Music Roulette 4 ~ The Latchkey Shuffle

Research shows that the level of personal enjoyment, not whether the music is happy or sad, is what matters for potential therapeutic benefits. This is an important distinction for me because music for me is all over the place. Symptom of my Gen-X-aphilia. If you’ve missed some of the earlier installments, you can catch them here, here, and here. I’m all about the self-healing and showing improvement of any depressive symptoms. Let’s see what we get this time around:

1. In The Arms Of Sleep ~ The Smashing Pumpkins

What sticks out for me, aside from the fact that so many of my college years memories are tied to specific songs from The Smashing Pumpkins, is the hilarious way that I followed the rabbit hole into the discovery that Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins is a secret half sibling of comedian Bill Burr. It makes me sad for him that their shared father was so basic that he gave them the same name to make it easier for him not to mix up his double lives. SMH. I don’t care if it’s not official, because they’ve never done a DNA test, any one who has eyes in their head can see that they look alike. And for whatever reasons they or he don’t consider it to be true, not getting it confirmed is as good as telling me they’d rather not know for sure, and preserve their fragile masculinity. 😢I feel bad for them.

2.

This song has to be a TikTok addition. I don’t really resonate with Billy Eilish as an artist. She’s just not my cup of tea. But tis song does have a good beat — in particular some remixes I’ve seen floating around TikTok. It would make a good song for my villain era. Is that now? Maybe not yet. That’s all I can really say about it.

3.

This song is very appropo. I got this album the year my youngest was born and this got a lot of play in the house but especially the car. My sons are very familiar with Gorillaz. That’s the GenX mom effect, am I right? 😎

4. Hate You – Polylow, BAUWZ, Nito-Onna

This song makes me think of the end of Underwater, except that’s a completely different song at the end of that movie. But the title of this song says it all, as do the lyrics. This one is dedicated to mr horrible.

5. Bouree ~ Early Light Consort

This song takes me back to being in high school. It’s when my obsession with the medieval-baroque era really hit it’s peak. I mentioned in another post that I went to the cloisters in NY with my father and my now ex-step-mother back in the day, and one of my souveneirs was this album on cassette. I played that tape out! I eventually bought it on CD as all Gen X eventually do who care at all about their music collection. And now here I am listening to it digitally. What a time to be alive!

6.

For some reason, one of the two cassettes I had from my father that weren’t a homemade mix tape, or a dubbed cassette copy of one of his albums (IYKYK), was a Tchaikovsky compilation cassette.

7.

I had three cassettes with me on a trip to Los Angeles when I was a teenager. Led Zeppelin was one of them, but it wasn’t this album. It was a copied cassette my father gave me with Led Zeppelin II on one side, and Led Zeppelin III on the other. Ironically, this is the album with Stairway to Heaven – which if you recall from this post was the other song up for vote as my Senior Prom song. Luckily, thanks in part to my steady campaign efforts, we voted for the correct other song that was up for contention and was not scarred having to dance at my prom to Led Zeppelin with my prom date. 🙄

8.

One of my weird interests is Medieval times and things in that vein. So imagine my delight when I discovered that there are wonderful musicians making versions of popular songs in the style of troubadours of old. This is one of many. Man, this makes me want to play Lord of the Realms for some reason.

9.

This song is tied to the entire year of 2017. The song was either in a trailer for a movie, or on the soundtrack. I spent a lot of time in the movie theater that year. Another discovery from the library. I borrowed this CD and immediately ripped it to my Google Music library. 😉 Before I went to Spotify, that’s how I used to listen to my music collection on the go.

10.

It is very fitting that this song closes out this playlist. Marimba is a musical instrument, and it is the national instrument of Guatemala, representing the cultural identity and national pride of the country. On one of my return trips to Guatemala (the one in 1997), I made a point to buy a collection on CD to bring back to the US to listen to. It’s nice that I can find the music on Spotify now. It was much harder to access when I was growing up in the 80s & 90s. This particular song plays over recordings of vendors as they drive around neighborhoods selling food (imagine an ice cream truck – but for typical food).