We thought for once we knew what really was important

I was dipping into the internet vacuum, emotions sucked up by others' dusty stories. 

Since I don’t really live there any more, when I'm sucked in, it really, um, sucks. 

I’d rather live in a dark November of another time, when I was busily preparing for one creative thing or another, planning travel, planning shopping. Going out or making strategies for when I am out. Or immersed in school, people.

Or walking shimmering Loop sidewalks in the early evening with a list in mind. Most of those walks were the function of moving through that list, completing that list, a blur of dashes and things to buy inscribed on a work post-it. Detergent, replacement earrings (again), and the beginnings of gifts, since it's early December or late November. 

The walks I remember are when I was--let myself be spontaneously sidetracked. Dip into this hotel lobby, lean way back and take in the Christmas Tree, where ever it was before Millennium Park existed, or --yes! the Puppet Bike! 

Whether I took it in or not, there was life all around. 

Today, where I walked, I looked at dead trees and dead leaves. Only the water moving, and a deer casually chawing, but always alert.

This doesn't have much to do with this song, other than I remember it was November dark and life was moving a lot when it was out.

Promises in every star (or, A weekend's worth of sadness)

I played the hell out of this cassette, I'm quite sure, but I don't think it survived a early/mid-90s This-is-not-cool-enough-to-remain-in-my-collection purge, or perhaps the purge prior to the big move to Chicago.

God, this is such a fall album (and reminds me of one fall in particular). But it's kind of overproduced, sadly so. The songs are great and I think they would survive a Let's-take-out-the-80s-flattening-production-effects revival today. I wonder if she ever plays these songs. Seriously, I'd love a re-recording of this.

Not, however, the first track off the album. This one--ah, I love its synthesized grandeur, the how it's haunting, but that is manufactured. Also, it just reminds me of both "What's Love Got to Do With It" and The Motels.


 
I feel like back then, her voice still sounded so, I don't know, contained. Definitely like she'd just gotten out of music school (which she pretty much had). I haven't encountered much Aimee Mann since then, or really tried, to, so I don't know how her voice has persisted or prospered over the years. I suppose I could go find out next month.

Or maybe that I ultimately like things that are a little rough, that kind of "college rock" or indie or what-have-you that sprang from the grubby punk impulse. Aimee Mann: she writes and sings about rough times, but she was never a little rough.

Sorry, I just cannot find a more expressive word for it than contained.

Still, I do love these two songs, and our Brave New Digital World makes it possible for me to have them. Well, technically, the BNDW has for the last ten years, but TT and this song didn't come back on my radar until I started listening to this latest in my hunt for the best and cheeziest classic-rock Internet radio station iTunes can offer me.

*Update: Um, yeah. I'm listening to the whole thing on Spotify and it gets progressively worse, and when you get to this track, you realize this should be faintly heard in Marshalls while you are shopping at the absolutely depressing one on Clark across from Century Mall for you-have-no-idea-what, you actually entered the building to go to the Cost Plus World Market that you thought was there but isn't so while you are in the building, why not just into Marshalls and see if they have knee socks or some kind of utility blazer and ohmygod these shirts are ugly as hell and, wait, that sounds like Aimee Mann faintly crooning above this rack of Misses tops and I should not have even gone into Misses anyway.

Now I know why I really purged it--if less than two songs make me happy, you're out.

Also: question answered.