To all you East Coast sophisticates: the cowtown isn't Denver, it's Greeley, way up north from here. When the wind is just right, you can smell Greeley, and believe me, you don't want to. Greeley's saving grace is the University of Northern Colorado, or, more specifically, its radio station, KUNC. It's notable for its offering of "eclectic music:" classical, jazz, pop, and treacly folk which appears to be straight out of the free-to-be-you-and-me 70s. Despite the last, it beats the snot out of most of the FM offerings in Denver, so that's what I turn to when the new's not on and I'm not in the mood for jazz. (For the record, Denver does have one of the objectively best jazz stations in these United States, KUVO. But I digress.)
And so it was that one Wednesday morning I heard "On the Air" by Girlyman. An instantaneous 5 stars in my iTunes. The extended metaphor is an aging actor looking back on the early part of his career as an actor in a TV comedy in the 1950s, a show from which he wanted to break out for bigger things, but now realizes was really as good as his life ever got. At first, I thought it was (like all pop songs) about romantic regret, but upon obsessive relistening, realized is a metaphor for life itself, for our insistent refusal to be satisfied with the good we have because we've deluded ourselves into thinking there's something better. Maybe there is, but often there's not. Rock music often keeps us from seeing this; who'd have thought pop could bring everything into focus?
Girlyman's label, Daemon Records, will let you download this pop masterpiece here. Do so. Immediately. Girlyman may never create anything this astounding again, but they can go to their graves knowing they did it once.
Not a bad way to die.
And so it was that one Wednesday morning I heard "On the Air" by Girlyman. An instantaneous 5 stars in my iTunes. The extended metaphor is an aging actor looking back on the early part of his career as an actor in a TV comedy in the 1950s, a show from which he wanted to break out for bigger things, but now realizes was really as good as his life ever got. At first, I thought it was (like all pop songs) about romantic regret, but upon obsessive relistening, realized is a metaphor for life itself, for our insistent refusal to be satisfied with the good we have because we've deluded ourselves into thinking there's something better. Maybe there is, but often there's not. Rock music often keeps us from seeing this; who'd have thought pop could bring everything into focus?
Girlyman's label, Daemon Records, will let you download this pop masterpiece here. Do so. Immediately. Girlyman may never create anything this astounding again, but they can go to their graves knowing they did it once.
Not a bad way to die.
1 comment:
I like the music.
Like you, it strikes a chord. Painfully.
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