One.

Marvin Gaye and His Girls
John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Double Fantasy
Paul & Linda McCartney - Ram
Loudon Wainwright III - Album II
Rick Nelson - The Very Thought Of You
Herman's Hermits - There's A Kind Of Hush All Over The World
Yaz - Upstairs At Eric's
The Best of Burt Bacharach
Burt Bacharach Plays His Hits
Donovan's Greatest Hits
Tim Buckley - happy sad

"I'll throw the Tim Buckley in for a couple of bucks," said the record clerk. "It's my last day. What do I care." He slides the records into a brown plastic bag. "Overworked and underpaid."

"Well, thanks for your help, and good luck with whatever you do next."

"I'm going to the moon."

"To the moon?"

"Yeah, to the moon."

"Well, good luck with that."

*  *  *

Two.

Tammy Wynette - Stand By Your Man/Bedtime Story
Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Punch the Clock
Cat Stevens - Tea for the Tillerman
The Steve Miller Band - Book of Dreams
Dick Hyman at the Lowrey Organ - Electrodynamics
Utopia - Oops! Wrong Planet
Utopia - Adventures in Utopia
Utopia - Utopia

"Do you want to try anything out?" said the girl at the counter. "I've been listening to The Kinks all day."

"I'd love to hear how this side sounds. There's a big scratch."

"Do you come in here often?"

"I try not to. If I do, I'll just spend loads of money on Todd Rundgren albums."

"I know what you mean. That's like me and bookstores."

"Oh, me too." Dick Hyman plays his Lowrey Organ. "I'm definitely getting this one."

"I used to be so into listening to new music. Now I'm just like, whatever." The sound of a cash register. "My boss will be so happy. He called before and said 'did we earn any money?' and I was, like, 'no.' I've been here for seven hours."

And with that, I crossed "record store" off our list of possible storefront ideas.

*  *  *

Three.

Prince - Purple Rain
Grand Funk - Phoenix
Christopher Cross* - s/t
Bessie Smith - Nobody's Blues But Mine
Kate Bush - Hounds Of Love

"Ah, yes. Kate Bush. I met her once."

"Was she nuts?"

"Well, hold on, hold on. She was signing records as a promotion for her album back in 1993."

"Rubberband Girl?"

"Well, no, let's see, it was… hmmm. It was called The Red Shoes."

"Uh-huh."

"This was in the days before the internet, but somehow word got out, and by the time I got there the line stretched six blocks. She ended up signing for six hours."

"Wow." (…ow, wow, wow, wow, wow; unbelievable.)

"I actually handed her something to sign that she'd never seen before."

"Cool. Do you still have it?"

"Of course." He flips back to the beginning of the stack and starts counting the prices all over again.

He never did tell me if she was crazy or not.

*Purchased because I confused "Sailing" with "Come Sail Away" by Styx. Oh well. At least I have something to listen to now when I take bubble baths.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Back in January, while I was waiting in line at the crack of dawn in Park City to see a movie that pretty much messed me up for life, I received a call from my mom. We chatted, she asked the "how's-it-going"s, and I answered my "it's-going-fine"s punctuated by massive yawns and teeth chatters. She had been following my posts on the Sundance blog, and after she got through telling me how exciting it all sounded and how jealous she was, she offered a bit of constructive criticism: "Break up your sentences more. With periods."

She probably doesn't want me sharing with the world the fact that she once offered me long-distance writing advice, but her advice was wise and welcome, and worth sharing. It's also a little bit of what I've been doing here the past few weeks: breaking up the sentences with some much needed periods of silence.

It hasn't been entirely self-imposed: I recently signed up to work on a translation of a book I love, and since I've been devoting the time I used to spend writing things here to actually working on the translation, this page is quickly becoming one big pile-up of zen. Which, in its own way, is a nice little period to break up the sentences.

If you're disquieted by this silence, I come today offering you some noise. Some beautiful noise, courtesy of my brother. He and his band Apollo Run are about to embark on releasing a trio of EPs and touring the country to promote them, and need to enlist the help of fans to make that happen. They've signed up with Pledge Music and are offering all sorts of incentives for folks who are willing to become patrons. Also, 10% of their proceeds will go to charity. Watch the video of my wonderful brother and his amazing nineties hair (everything is nineties!) and think about helping him out. If your name is something interesting and/or unpronouncable, please consider choosing the option of having it written into one of their songs. I love giving my brother a challenge. (I've also promised to stop teasing him so much once he reaches 30. That's fair, right? Though I don't think being the big sister has ever had an age limit.)

And finally on the topic of music, I've been doing a lot of shorter writing about it on Tumblr. If you're starved for words, there are some on offer there, along with cryptic pictoral reviews of Greenberg and whatever other random thoughts and images come tumbling (ha!) forth from my giddy mind. A sampling:

• Age Difference
  I’m jealous he got to be there at the beginning of everything I ended up loving. Especially The La’s.
• Aaron's Mix Tape
  A few weekends ago I came across one of the mixes he made and sent me while I was living there, with its pasted-together cover and high school boy chicken scratch track listing.
• The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio
  How could I ever love this place - where I so often feel like *I’m* being thrown into the fireplace - more than I love Ohio? What was it I came here to find?

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

The other day my brother called me to talk record players. "I think I want to get one. I think I need vinyl in my life."

It's addictive, I warned him. You will accumulate; your apartment will begin to smell like cardboard. Tthere's just something about listening to an entire side of an album, waiting for that pop that signifies it's through, the needle bumping in the groove, sometimes silently, then you rise and carefully flip it over… it's meditation over music. None of this shuffle nonsense.

Ceremony.

"I know a great shop for second-hand records if you do."

I've owned a record player at almost every stage of my life. From the time our mom came home from a yard sale with the Saturday Night Fever and Breakin' II soundtracks, up to the days I discovered my dad's collection of Neil Young albums and hauled them off to college along with a portable turntable that had faulty wiring and used to give me electric shocks. Even when the record player was an old broken one we had to hand-wind to play our Herb Alpert while living a ball's throw from the cricket ground in London, the spinning record has always been there, a 33 1/3 metronome for the rhythm of my life.

This Saturday, I popped into the East Village outpost of Kim's, enticed by balloons and the excitement of a crowd still loyal to the format, a crowd who still knows why they're called "record" stores, all congregating on a single day to support a cause they believe in. I wasn't hip to how things worked, and didn't realize I was supposed to buy some sort of limited edition 7" from The Hold Steady or Surfer Blood or the like. Instead, I walked out with Grand Funk's Shinin' On (replete with 3D cover, but missing the 3D glasses), the new Yeasayer album, and a kit for cleaning vinyl—an impulse buy at the register.

Here is where I admit how cool I feel carrying around a bag of vinyl records. Whether I actually am cool or not doesn't matter; it feels cool.

A few nights later, my brother, his girlfriend, and I met at a pizzeria in Brooklyn before we went off to see Liars. The record player was still on his mind. We talked needle quality, pre-amps and speakers. I'm not much of a gearhead, but I now know where to get a good belt for your belt drive, and I know how to handle a record, no matter what the alert looks record shop owners give me when I slip the record out of its sleeve may tell you.

John was all set to dive in. And, coming fresh from the high of slipping vinyl out of its sleeve, I was excited for him.

"I can lend you all my Todd Rundgren albums now."

***

I've been relegating anything I have to say about music lately to Tumblr, partly because the format is more conducive to posting video/audio. But this recent post from Jessica made me realize that there's still something to be said about the songs we love, and why we love them, and oh boy what they do to us when they get stuck on repeat. (If there was a Last FM for my record player, I'd be embarrassed to see how many times I've listened to Todd. And Honky Chateau. And Enoch Light's Persuasive Percussion. And — oh my god — Upstairs at Eric's.)

WORDS. Words used to talk about how much we love our music. Gushing, unadorned words. This is okay to do sometimes.

So this is it. This list: these are the albums that make me happy I own a record player.

(If there's something broken in you and you are predisposed to hate anything that came out of the seventies, please skip forward, waving along the way to me in my jeans zipped up with pliers and my hair feathered out to here.)

Todd Rundgren - Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren
Track: Long Flowing Robe (links go to YouTube)
Let's get this out of the way first. Everyone who knows me is so completely sick of hearing about my recent fascination (to put it mildly) with Todd Rundgren. But I'd be untrue if I didn't mention it at the top of the list. As much as I love the wacky later Todd records, there's something about his early Carole King-esque ballads that I really connect with. This is the sound of my memory: Nothing beats a lonely Friday night. See also: Todd, Hermit of Mink Hollow, Healing.

Joni Mitchell - Hejira
Track: Furry Sings The Blues
Joni Mitchell's Blue was the first piece of vinyl I purchased as an adult, an album I used to listen to while I took baths in the perch of our Crouch Hill flat in London. It was all optimism and airy vocals; even the sad songs seemed elated to be sad. Hejira came to me later, once I'd started to tire of living in New York. "Furry Sings The Blues" may be a song about Memphis, but it still somehow applies to this town too: Old Furry sings the blues / He points a bony finger at you and / "I don't like you" / Everybody laughs as if it's the old man's standard joke / But it's true / We're only welcome for our drink and smoke.

Cat Stevens - Buddha and the Chocolate Box
Track: Oh Very Young
And though you want to last forever you know you never will... This is the tagline of my life.

Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac
Track: I'm So Afraid
Our favorite part of this album is the credit on the back that says "Sleeve Concept: Fleetwood Mac." Oh, the seventies. I can't listen to this album without raiding my own collection of scarves.

The Stranglers - All Live and All of the Night
Track: Always the Sun
The Beatles - The Beatles '65
Track: I'll Follow The Sun
There are bad days once in a while. Days when work has been difficult, or someone got uppity on the subway. These are the days we require these tracks. A rough day turned around by a Hugh Cornwell lyric.

The Sandpipers - Guantanamera
Track: Louie, Louie
Since discovering this album, we give money to anyone who enters our subway car and plays "Guantanamera," no matter what mood we're in that day. The Sandpipers' version of The Kingsmen classic is worth the price of this album alone.

The Clash - Singles Box
Track: This Is Radio Clash
I defy you not to dance. I'm dancing in my office right now. (Yes, dancing in my office. Not that uncommon. Whenever I get caught, I tell people I'm stretching my legs. Those devil's horns I was throwing? Carpal tunnel exercises.)

Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks
Track: Tangled Up In Blue
My reading album. It goes on, the book comes out, and I listen to it over and over. I never could listen to Dylan before I owned it on vinyl, maybe in the way I don't like to read Hemingway in paperback. Little peculiarities and preferences that make life more comfortable.

Yeasayer - ODD BLOOD
Track: O.N.E.
Holy 1991 dance party! Erasure vocals and whistles and pumping your fists in the air. The song that follows it on the album is like "WHOA, who let Altern-8 in here?" (Which, in turn, reminds me of this episode of Spaced. Only for the hardcore UK raver.) Well done, Secretly Canadian, for including an mp3 download with the album. Most record companies do this these days; it's smart and appreciated.

Brainiac - Bonsai Superstar
Track: Hands of the Genius
See also: every album I ever bought in college, from Lazy to Hüsker Dü, and many a Guided By Voices or Boyracer 7" in between.

And the one I'm on the hunt for...

Badfinger - Straight Up
Track: Baby Blue
This is one of those pop songs that is near perfect. Along the same lines as Big Star (also a regular on the turntable, but then you knew that). The thing is? You can only get the version I want — the version, I later discovered, that was produced by your favorite and mine: Todd Rundgren — if you find an old copy of Straight Up, or buy the entire soundtrack to The Departed. I do not want the soundtrack to The Departed. Somebody fix this, please.

One of these days I'm going to make a mix for the internet. Or you could totally just borrow all my Todd Rundgren albums.

(Also on heavy rotation: these Kenny Powers inspired mixes from Molly Lambert at This Recording. Which were obviously inspired by many old beat up record players. And more vinyl inspiration from Jim at Sweet Juniper, including the fabulous Loudon Wainwright III track, "Hotel Blues," also part of the collection that currently leans against my wall.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

This is going to be harder to write than I wanted it to be. Everyone seems to have their feelings sorted out ahead of time about the sudden passing of Alex Chilton, instant access to their memories of where they were when they heard a particular Chilton track, or what it meant to see Chilton bristle in a rare interview, or have "Thirteen" played at their wedding.

Everyone is already so eloquent. How can they know what to say so quickly? I'm still coming to terms with the newness of his ghost.

* * *

I only really started listening intensely to Alex Chilton's music in May of last year. I'd had a few Big Star songs in my collection for a while, but something happened in May that ignited an obsession of a magnitude I wasn't quite prepared for. And I can't even say what that thing was. Still, no matter how deep and broad the obsession became with his music, I didn't expect to be hit so hard by his death. Or maybe I just didn't expect him to ever die at all.

But as I saw his name come up on my screen last night next to those horrible words that seem so wrong —"dead at 59" — I shouted. I was angry. Then I raced to put one of his albums on the record player. I needed to hear his voice, needed to hear him play. And that's when it hit me. Hard.

This sounds a bit like goodbye
In a way it is I guess
As I leave your side
I've taken the air
Take care, please, take care
Take care, please, take care

Back in November, when we saw Big Star at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, the best part of the night was watching Chilton there on stage simply enjoying playing his music. He loved playing the songs he loved, and he loved watching the rest of us get to hear them. There was no question about that, and you could tell he felt music in every fiber of his being.

I get angry at the fact that here you have this guy who enjoys playing music so much, so very obviously much, and he doesn't get to any more. He's gone. He'll never be on that stage again. He wasn't ready to stop playing, but some idiot pulled the wrong rope on the curtain. He wasn't ready to stop playing. That's what has hit me the hardest.

Life is too goddamn short.

I hope there's plenty of music wherever he is now. I hope he hears that funeral march of the thousands of stereos playing his songs, and joins in. I hope he's playing hard, bending his shoulder into the beat, leaning his head back and hearing those songs play him all the way up to heaven.

The music will miss you too, Alex.

Other things I've written because of Alex Chilton can be found here:

Ritual
An Open Letter To Nick Hornby
Guess Who Has A Tumblr, and other things marginally related to Alex Chilton
She Thinks She's A Mystery To All
Alex Chilton Is My Nerd Boyfriend

and

All Things Chilton on my other site, Alex Chilton Is My Nerd Boyfriend

If you've never heard any of the following songs, do yourself a favor and seek them out. The best thing I can think to do to remember him is to play his music as loud as we can, windows rolled down, feet on the dashboard.

The Box Tops
You Keep Tightening Up On Me
Soul Deep

Big Star
Thirteen
Ballad of El Goodo
Back of a Car
September Gurls

Alex Chilton
Every Day As We Grow Closer
Hey! Little Child

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

There are some people with online presences who, when you meet them in person, are exactly as you'd expect them to be. Me? Sort of. I have a kind of "ego, super-ego, id" pattern going on with my online presence: Twitter being the ego, this here blog the super-ego, and Tumblr the id. The balance of the three: me in real life.

This balance has been more of a struggle lately, and the id is winning the wrestling match, no thanks to Todd Rundgren. Still, it's nice to have somewhere to let obsessions run their course out of sight, where they won't hurt anybody. (Those of you who already follow me on Tumblr may beg to differ.) And every once in a while, it's nice to let the id take control, to not hold back, to throw everything onto the page, and see what comes out of it.

Sometimes it's almost worth sharing.