People Playlists

Today's mostly-unprovoked project is people-themed playlists. I pulled songs that I strongly associate with people I know very well and grouped them by person in my iTunes player. Here's two of them:

DAD

1. "O Sole Mio", Dean Martin
2. "On the Road Again", Willie Nelson
3. "Stand By Your Man", Tammy Wynette
4. "Ring of Fire", Johnny Cash
5. "Love Letters in the Sand", Patsy Cline
6. "The River", Garth Brooks
7. "Take it Back", Reba McIntyre
8. "Imagine", John Lennon
9. "King of the Road", Roger Miller

1: Dad's an Italian guy, hence he can sing "O Sole Mio." It's also one of his favorite songs to sing in the shower, or while he's taking a piss. He really likes to sing while he's taking a piss.

2: This is one of those songs that Dad will sing along with whenever he hears it. But he has a hilarious inability to remember lyrics, which means he's pretty much singing just the words "on the road again" and the rest is a bunch of la-la-la's and mumbles.

3: Sometimes he'll come out with this song, and Mom will snipe about how sexist it is, and they'll have a play fight about it.

4: Dad has a bunch of Johnny Cash albums, and played them all the time when I was growing up. I remember this one the best because on the album cover, Cash is standing in front of this trippy vortex graphic that looked like he could very well fall into a ring of fire.

5: Patsy and Johnny are probably Dad's two favorite singers. I could have picked quite a few different Patsy songs, because an album of hers was one of three cassette tapes Dad kept in the car and played on loop on long car trips. But this song wins because it's another one of Dad's peeing songs, which gives "Love Letters in the Sand" a whole new subtext. (Love letters in the snow?)

6: The other two cassette tapes were a concert by the West Point Military Band (which I don't have on my iPod, and never will), and The River. Dad would literally ask for a hush over the car when this song came on, such was his reverence for it.

7: Dad's radio is always tuned to Country 92.5, so I heard the latest country hits every Sunday on the way to and from church. This is one I really got to like when I was maybe 11 or 12.

8: Dad had this album on a 33. He played it for me when I was very young, and then years later, bits of the song came out as I was trying to make up a song (maybe when I was 8 or 9). So for a few years I literally thought I had written the song "Imagine", until he played it again one day, and my mind was blown -- How did John Lennon know the song I wrote???

9: Nowadays when I fly back to visit my parents, it's usually Dad who drives me up to the airport to go back to Chicago. Many times this is a long quiet trip, because we don't have all that much in common, and are often at a loss for common topics of interest. We were driving north on I-84, approaching Hartford, "King of the Road" came on the radio (92.5 of course), and we both sang along for the entire song. That might be my favorite Dad moment ever.

*****

SCOTT

1. "New York State of Mind", Billy Joel
2. "I'll Do Anything", Jason Mraz
3. "This Love", Maroon 5
4. "The Summer Wind", Frank Sinatra
5. "Alcohol", Barenaked Ladies
6. "Sooner or Later", Madonna
7. "Kerosene", Miranda Lambert
8. "Just Like a Pill", Pink
9. "Man on the Moon", R.E.M.
10. "Got to Begin Again", Billy Joel

1: We're in a bar, and the guy sitting next to us pumps the jukebox with quarters and back-to-back Billy songs. So we get into a conversation about our favorite songs (can we pick just one?!?!), and the three of us sang along with this whole song together.

2: This was the theme song for the character he played in my final film in college. If I could afford the rights to it, I would have played the opening bars under his character's first appearance in the film.

3: I'm a little fuzzy on this one; I know this song kept coming up in Directing III, but now I can't remember why.

4: The night we wrapped my Directing III film, we went to a bar across the street from the shooting locations, and I played this on the jukebox. The night he wrapped his film, we went to the bar that was adjacent to HIS shooting location, and he put this song on the jukebox for me. Who'd a thunk the bastard could be sentimental?

5: Because he loves to get me riled up about how much he drinks. (And he has played this exact song to illustrate his love of the stuff.)

6: We both hate Madonna. A lot. But we both have this song because of Sondheim.

7: Scott, you probably don't even remember this song, but I played it for you once, and you described it as "Tampon-y." (Shaking head in disbelief...)

8: This was playing in Nick's Uptown the first time he and Josh tried to get me to play pool. And I sucked. Hard. So you might say pool, for me, is just like a pill. (Insteadda makin' me better...)

9: I'm proud of this one. Lately he had been talking my ear off about what a great album Automatic for the People is. (Not that I didn't agree.) So then once he was telling me about the moon-landing-was-a-fraud theory, and I said, "Well, if you believe they put a man on the moon...." and it wasn't until I said "up his sleeve" that he realized I was fucking with him.

10: Me and him drove our Directing III teacher crazy with our constant bickering. One exchange went something like this:

Him: It's called "Got to Begin Again."
Me: What album is that from?
Him: It's a rare one, you've probably never heard it.
Me: I have a lot of Billy albums.
Him: You don't have this one.
Me: Try me!
Him: Cold Spring Harbor.
Me: I don't have that one.
Him: Told you.
Me: Whatever, asshole.
Teacher: What the hell is wrong with you two?!?!

*****

To be continued...