Carnival Kids

The last time I lived in Huntington Beach I had a friend who would make me the best mix CD's. In the days before i had a wireless connection and a downloading addiction, I was dependent on the kindness of friends with CD burners to help me find new music. And Jayd was really good at feeding my habit. So about two and a half years ago, I had one that was in pretty heavy rotation when it just disappeared. Gone without a trace. And since I had memorized all the songs but not the titles or artists, I had 15 melodies in my head but no way to find them again. Since songs to me are like diamonds or shoes to other girls, I was heartbroken to have lost them.

Fast forward to today. April, 2006. I broke the CD drive in my work laptop yesterday in an accident involved my power cord, a swivel chair, and my ankle. So I took the poor thing to our overworked IT technician to repair. I personally believe that this laptop was actually the first one ever made because it is massive and old and loud and the battery lasts for exactly 20 second after you unplug it. Don't even get me started on airport security lines. I start dreading having to pull this thing out of my backpack 45 minutes before I even get to the ticket counter. There is a reason I have a nice, sleek, lightweight iBook at home. Needless to say, the only way to replace the CD drive in this fossil is to take it from another computer also built in the early 1800's. Faraz found one in the dark recesses of the IT closet, performed a little intel surgery and I went back to my desk to test it out. I opened the drive and there, all blue and shiny with Jayd's super feminine handwriting, was "a box full o' suggestions".

Yes, somehow, somewhere, this tiny time capsule and I have been joyfully reunited. It starts off with a Bright Eyes song that never quite grew on me and apparently never will as time does not seem to have improved it. But then we jump right into "Don't Steal Our Sun" by The Thrills that used to make me tear up my first few weeks in Boston. A Futureheads tunes that, true to Jayd form, I got about six months before everyone was talking about the Futureheads. (I know the Killers are now the most overexposed band in all of indieland but he put "Mr. Brightsides" on a CD a full nine months before Hot Fuss was released in the U.S. I saw them open for another band at a tiny club in Boston in the meantime and was the only person who knew all the words. I'm rarely ahead of the curve but damn, that felt cool.) We have The Rapture from that year when we all loved The Rapture before we never heard from them again. A Tahiti 80 song that hadn't quite stuck in my head long enough for me to find it again but now has me completely enthralled. The first Goldfrapp song I ever heard and then two weeks later I actually saw her getting into a taxi outside some dive bar in NYC. "Last Day of Summer" by Magnet that convinced me to buy his CD the second it came out. Well, that and the video for his cover of "Lay Lady Lay". Clem Snide, Jay Farrar, Bonnie "Prince" Billy and British Sea Power round out the tracks I can identify. There are three or four that feel so familiar but I still can't remember the names or artists. But here they are, for me to google the lyrics and peice together a new track list.

The music is great, but so is September 2003 coming into sharp focus in my brain. I know this is going to sound weird coming from a person that just moved across the country to start a newish job but I'm thinking alot about change right now and where I want to be in another two or three years, it's fun to have a reminder of where I've been.

Box full of suggestions indeed.