Does anyone actually LIKE Valentine's Day? Someone has to, right? Every year it approaches followed closely by groans and eye rolling, yet there it is on every TV show and coating every Walgreens candy aisle, seemingly stronger with with each iteration. How does that happen?
Some would say that it's merely the inexorable machinations of a capitalist system that demands seasonal grist for it's consumerist mill and they wouldn't be wrong, but I suspect there's more to it than that. February is a rough month, especially here in Chicago. It's cold, it's grey, the Bears are done and the Sox are not yet playing in Arizona. Given that the next holiday on the horizon is followed by forty days of fasting, it's fair to say that we could use a little psychic sustenance to pull us through. And what's better than l'amour to give succor to those suffering in the cold? Romantics get to gush over flowers, cynics get to look forward to some guarenteed lovin' and everyone else gets to mock it from afar.
#firstworldproblems
Until at least the middle of the twentieth century there would be no need for "music to get you through your twenties". Once most people graduated high school, or (for those lucky few) college, they would marry, get a job (or, if you were female, quite your job) start having kids and work till retirement. It was a straightforward life with perhaps less self-discovery but also less self-exploration and its attendant self-recrimination.
For a lot modern Americans however, the twenties are an increasingly complex period containing a slow and erratic shift from adolescence to mature adulthood. If you're in your twenties with a college education odds are you're spending that post-grad decade trying different jobs, cities, mates, ideas and attitudes on for size before taking the big plunge. It's a life of late nights AND early meetings. Paying bills AND playing in bands. You're not quite ready to give up the ghost and "settle down" but you're also working your ass off to make a career and define a place for yourself in the world. It's not as bad as being a teenager but, like pretty much every stage in life, once you're there you find that it's nowhere as easy as you thought it'd be.
If there ever were a medium that would understand the feeling of being an overgrown teenager (or immature adult?) it's rock n' roll. Here are six of best records that will help get you through your third decade alive.
Poles who speak English have an oddly charming way of turning phrases. I think it's the combination of the nation's famed "poetic soul" and the almost-familiarity of a second tongue. One of the things I enjoyed most when I lived in Poland was people's habit of describing things as "something terrible, but also something wonderful".
I couldn't think of a better description of radio than "something terrible, but also something wonderful" for music. The radio has exposed millions to mind-altering music and turned many a group of hopeful teens into prophets with an audience of millions. At the same time, radio has also always been a great homogenizer, sanitizer and censor of music, a trend that grows ever worse with Clear Channel playlists increasingly dominating the commercial dial.
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