, deliriously happy, on our way to pub, after pub, after pub, before finally ending up back in Kingsford at dawn. I thought about conversations had on benches by the water in Circular Quay over fried rice and on tables by the water over beers. About secrets shared and hearts opened and understandings reached, but not really reached. There were times in Sydney, amongst the impromptu Irish dances with scary women at nameless pubs, and the Jim Jarmusch screenings at UNSW, and the walks through the parks and the midnight swims on the beach and the VBs and the great talks with great, great friends, where I would stop for a moment, and sit back, and think, This is as happy as I've ever been, and I'll never be this happy again.

I was wrong, of course. But I play "41" 'cause it's a great time to think about.