“The flow of time is always cruel. Its speed seems different for
each person, but no one can change it. A thing that does not change with time
is a memory of younger days.”
Sheik – The Legend of
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
This quote popped into my mind suddenly
as I was writing this. Time really was a central theme in that video game. And
it had something deep and profound to say about it. Time waits for no man. The
Earth has completed another orbit around the Sun since the last time it was
close to New Years, and by the abstract Gregorian calendar most (but not all)
of humanity uses, it’s going to be the year 2020 soon. And this is considered
significant, although not quite as significant as 2000 was. The years 2010 and
2000 don’t feel all that long ago. But in some ways, they feel like they were
an eternity ago too. Maybe they’re never going to feel like that long ago to
me. One day my son, born in January 2019, will look at the year 2010 the way I
look at 1977. It is going to all seem like ancient history to him. And to me
2010 was like a couple years ago, in my mind. Getting old sucks. Yes, as Sheik
said the flow of time is indeed cruel.
But
I suppose since everyone else is taking stock of the last ten years at the
moment, I might as well hop on the bandwagon. I have little idea what music was
actually popular in the United States during this decade. I stopped keeping
track of that after high school (Class of 2004 if you’re curious). I suppose
once you reach adulthood it gets easier to shelter yourself from all of that irrelevant
nonsense. You might still have to hear the irritating popular music at the
store or something, but most of the time you can avoid it. What did the kids
listen to this decade? There was it that dubstep noise, that prima donna Justin
Bieber, Katy Perry and Gangnam Style became the Macarena of the decade. That’s
about as far as I know about the music that was popular in the 2010’s, and it
sure wasn’t what I was listening to. Come to think of it my lack of knowledge
about it makes me understand why so many people over 50 seem to think young
people still wear baggy jeans that show off their boxers like it’s 1998. You
get more sheltered from all of that foolishness the older you get. I hope I
don’t ever get quite that out of touch.
As it so happens, another weird
tradition I keep (I should have started blogging years ago so I could share all
these), is to keep track of my top two songs each year. The ones that remind me
the most of how my year went. I do this so that I can eventually make a mix
tape covering the years. These songs needn’t have been released that same year
as they’re listed, in fact some of these are from the 1980’s and 1990’s, but
it’ll be the year I discovered them, and the year they impacted me.
“Time passes. People move. Like a
river’s flow, it never ends.”
2010
·
Ayria
– Lovely Day
A
song I associate with sitting in my room at night having no one to hang out
with and nothing to do, when I wish I did. But “I fear rejection more than
being alone”, very true of myself at the time and why I had neither a
girlfriend nor many friends in general save for a small core that I still have
today. At this point I actually had to return to Community College for the last
couple of classes I still needed for my Bachelor’s degree, which weren’t
offered at my University. So, I was back with my parents in Martinez,
California, doing mainly nothing else but write. I was in limbo at this time.
·
And
One – Years
A
song about time. It makes me think about how the years roll by faster and
faster, growing “colder” as they pass, as I look at the world through an
increasingly jaded lens. And when they’re gone, it’s “just memories left
behind”. The cruel passage of time. Like a river’s flow, it never ends. Fits in with my introduction to this blog entry quite well.
2011
·
Epsilon
Minus – Just Another Long Shot
So this song was done by the band Jennifer Parkin was in before she went solo and started Ayria, but the song appears on one of her later albums anyway as a bonus track of sorts. In
spring 2011 I was trying to get accepted into Graduate School, throwing my bets
on that being what would provide me with a financially stable future. *cue
laugh track* It was another long shot. This song was there when my anticipation
was at its highest. I was holding my breath, waiting for the answer for months,
wondering if I’d be good enough. I’m still wondering if it was fortunate or not
that they accepted me. As I’ve discussed, if there was a year that I could just
do over, it would probably be 2011.
·
And
One – Save the Hate
A
song I associate with trying to put your negativity aside and enjoy the day.
Don’t let the depression win, save the hate for another day, just seize the day
and don’t let anything get you down. “Don’t bring me down it’s far too late”.
I’d been through the worst of it, nothing that life could throw at me was going
to be something I couldn’t handle. It was a song that pumped me up as I
prepared to enter Graduate School.
2012
·
And
One – The Sun
This
song will always remind me of my first trip with my girlfriend to Florida (my
wife now). I see it as an ode to the Sun, the star that gave us all life, which
I personally have a love/hate relationship with, but have to remember that
without it, life wouldn’t be here.
·
Light
Asylum – Heart of Dust
I
wouldn’t say this song has a whole lot of personal relevance to me, but I was
obsessed with this song back in late 2012 and early 2013. By the lyrics, it sounds like a song about a haunted house, or trying to get a spirit to leave your house. Interesting subject choice, not something I can say I've had personal experience with. I want Light Asylum
to come out with a new album already. They had what, a single, one full album,
and then they were gone. We miss you and need you, Light Asylum.
2013
·
Light
Asylum – IPC
Yes,
this band again. I bought their album in early 2013 after having heard “Heart
of Dust”. This song is even catchier than Heart of Dust. And its
anti-authority, which is always fun. It stands for "Industrial Prison Complex" and is about people being arrested for petty crimes for the profit of prison owners. Nobody's innocent in their eyes. It's true. The tune of this song is going to get
right up in your brain and never leave though, so be careful. Here's a live version for you to watch.
·
The
Jetzons – Hard Times
It
was this year where in the Sonic the Hedgehog community, someone finally put
two and two together and realized that this song was the basis for the theme of
the Ice Cap Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The song had been recorded in
1982, but went under the radar along with the rest of The Jetzons’ catalog.
Their music was rereleased in 2009 but remained obscure, and it took four full
years before someone listened to this song and realized it sounded like the Ice
Cap Zone theme, and discovered that the singer of The Jetzons, Brad Buxer, had
worked on the soundtrack for the game, so it was obvious. Before this the main
theory was that Ice Cap Zone was based on Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal”,
since he also worked on the soundtrack, but that turned out to be a red
herring. Ice Cap Zone was always the best song from that game, and to hear a
New Wave song done to the tune of it? A part of my childhood was completed. Any
time I feel like I’m going through “Hard Times”, it makes me think of this
song. The hard times can still be the “happiest days of our lives” when we look
back on them, even if they felt hard at the time.
2014
·
And
One – Missing Track
This
song is inseparable in my mind with my first trip to Armenia, a two-week
excursion with Fresno State’s Armenian Students Organization. I afforded it
with a scholarship and a generous donation from my aunt Sharon (thanks!). I had
this song on my MP3 player while we were on the tour bus driving through the
beautiful mountain landscapes. But the lyrics are about writing to someone far
away that you miss, like a long-distance relationship. I still missed my
girlfriend Deborah while I was on the trip and it reminded me of that. The song
came back the next year when I went to Armenia again for some internships,
becoming even more relevant to me. And wow, the "Missing Track" is missing from YouTube! How strangely appropriate. This was all I could dig up.
· Aurelio Voltaire
– The Night (1988 Deathrock version)
This
version is my favorite, as Voltaire had an earlier version that was heavier on
the violins, but somehow not as dark sounding, nor as heavy. I suppose I just
prefer it in this style. It’s a song for those of us who prefer the night to
the day, despite others telling us it is unhealthy or wrong. The perfect song
for any goth, really. I relate to it quite well.
2015
·
And
One – Nyctophiliac
This
is one of my favorite songs of the decade, really. I can remember listening to
it on my MP3 player on a tour bus driving from Armenia into Artsakh, the
unrecognized country I visited during my trip. It was night out, the roads were
winding through the mountains, tossing us back and forth. Through the windows I
could only see an inky black night, with the rugged mountains only slightly
darker than the sky above. If you live in America, you probably rarely see
landscapes this dark. No city around for miles. A village passes briefly every
now and then, but these aren’t very bright either. Only the major cities in
Artsakh have street lights. They have to conserve. As I pressed my head against
the glass of the window in fatigue, I thought about how much blood was spilt
over this land in the early 1990’s, when a war was fought between Armenia and
Azerbaijan over it. I thought about the history of conflict here over the
centuries. Night had fallen over this land. It was peaceful, but the peace is a
fragile one. Will it survive? “Will I survive?” The lyrics seemed to me to be sung
by the land itself. I'm also a nyctophiliac myself, which is a lover of night, so that's another reason I relate to it.
Garegin Bingyol – Done Yar
This
is the catchiest Armenian song ever. I first heard of this singer when I was in
Armenia and one of their songs was played on the bus during one of our trips. I
discovered this one after I returned to the US, late in 2015. It kept me
connected to Armenia at a time where I felt sadly severed from it.
2016
·
Vellum
Stairs – You’re Always Guilty
An
overlooked song from 1990, this is some good New Wave. And I was feeling guilty
at the time I heard this. I felt guilty that my fiancé had a job and I had been
unable to find one. I felt like baggage, like a burden. This song hit close to
home that summer. It was a depressing time, but the good news is that September
I started the best job I’ve ever had, at the Cracker Country museum on the
Florida State Fairgrounds. Then I got married. So things turned around.
Katzenjammer – Soviet Trumpeter
This
song reminds me of my tortured inner artist, who must subsist in a world where
it is so hard to be heard, so hard to be noticed, and you often have to endure
rejection. This could be the theme song of this blog, really. It certainly felt
that way to me around the time I uncovered this song, when I was finding out that self-publishing was a
lot harder to make money from than I had anticipated.
2017
·
Brotherhood
– Damned
This
is a catchy song I was really into in the spring of 2017. Reminds me
of how life feels sometimes. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, there is no
hope. Life after graduation with a Master’s degree. This song has stuck around
with me too. The description on the official upload describes the song as being about the pursuit of elusive happiness, among other things. And happiness is elusive.
·
The
Midnight – River of Darkness
This
was the year I discovered synthwave, a revival of the synth music of the 80’s.
The Midnight is my favorite band in this genre, with the great vocals and 80’s
sax, and melodies that many times feel magical. It was something different from
what I’d been into before. I don’t adopt new genres often but this song here
was a gateway drug. It’s probably dark enough to get played on one of the goth
podcasts out there, but a lot of the rest of this band’s music probably is not. It hooked me in though.
2018
·
The
Cure – Cold
Yeah
this one’s an oldie from 1982, and unlike "Hard Times" by The Jetzons, which also came out that year, this song wasn't almost completely unheard of for almost 30 years; but for some reason it eluded me until 2018 when
I started buying albums from The Cure. The album this is on, Pornography,
is my favorite album from The Cure. A lot of people say Disintegration
is their favorite, but I just like this one better. The songs are more raw, I
suppose. Disintegration was The Cure’s return to darker music, but
Pornography is the sound they were returning to. The origin. I love the lyric “Your name like ice, into my
heart”. It helps that I discovered this song right around the time I started
the worst job I ever had, at that call center. It made me feel like this song
inside.
·
Ministry
– Game Over
If
“Cold” represents my depression from that year, “Game Over” represents my
escape from that depression. An old Ministry track from when they were
synthpop, I mentioned before on this blog that it just feels adventurous. It
feels like a fantasy, an escape. I got heavily into escapism while I was
working full time at this call center, and it was partly fueled by this song.
And the Land of Oz books.
2019
·
Boy
Harsher – Fate
So
this year is over, and I might as well pick my favorites from this year. It’s
hard to pick just two, it really is, I’ve heard all sorts of music this year.
It’s easier to talk about the years when they’re in the past, not when they’re
not quite over yet. I’ve been jumping from band to band this year thanks to
listening to Communion After Dark and other music I find on YouTube. But, let
me first go with “Fate” by Boy Harsher. I saw this husband and wife duo in
concert last April in Ybor City, Florida, with my wife, and we had a wonderful
night out. I bought their album Careful on cassette too, which I should
review sometime. This song was running through my head for a couple months
earlier in the year.
Buzz Kull – Avoiding the Light
This
song came out last year and I’m kicking myself for not hearing it sooner. It’s
dominated my top 3 songs of the month for two months straight. It’s one of
those songs that I feel like was written for me in a way. And I bet I’m not the
only one who feels that way. I want them to play this at The Castle nightclub
in Ybor City so I can dance to it. Somewhat sadly, I’ve moved this year so I won’t
be able to show up there as often anymore.
This song just makes me think of dressing up and having a fun night out
at a Gothic nightclub.
I’ve been making playlists for my CD
mixes of my favorite songs that were released year by year since 1981, and I’ll
be sharing those soon if you’d rather see a list of songs going by the year
they were released. I’m currently up to 2007 on that. I like to decide the best
songs released during a decade after a little more time has gone by, because I
may not have heard it all yet. I’ve only recently been able to put together a
comprehensive list of the what I consider to be the best songs of the 2000’s in
the last couple years, and well over half of the songs on that list are ones I
wouldn’t have discovered yet in late 2009. But that’ll be for a later blog
entry.
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