A Soundtrack of My 30s and 40s
Hello, dear readers! Wow, it’s been a long time since I wrote a post. The past couple of months have been a whirlwind, as I did a little traveling, accepted a new job in San Francisco, moved, and started the job. With so much transition happening, I am feeling both energized and uprooted. Everything is new and strange. I am having to “redo” just about every part of my life: commuting via mass transit, putting my home together, altering my social life, finding my new dance community, dealing with city parking, learning new procedures and routines at work … With all this change, I find myself reflecting on the past.
So, you get yet another “soundtrack” post! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now: I am not sure anyone but myself enjoys my musical musings, but it brings me joy and comfort to reminisce, so humor me. This post covers favorite songs and bands from my mid-30s to now, which takes us from the mid-2000s to the present.
In the mid-2000s, I was starting another big life transition: I had decided to change careers and apply to graduate school in psychology. I felt that starting grad school presented the opportunity to move to the West Coast, something I thought would be a fun adventure. When I moved to California in 2005 to attend grad school in San Francisco, I figured I’d live in California a few years and then move back East once I had graduated. Well, 14 years later, I am still in California! Go figure.
The mid-2000s were a time of diverse trends in music, and my tastes were also diverse. One genre I continued to like was “lounge,” electronica, and DJ music, particularly RJD2, DJ Krush, Gorillaz, and DJ Shadow. Some of it was good for actual lounging, and some for dancing.
I was still into indie rock and Britpop, post-punk, and garage rock. Being in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid- to late 2000s gave me access to a lot of great live shows and exposure to some more obscure garage rock bands a grad school friend was into. I discovered two bands during that time that are still favorites: Brian Jonestown Massacre and King Khan (real name, Arish Ahmad Khan). BJM was formed in San Francisco in 1990. I saw them perform several times in the 2000s; although I love their music, their live shows are spotty and unpredictable, sometimes marred by fist fights or verbal altercations between band founder Anton Newcombe and other band or audience members. The last show I saw, just last year in 2018, was not good–Anton seemed high (he’s struggled off and on with addiction) and was pretty out of it, barely able to perform. The band only played 6 songs before throwing in the towel.
King Khan is a high-energy performer whose music combines funk, garage rock, and other genres. He’s had several bands/projects, including King Khan and BBQ Show, King Khan and the Shrines, and Almighty Defenders. I’ve seen him perform a few times, and it’s always fun and a bit raunchy.
Lots of indie and garage rock, some of which I started listening to in the ’90s, was still on my playlist through the 2000s (e.g., Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The White Stripes, The Hives, The Vines, Holly Golightly, The Black Keys, The Raveonettes). I also continued to love Radiohead. I still listen to a lot of this music today. Some other favorite bands/artists that recorded in the 2000s (or that I discovered at that time) were Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Franz Ferdinand, Arcade Fire, The Shins, Belle and Sebastian, The Raconteurs, and The Beta Band. My memory of exactly when I got into which bands is a little rusty now!
An artist I always associate with my grad school years (2005 to 2010) is José González. I love his beautiful, moody guitar-heavy music and really got into it during that period. I also started listening more to some country and alt-country, such as Dolly Parton’s bluegrass album “Little Sparrow,” as well as Lucinda Williams, Neko Case, and “Van Lear Rose,” Loretta Lynn’s album produced by Jack White. I also added bands such as Bon Iver, Wolf Parade, Broken Bells, Iron and Wine, and British Sea Power to my library.
In the late ’00s and early 2010s, my musical tastes stayed pretty similar, heavy on garage and post-punk rock, with a bunch of other random stuff thrown in. I also had fun exploring older music, such as classic country and rockabilly (Patsy Cline, Kitty Wells, Roger Miller, Lefty Frizzell, Carl Smith, Ersel Hickey, Johnny Horton) and funk and R&B (The Bar-Kays, Taj Mahal, James Brown, The Mighty Dogcatchers, Robert Jay, The Stovall Sisters, Wilson Pickett, Detroit Sex Machines).
That brings us up to just a few years ago. What I have been listening to in the mid- to late 2010s has been pretty random: A large sampling of stuff old and new from my iTunes library. Artists I have discovered in the recent past (some of them new, some just new to me) include Ray LaMontagne (yeah, he’s been around a while, but I didn’t really like him all that much until his 2014 album “Supernova,” which I love), Rayland Baxter, Amen Dunes, The Allah-Las, Baby Woodrose, Black Mountain, The Black Angels, Beats Antique, Dan Auerbach, Leon Bridges, The Limiñanas, Stephen Marley, Toro y Moi, and a whole bunch of bellydance and bellydance-friendly music (due to my dance habit!). A few fave artists/bands for bellydance are Solace, Issam Houshan, and Raquy & The Cavemen.
There’s much more I could share, but I’m getting tired, so I will end here for now. I hope you have enjoyed the music!