Letters From Freakloud: A Late-February Broken Love Song Special

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I don’t drink brandy, I hop scotch/ I Hop? Mmmmm…pancakes/ I move crowds with handshakes, milkshakes and marinate crooks in mayonnaise/
—Squared Circle

As I float with intent through LA’s underground rap scene, I am occasionally struck by the random rap lyric. They pop into my mind from the place where I keep all the audio that my brain has unknowingly downloaded. Sometimes I think I must have accidentally memorized thousands of rap lyrics, and now that I consider it, I must have quite a bit of alt-rock lyrics swimming in that soup, too. I’ll surely know that my mind is dissolving in old age when I can no longer recall every word to Midnight Marauders.

While that will certainly be a demerit on my b-boy report card, I may welcome the change. As it stands now, my mind is far too impressionable to the sounds that people make. Most people that know me think that I avoid “bad” music because I’m a jerk. I can understand that, because I often express my distaste for radio poop in a very unfriendly manner. I’m sure I’ve offended some by my words, actions and gas faces, and while I don’t apologize, I would like you to understand my position a little better.

I strongly believe that words, notes and chords affect listeners in a profound way. At the moment, that can only be offered as a theory, since I’m just as sure that there are some people who are completely unaffected by music. Me? I haven’t the slightest defense against it. Music speaks to parts of me that live human beings still haven’t learned the password to. This susceptibility forces me to be wary of what kind of footwear is worn by artists that I submit to, as they might track dirt and dog poop on places that are hard to wash.

And let’s not even start on songs that I’ve heard during some special moment. I’ve had a small treasure trove of songs ruined forever by encounters with women with whom I was enamored at the time. When the relationship(s) turned sour they dropped soft, wet turds on any songs shared in warm moments. In some of these instances it’s been over ten years and I still can’t muster up enough rain to wash the doo doo away…

TOP FIVE LIST OF SONGS SLAIN BY FLIGHTY WOMEN

Raphael Saadiq – “All I Ask of You”‘

Puppy love is a bitch with sharp teeth. As necessary as it is for human development, adolescent romantic relationships leave a lot of furniture broken on their way out of the house. This gem of a song was flawed by one such event. We used to do weak shit like falling asleep on the phone while this song played on both of our stereos. Now when I hear it, I throw up a little bit and swallow it. The worst part is… I “kissed her anywhere”… yep. Even there.

Maxwell – “Sumthin’ Sumthin’: Mellosmoothe”

I always hated Maxwell. I never trust anyone with a shaved face and a busted fro. Now I hate him even more since a sour woman tricked me into liking this one song. If the moment that we christened with this song had held up, I may have had a use for Wack Max’s noise as good getting laid music. Now his face reminds me of hers. His waxed moustache, too.

The Doors – “The Crystal Ship”

This song died a very special death. It was the anchor track on the last mixtape that I ever made for a woman that didn’t deserve one. It was the last time I allowed good looks and a decent couple of conversations to let me overestimate how compatible me and a woman might be. And most importantly, it was the last time that I accidentally talked myself out of what would surely have been some fine vagina. The moral: The quickest way to turn off a possible f*ck buddy is to let her know you were thinking about her when she wasn’t there.

The Entire Second Disc to the Ultra. Chilled Compilation

It was the background music to one of those first deep-conversation, first-kiss evenings. The night may have ended in weary dry-humping, but it kicked off with an hour of space-sharing so intense that I hadn’t so much as touched the disc since the girl went bat-shit. I pulled it out today to try to remember which song it was and was dumbstruck by the realization that I had a different part of the evening associated with each wordless track. The most f*cked up part of all is that I had the misfortune of having a yoga instructor of mine play this CD during a class, thus marking the most counter-productive hour of my life.

Mos Def – “Climb”

God damn. I came really close to shortening the list to four—either that or exaggerating the importance of another joint as to avoid going this far in. Shit. This song reminds me of a really f*cked up time in my life. I had to go to Amazon.com and listen to the snippets to ensure that this was the right one, and sure enough I had tears in my eyes within seconds. The thing with this one is that it wasn’t just the girl. It was being in school three hundred miles away from home; having come dangerously close to flunking out the semester before. It was realizing that since my mother moved into a house with one less bedroom after I graduated high school, I had no place to go if I had a means to travel the distance. It was being told by the university that my financial aid information wouldn’t be processed in enough time to get housing. This song reminds me of a night in the spring of 1999 when I sat in the back seat of a car with four close friends driving out into the woods a few miles outside of campus. We were far enough from the town to see every star in the sky and Black on Both Sides played on the stereo. When “Climb” came on, I remember looking up and thinking about how much I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t even want to go to the woods, but the friend of mine whose dorm floor I was sleeping on was going so I had no choice.

Then I found out my girlfriend at the time had another boyfriend in Chicago.

So while this may be have been the last Mos Def album that I’ll ever like, I’ll never be able to listen to it without bias. I’ll never be able to separate it from the memories made while it was in rotation. The face that he makes on the cover looks a lot like how I felt then.

Prologue:

That summer I decided to become a whore-mongering, hoe-bag. It was a slow process, I had an unrequited crush and a half before I really took flight, but when I did, gosh, golly, gee-whiz, I flew with purpose. The soundtrack to that summer? Fantastic, Vol.1 by Slum Village.

What a kick-ass record…

OpenMikeEagle

Out.