The Quintessential Christmas Playlist

Track 1: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Ella Fitzgerald
2: White Christmas - Bing Crosby
3: Christmas Time Is Here - Vince Gauraldi
4: Winter Wonderland - Aretha Franklin
5: Please Come Home for Christmas- The Eagles
6: Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt
7: Baby It's Cold Outside - Dinah Washington
8: Jingle Bells - Johnny Mercer
9: All I Want for Christmas is You - Mariah Carey
10: Santa Claus is Comin' to Town - Jackson 5
11: The Christmas Song - Nat King Cole
12: Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses
13. I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm - Billie Holiday
14: Jingle Bell Rock - Wayne Newton (yeah I said it)

This is how I love music.

I know better than to bring music up on a first date. Not because I think its inappropriate dinner conversation, but rather, because I am too opinionated for my own good. I'm not one of those people who lists "I listen to everything" on their MySpace or Facebook page because I listen to Kiss FM. When people ask me what I like I certainly don't answer "everything but country;" No, I provide people with more detail than they could have possibly hoped for when it comes to my taste in music. Occassionally, I will give a vague or general answer like "I like Jazz, Rock and the things that fall in between." But that usually causes people to ask me more questions. Which I answer. In great detail. Once, on a date, a guy mentioned that he was a Jazz guy, which delighted me. I started spewing information at him about local trio's and jazz bars, brilliant recordings from the 60's and excellent covers of Standards. He looked at me like a deer in the headlights. Apparently, not quite as Jazzy as I had hoped. Apparently his version of being a Jazz fan was a couple of Dave Brubeck albums and a copy of "In the wee small hours of the morning" by Frank Sinatra, all of which are brilliant, but they were'nt quite what I had anticipated.


I love finding "new" music. I love the idea that I might have helped someone find a new favorite song or band. I love knowing songs before they come on the radio or pop up on my "Just for You" on iTunes. My brother is the same way, but we NEVER agree on music. He covers Rap, Hip Hop, R&B while I cover Jazz, Rock, Blues, Folk and Pop. The only things we agree on are songs that we grew up listening to together. By the likes of Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Bach, Michael Jackson, Earth Wind and Fire and The Who. He loves beats and I love Melodies, I love lyrics and he loves stories. So this is going to be my feeble attempt to explain why and how I love music even though I can't play or sing to save my life.


I love the way it makes me feel. I love how it makes me think. I love that it is a combination of various forms of art, layered together for my listening pleasure. I always in the mood to listen to, think about or talk about music. I love the way that genres overlap and the fact that a group of four kids from Liverpool can change the world forever. Even as I run without an iPod, I have a song in my head and I play it over and over and over again. (Lately that song has been "To the beat of our noisy hearts" by Matt Nathanson.) I develop crushes on musicians not for their fame or their looks, but for the way they play, sing or write. The way BB King and Muddy Waters make a guitar sing, the way John Mayer spills his soul and the way Frank Sinatra Crooned. I adore the darkness in Johnny Cash's voice. I cherish the music that my friends make and hold them in exceptionally high esteem. I love songs of unrequited love and vicious indiscretion. I adore the subtle and the brutally obvious lyrics of Adam Levine. I long for infectious melodies and loathe the constructed pop of the late 90's. I live for the chills that you get the first time you see a song you really love performed live. I admire modern interpretations of older songs and I am delighted with those who play tribute to the people who have inspired them over the course of time.

I remember the first time I walked into Amoeba Records on Sunset, I thought to myself, Wow, so this is what a music store is supposed to be like. I had gone in for a copy of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and I came out with a total of 6 albums, which seems to be a problem that I regularly have in music stores. The difference that time, was that it had taken me an hour and a half. I zigged and zagged through the ailes flicking through CD's by artists I had never heard of. I found albums from my youth that I had long since forgotten and I realized, that there would always be more music for me to find and more for me to love.


Music is my best romance, my constant companion, my favorite kind of discovery and the key to all of my emotions. At this moment in time, its the closest thing I've got to religion.

Sometimes I ramble on about music extensively.

Alright, so we all have music that we listen to when we are in certain moods, like for Self Reflection, I listen to Death Cab, For Lust I listen to Rilo Kiley, for Romance, John Mayer; Snow Patrol-Eyes Open for Joy and Final Straw for Sorrow. When I'm drinking Whiskey I love Johnny Cash or Frank Sinatra. If I feel the need to move, I pop in a little Michael Jackson, The Fratelli's or Tina Turner, and if I want to rock out with nobody watching, nothing works better than Jet or the Violent Femmes. For basically anything else, I listen to Jazz.

Then of course you have your go to Make out list. Juvenille perhaps, but still strikingly effective. But what do we look for in a good Make out list? Nothing too sappy but nothing overwhelming either. It definitely has to be background music. For example, "Come Together", my favorite Beatles Song is hardly make-out material. It would probably be good for some other things, "Something" on the other hand is an obvious choice because of the way it lulls. Anything by Coldplay will work in a pinch as will basically the entire works of Dispatch or Death Cab for cutie. Sing by Travis is flawless and Jamie Cullum is a very safe bet-Photograph is one of my all time favorites, for these purposes.

Then there is the kind of music that you want to listen to in a dark and dingy bar. You want a bartender to lean over and explain the history of your drink to you. You want the looker that you just met to lean in close and to never wander, and you want the atmosphere to match that warm fuzzy feeling that clouds your brain. There is nothing that I hate more in a cool bar, than inappropriate music. It completely ruins it for me. Give me a little Dave Brubeck, Otis Redding, Mose Allison or John Coltrane on the weeknights. Play "A little Less Conversation" by Elvis, "Fell in Love with a Girl" by the White Stripes or "Jackson" by Johnny and June Carter Cash on a Saturday night, depending on the scene. Nobody's there to dance, they are there for temporary romance. Granted if its a spot like, The Standard, Downtown, they have come to be seen and no one really cares what's playing overhead, which is good, because its generally crap.

Also, I would like to see more Jukeboxes carrying the Violent Femmes, so, bar and Jukebox owners of America, recognize the sexual frustration of a generation and play "Gone Daddy Gone" for me.

On an unrelated note, I have decided that John Mayer is possibly the single most brilliant break-up and get back together artist of our generation. I mean think about it, he goes on in interviews about how, "he's a really bad boyfriend because he spends all this time trying to get the girl and then when he gets her he just wants to spend all of his time writing songs about it." Girls are suckers for a story as they are a great poet. He has both of these. One line can prove my point, off of Heavier things, from the song "Split Screen Sadness"

'I called, because, I just, need to feel you on the line, don't hang up this time. . . And I know I'm the one who called it over, but I still wish you'd fought me 'till my dying day, don't let me get away.'

Seriously? Seriously. Show me a woman who can resist that line, just one. Bastard. No, I'm kidding John, I Love you.

Okay, if I had a point, I should have made it by now, but I don't really. So keep listening and keep buying music. Spread it like wildfire friends or Britney might make a comeback. (oh shoot. . . )

The Trouble with Love at First Sight

Okay, so I'm jaded. I recognize that, but I am still completely happy with myself, my friends and my relationships. This weekend someone told me he loved me. Actually his exact words were to one of his friends, with me standing by, "I love this girl, I just love her." No joke. This guy, I went out with once on a sort of sympathy date and hung out with a couple of times. There was some mild chemistry but we were from very different backgrounds and he was a little too eccentric for me to take seriously. (coming from me, that's saying something) His friend who he was with at the time of his minor confession, asked me "Don't you believe in love at first sight." To which I replied, "No of course not. And Frankly I find the concept kind of insulting."

I mean think about it, think about the most attractive or striking person you have ever seen or met. Just because you found yourself drawn to them does not mean that you want to, or even should spend the rest of your life with them. Furthermore, thinking that you are in love with someone at first sight, takes away parts of their humanity, it makes them an object to be desired and I do not understand how an object can be loved and love someone equally in return. There is a problem of balance there. I completely believe in electric first meetings and getting along brilliantly with people and wanting to spend more time with them after a few hours of conversation, but that's first meeting, not first sight.

I also, have no problem with Lust at first sight, I mean we all make bad decisions that we secretly love and I am fully in support of that kind of behavior, but we should call it like it is, not like we want it to be.

I guess that the point I am trying to make here, is that we should look for more in ourselves and in love. We should give ourselves a reason to love those that we surround ourselves with and that we should so our best to deserve their love in return.