Ep 96 Listeners’ “Still in Rotation” Albums

Midlife Mixtape

“It means different things all the time, but it always works”: Listeners share stories of the music of their lives, from Prince to Joni Mitchell to The Beastie Boys and everyone in between.

Find the full archive of 30+ Still in Rotation guest posts here!

This 2021 re-recording of “Biko” by my still-in-rotation performer Peter Gabriel is just jaw-dropping to me.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 96 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on April 27, 2021. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email [e-mail] ***

Taya Dunn Johnson 00:00

All of his songs move me in different ways, and whenever I need to creative push, I know that this collection will give me what I need.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:09

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:33

Hi Listeners! Before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to give a hearty congratulations to the team at TueNight.com, a community for GenX women – you’ve probably heard me talk about them before because I love the writing, interviews and resources on their site and in their FB community. Their founder and editor-in-chief Margit Detweiler was my guest for Episode 82 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast! Well, TueNight is now growing into the next step and, aside from a fabulous refresh of the TueNight.com website, they’re creating their own TueNight community platform for events, live and on-demand courses, topic-based groups and live chats. It’s been a long time coming and a lot of work on their part so I hope you’ll check out the TueNight.com – TUENIGHT.COM. She looks like she just came back from the spa or had VERY subtle work done.

And while we’re on the topic, let me shout out a couple more websites podcasts that aim at the ladies of a certain age: The Woolfer, Jumble & Flow, Dame Magazine, Girls of Certain Age – of course their creator Kim France was a guest on Ep 70 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, she was the founding editor of Lucky Magazine – and a new one to me, Black Girl’s Guide to Surviving Menopause, a multimedia project seeking to curate and share the stories and realities of Black women and femmes over 50. That’s https://blackgirlsguidetosurvivingmenopause.com/

Lots of new stuff for your midlife listening, check it out!

[MUSIC]

Hi there and welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast! I’m Nancy Davis Kho, creator and host of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast and author of The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. Did you have a favorite member of New Edition, Menudo, or New Kids on the Block? Take your calcium supplement and relax, you’re among friends here.

Back when I started blogging at Midlife Mixtape a full decade ago, there was a phenomenon called “guest posts”. That’s when you invited OTHER writers to write an essay for you blog, probably so you could take a day off and shop for jeggings. In my case, I had a little feature called “Still in Rotation” where I asked writers to tell us about an album they bought forever ago, but still listen to now.

I loved reading stories about why certain music sunk into certain souls so deeply, and how that vinyl or cassette or CD became a talisman that followed the writer forward into the Spotify and Apple Music years.

So for this episode of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, I put out a call to listeners to ask YOU that same questions: what’s an album you bought in the 20^th century that you still listen to in the 21^st?

In the responses I received, it was clear that sometimes that album is like comfort food.

Here’s how one listener put it:

Sean J. 03:34

Hey, this is Sean J,. otherwise known as @BlueNoteBacker. My Still in Rotation album is The Shins Wincing the Night Away. The Shins has long been one of my favorite bands and while I haven’t bought any new albums or CDs in a really long time, this one is always in my CD player, especially my car. I know that anytime I feel like I need to pick up or just something to make it a little more bearable, this is the one that plays. I can listen to it at any time any point in the album. It’s full of great Shins songs, James Mercer’s incredible and this is by far my Still in Rotation album, almost 15 + years since it came out. Thanks very much.

Nancy 04:31

Thank you, Sean! I appreciate you sharing that story. I really love The Shins and I have not listened that album forever.

Sometimes, those albums take us ALL the way back in time to earlier days, when we need that reminder. Like Cheryl said when she wrote:

“This Mortal Coil – It’ll End in Tears. Still on heavy rotation after all these years. Such a wonderful collection of songs by an amazingly talented roster of 4AD artists. Each song transports me back to that time in my life.”

We all need that little time travel music, I think. As I was prepping the episode I went back to reread some of the 30+ Still in Rotation posts on MidlifeMixtape.com, dating back to almost when the blog started in 2011. And thought, GEEZ this is really good writing that is buried too many layers down in the blog archives for people to find anymore! So I reached out to a handful of those essayists and cajoled them into reading their pieces for today’s shows. 2011 Me would have said “I’ll be podcasting in 2021? Hold on for a sec, I’m just joining this new thing called Twitter.”

So today’s episode will be a mix of the two – your 2021 stories of the albums that shaped you, then and now, and some older Still in Rotation essays that explore the wonderful connection between our music and our personal stories. Grab something to write with because if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to go back and check out all this music after you listen.

[MUSIC]

The two co-hosts of the wonderful parenting podcast “What Fresh Hell” both sent in responses.

Margaret Ables says:

“August and Everything After by the Counting Crows – a very long story but after a desperate and youthful romantic gesture, I found myself stranded in Vegas for 5 days in my early 20s with very little cash and I spent the days sleeping on a lounge chair at the Circus Circus pool and the nights walking around the strip with my disc man and only that CD – such a wormhole album for me.”

Her partner in podcasting crime, Amy Wilson, said:

“When my husband and I were first dating and making road trips to our friends’ parents’ house in New Jersey that had a pool, we used to listen to BRINGING DOWN THE HORSE by The Wallflowers. Over and over again. I have recently started listening to it after happening to hear “Sixth Avenue Heartache” at a restaurant with our kids. They were giggling at us as we belted out every word. It takes me back to a time in my life that was exciting and happy and felt full of possibility. Life still is. This album, now on my Spotify rotation (NOT on random) reminds me of that happiness that is available to me.”

Both Margaret and Amy’s stories exemplify the powerful way that music can take us back to those earlier days and the way that music studied us through our younger romantic lives – the good and bad aspects thereof. Sleeping at the Circus Circus pool might… I don’t know that could go in either category. Could be good or bad.

The way that music steadied us through our younger romantic lives and evolves as we do came through in this beautify essay by Vikki Reich from 2014, about Shawn Colvin’s 1989 album Steady On.

Vikki Reich 07:45

It was the spring of 1990 and I was a junior at Grinnell College. Melissa Etheridge had just released Brave and Crazy and the campus lesbians were convinced she was a lady lover. The Indigo Girls had released their self-titled album and everyone was feeling Closer to Fine and Shawn Colvin had just released her first album, Steady On. It was a great time for women in music and for women who loved women in music.

And this is where I must share with you my deep, dark, musical secret: I have not listened to Melissa Etheridge or the Indigo Girls in years. This is lesbian blasphemy but Melissa Etheridge is a terrible lyricist and the Indigo Girls’ harmonies aren’t as captivating as they used to be. But, for me, Shawn Colvin’s lyrics and voice stand the test of time and she will always hold an honored place in my music library.

But back to 1990.

I had absolutely no idea I was gay. I was not struggling with my identity, was not keeping secrets. I was simply bounding through college life with the insight of a Labradoodle. There were rumors and gossip that I was a lesbian and I found the attention flattering but it didn’t lead to a single moment of introspection. My brain was busy with important things like playing guitar for hours and rugby and figuring out when Chicken Filet Day was at the cafeteria.

Then one night, I went to an off-campus party at a friend’s house and spent the evening drinking cheap beer and playing guitar. My friend had a friend in from out of town and, after we finished playing a song, my friend leaned in and kissed her visitor, and I tensed, a physical reaction that came with no accompanying thought. I sat staring at them for a moment and then packed up my guitar and music, made an excuse and bolted.

When I got home, I teased apart everything I was feeling and realized that I felt jealous, that I was attracted to my friend, that I was a lesbian. And that night, I pushed play on my cassette player, curled up in bed and listened to Steady On.

I knew that my life would never be the same and took comfort in the lyrics of that title track.

This album centered me in the coming months as I came out to friends and family, as I began dating. I fell in love to this album and when I fell asleep in a woman’s arms for the first time, I did so to the haunting tune of Dead of the Night. I remember lying there, listening to her heartbeat and thinking, “Yes. This is right.”

When my junior year ended, I headed to southern Missouri to spend the summer at my mother’s house. I hadn’t planned to come out to her until the summer was over but she asked and I was honest and our relationship fell apart. That summer, I had my tapes and my guitar–that’s how I survived–and I sat in my room and taught myself to play Cry Like An Angel, finding comfort once again in the words.

That was all 24 years ago. In those intervening years, I fell in love with my partner and had two kids and watched as my mother held each of them without judgment of their parents. Steady On was the soundtrack of my coming out–the good and the bad. When I listen to it now, I feel nothing but gratitude for the music and the words, for being on the other side of figuring it all out. And any time I’m feeling a little lost, I remember that boats on the ocean find their way back again.

Nancy 11:17

Sometimes the albums stayed with us because they’re so damn good, you can’t leave them behind.

In this category, Denise wrote in and said “pretty much any album recorded at Sound City in LA” – that would encompass a little album called Nevermind by Nirvana, along with albums by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, Rick Springfield, Tom Petty, Rage Against the Machine, and Slipknot. It closed in 2011, by the way, and there’s a documentary about Sound City that came out in 2013, produced and directed by Dave Grohl, that you might want to check out. But when pressed, Denise says, “At this moment, I think I’d put on Damn the Torpedoes by Petty because it just sounds so damn good on vinyl (and he was my 2nd concert!)”

When the next Still in Rotation essay landed in my inbox back in 2013, I remember thinking, Damn, I don’t think I had any idea of the significance of this album when it came out. But when writer Lance Burson gets started on The Beastie Boy’s Paul’s Boutique and why it’s so unique, it’s hard not to catch the wave.

Lance Burson 12:19

It’s cliché to remember your first. The awkwardness of how your fingers feel over every part and how they’ll sound at full volume. I can’t forget mine, even though it was twenty-three and a half years ago. The initial compact disc I ever owned is one I keep in full, heavy, proud rotation today, Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique.

It’s difficult to imagine the Beasties not being the apple of the critical eye and instead a forgettable, borderline hated, one-hit wonder. In the summer of 1989, when it was announced that the white boy hip hop trio from Brooklyn, New York, would finally release their follow-up to their multi-platinum debut, Licensed to Ill, the reaction was mixed from excitement for diehard fans to genuine animosity from many who felt they were obnoxious misogynists.

I was beginning my second year at the University of Alabama. The student radio station was my Al Diner’s or Peach Pit. I was there when I wasn’t in class or passed out. The CD has been out for about three weeks. I’d heard “Hey Ladies” on the radio and it sounded like it would’ve been the best song off Licensed to Ill. Before driving my parents’ new house in an Atlanta, Georgia suburb, I stopped by a Turtle’s record store, bought the cassette tape, and played in three times over the almost four hour drive to Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

By the time I’d arrived at my student radio station hangout, I was sure the other DJs there were playing Paul’s Boutique. I was wrong. One fellow Beastie fan and I talked about how awesome it was. Then he made this statement: “Dude, you’ve got to bite the bullet, spend the extra four bucks and get it on CD. It sounds amazing that way.”

Paul’s Boutique is not only the Beastie Boys best album, it’s arguably the best hip hop record ever made. Their accomplishment was a once in a lifetime event. Less than a year after Paul’s Boutique was released, Biz Markie got sued by Gilbert O’Sullivan for unauthorized sampling of his song “Alone Again (Naturally)” and the rap and hip-hop business changed. Instead of goofing around in a studio with a junkie-like dependency on sampling, paying a few bucks here and there for licensing, it became an expensive contractual venture that terrified record companies.

There are 106 songs sampled for Paul’s Boutique, double what any other act had ever used. Contrary to myth, the Beastie did pay for the samples, but at a fraction of the cost that a rap or hip hop act would pay today. The production values of Paul’s Boutique are second to none. It opens with Mike D, King Ad Rock and MCA extolling their appreciation for all types of women and you think this will be balls-to-the-wall frat hop indulgence. Then “Shake Your Rump” rumbles through the speakers and the game’s changed.

Paul’s Boutique is a sonic masterpiece. Away from the cynical rock influence of producer Rick Rubin, the Beasties became disciples of their new stewards, The Dust Brothers. The flow of the CD is amazing. It’s the perfect driving record. It’s the perfect party album. It’s the best CD to lift your spirits on a bad day. But it also talks about racism, judgement, cleaning up your act to survive, maturity, and being a grown-up. It might be the greatest album you could ever play to get your shit together while dancing and rhyming.

I became the second person to ever play Paul’s Boutique on the air at the University of Alabama’s WUAL radio station. But I’m convinced I was its biggest supporter. Talking about having “more hits than Sadaharu Oh” and “being more dapper than Harry Truman” became staples of my vernacular. I say “droppin’ science like Galileo droppin’ the orange” at my teenage daughter’s cheerleader parent meetings.

Beastie Boys Paul’s Boutique was considered a surprise comeback artistically, but was disappointing commercially. After twenty-three years, PB is considered a landmark in studio production, rhyming schemes, pop culture references, and hip hop writing. It will always be in heavy rotation with me.

Nancy 15:55

Virginia wrote in to say that her Still in Rotation album comes from one of the 80’s uber-icons: Madonna. “Madonna’s debut album (even though it debuted a month after I was born, haha).” OK, settle down, Virginia, just because I was a high school senior when Madonna, by Madonna, came out, we can still be friends. Virginia adds, “Still so good. It reminds me of when I started to learn music and lyrics, so when I hear those songs, it makes me feel full of joy and all I want to do is belt out the songs.

Speaking of ‘80s icons, you can’t mention Madonna without following up with Prince. And writer Ann Imig’s 2013 essay about her original and current relationship to Purple Rain is, well, one of my favorites.

Ann Imig 16:38

Even though we had some notion of Prince’s Little Red Corvette, my generation’s liner notes lead back to one place…Purple Rain (1984.) No two words evoke such a combustion of pre-teen angst, hormones, and nostalgia in me as those. After all, who among us doesn’t know the answer to the primal call and response:

“Wendi?… Is the water warm enough?… Shall we begin?”

Yes, Lisa, we knew that something untoward was going on: Two ladies! Bathing together! Just like we knew that Darling Nikki was a sex fiend. These exciting/confusing sentiments were heightened even further by the fact that my mom accompanied my siblings and I to Purple Rain: The Movie, launching the movie-musical sexuality discomfort level to code ITCHY PANTS MAKE IT STOP BECAUSE MOM BUT ALSO WAIT DON’T. Whatever she thought the movie was about, it wasn’t Prince fondling/writhing with Apollonia. That’s about the only scene I remember, thanks to the brain-branding that mortification provides. Regardless, whatever this “grind” move Prince saw little Nikki perform in a hotel lobby with a magazine? Well, we wanted to know about it, because evidently Prince liked his ladies both pretty and talented, and we liked Prince. As more than a friend.

See, Prince was hot. Prince was a total babe. And not just because he could shop for Esprit splatter-paint overalls with us in the Juniors department if he so desired. Looking back, he probably shared a stylist with Designing Women, but everything went all gender-bendy in the early 80s, and our hormones fell right in line. A super wavy—we’ll call it a body wave—of a line. Have you looked at the boys of Duran Duran lately? Remember the Newsweek cover featuring Boy George and Annie Lennox? Boy George set my heart a-flutter and Annie Lennox looked as feminine to me as The Disney Princesses not-yet-invented. Incidentally, put a pencil-wisp of a mustache on Jasmine from Aladdin, add a ruffle-throat tunic and VOILA, Prince!

Purple Rain was my first 33 rpm record purchase, at West Towne Mall, with my own allowance. I did not get one of the coveted purple vinyl limited-editions, so I drowned my sorrows with TartNTinys and the purchase of a Purple Rain T-shirt from Spencer Gifts. I wore said shirt to Mrs. Selvaag’s fifth grade class to claim my fandom, along with my homemade “I heart Billy Idol” button. Written in crayon. I even choreographed and performed my own version of The Bird routine in music class; I Pledge Allegiance To The Time! (Hand on heart! Other hand starts at 6 and flares right on up to midnight!)

I spent after school hours with that record jacket in my room, singing along and wishing I could comfort just one poet blouse sleeve’s worth of Prince’s angst. HE ONLY WANTED TO SEE HER BATHING/LAUGHING IN THE PURPLE RAIN. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK? BUT HE NEVER CAN BECAUSE RAIN NEVER EQUALS PURPLE. I WOULD DIE 4 U, PRINCE! ME. BECAUSE I <3 U 4 U R A QT! I DON’T CARE IF WE SPEND THE NIGHT IN YOUR MANSION. BUT ACTUALLY I’D LIKE TO SEE A REAL-LIVE MANSION. TAKE ME WITH U!

1999 came and went along with Y2K. Prince became The Insignia formerly known. Instead of dancing in middle school gyms, you’ll see my friends and I going crazy from the driver’s seat of our Little Chrome Station Wagons. We know what it sounds like when children cry.

That’s when we turn up the doves.

Nancy 19:57

My pal Jill wrote in with her Still in Rotation pick – Elvis Costello. Jill wrote:

While Elvis Costello’s Punch the Clock was my absolute favorite first album, the song that returned to the top of the “Still in Rotation” pile for me is from his 1979 Armed Forces album.

Last fall, in the horrible run-up to the November election, I returned to “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” and had it on repeat. The lyrics felt like a rallying cry to me & it’s the perfect song to sing at the top of your lungs in the car.

Well, one of my Still in Rotation writers would no doubt agree with Jill’s choice, but for writer Lisa Rosenberg, the Costello Album was My Aim Is True.

Lisa Rosenberg 20:39

In the summer of 1982, I celebrated my recent high school graduation at a concert at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. I was there to see Elvis Costello. Seven albums deep into his career, he was touring behind his latest release, Imperial Bedroom. I was there to hear so many of my favorite songs and especially those from his very first album, My Aim Is True, specifically to hear my favorite song, Alison.

At the concert, my hair was cut in a severe chin length bob. I wore black and white saddle shoes that were meant to represent me as one who enjoyed ironic throwback fashion and was sort of into ska. My friend Valerie Marcus and I danced in our vintage pencil skirts. The crowd was young and rowdy and new wave. There was dancing and skanking and someone was kicked out for smoking pot.

Elvis wore a suit and a tie and his signature black framed glasses. He was funny and clever and fiercely intelligent: an amazing musician with one of my favorite voices on the planet.

After the concert, Val l and I sneaked into the bar at the Holiday Inn where we heard Mr. Costello was staying. We giggled as we watched him drinking beer at the bar. When we finally got the courage to say hello, he was kind.

Growing up in a northern California coastal town, music at my high school was Blue Oyster Cult and AC/DC and more Blue Oyster Cult. New wave and punk music hadn’t broken through the pot-fueled haze of weekend keg parties at the beach. Listening to Elvis Costello felt like something “other.” An act of defiance, and freedom, it made me feel grown up. It was mine.

In college, I was living in LA. I had shaved the left side of my head and was wearing the right side in braids. I was living on a futon in the family room of a friend’s apartment. I borrowed a homemade cassette of My Aim Is True from my friend Barry and played it on a small battery-operated boom box in my car as I cruised Hollywood in my Toyota hatchback.

I never returned Barry’s tape. It followed me from car to car through the nineties and into the new millennium. The songs were my anthems, seeing me through moves and jobs, marriages and divorces, road trips, bad haircuts and worse outfits. Elvis Costello’s iconic voice and gutting lyrics sustained me.

Two years ago, my husband Jeff and I saw Elvis Costello at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara. He played alone on the stage with his guitar. My hair had been dyed to cover the gray. I wore a vaguely business casual ensemble with a colorful scarf to keep off the chill. I sat in my assigned seat and clapped appreciatively between songs. The crowd looked like the population of a 30 year high school class reunion. More than one of the men resembled Mr. Belvedere with a ponytail. There was polite applause and singing along and someone got kicked out for taking a picture with his iPhone.

Elvis wore a suit and a tie and his signature black framed glasses. His temples were graying and under his hat, a receding hairline. It was a grand performance. He played my favorite song, “Alison.”

Over time, I finally figured some things out. It’s no mistake that my husband is also funny and clever and fiercely intelligent: an amazing musician with one of my favorite voices on the planet.

After that concert, Jeff and I talked and laughed on the long ride back home. When we got to the house, I tiptoed into the room of our little boy who, had he been born a girl, might have been named Alison.

Nancy 24:09

I loved this memory that Pam shared on FB of one of my favorite early albums: INXS Shabooh Shoobah.

“I still listen to this album a lot. I first heard it in the fall of 1984, when I was falling in love with my college boyfriend Andy. He told me that “To Look at You” reminded him of me, because I was (per the lyrics) “a different kind of girl, who knows the feelings but never the words.” He and I went to see INXS at the Dane County Coliseum in Madison, Wisconsin, and it was an awesome show. RIP Michael Hutchence! Andy and I dated about 5 years, but didn’t end up together. We’re both happily married with kids, and are still friends — even though I now live in Chicago and he lives in Marquette, Michigan.”

I knew I was going to invite the writer of this next essay to record her Still in Rotation pick, primarily because it meant I’d have an excuse to catch up with her after a LOOONG pandemic. After an hour of chitchat in which I learned that she’s done a fascinating career shift that I’m going to invite her on the podcast one day so she can share the story, I finally remembered to press record so that Taya Dunn Johnson could tell us all about Donny Hathaway devotion.

Taya Dunn Johnson 25:20

Entering my childhood home in Hempstead, New York, one was almost certain to hear music in the background. My parents were both music lovers; my father played drums for many years in a local band and two of my uncles were DJs. I can recall day- long trips from our home on Long Island into Brooklyn and the Bronx to visit the old school record shops that my father and uncles loved. The smell of thousands of vinyl records in a small space was intoxicating.

Being surrounded by music was the most natural thing in the world to me, and my love for it developed early. My parents got great joy in watching me perform my own dance routines to songs by the Stylistics and the Commodores, and I’d be shocked if any other five year old knew all the lyrics and cadences of songs like, “Baby Workout” by Jackie Wilson.

Family and music were connected in such a way that the Christmas holiday season became that much more magical to me. Each person has “that song” – you know, the one that puts you deep into the holiday spirit from the very first note you hear. I don’t remember the first time I heard “This Christmas” by Donny Hathaway, but I do know that by the age of five, I had all the lyrics memorized and it was “that song” for me. My parents had a small collection of Christmas songs from The Temptations and a few other soul artists. Prior to hearing Donny Hathaway’s contribution, so many Christmas songs didn’t reflect the amount of soul and love that my favorite R&B songs contained. “This Christmas” had it all – deeply melodic voice, catchy and repetitive chorus, tambourines and a grooving bass line. As soon as the song came on, you just had to dance, smile and say, “Ahhh, yes, THIS is Christmas.”

I remained a lover of music my entire life and it’s probably no coincidence that my high school boyfriend-turned-husband played percussion like my father and had my same affinity for good music. During my first year of college, music helped soothe the stress of being an only child away from my parents (and boyfriend) for an extended length of time.

Late one night in early December while studying for finals, I found myself needing a real boost – a taste of home and family to push me through to the finish line. I was surrounded by friends and dorm mates, but everyone was struggling and none of us was having any luck with motivating one another. Donny’s voice popped into my head and I knew what I needed to do. I ran into my room and searched desperately for my cassette tape of “Holiday Jams” that I had recorded from the radio the previous Christmas. I tossed it in the tape deck and instantly the odd three-count drumbeat filled our suite with ENERGY.

My black friends jumped up and started singing and swaying to the beat. My white friends looked intrigued and I knew it was the first time they had ever heard the song. Within a few seconds, Donny grabbed the newly exposed and made them dance too. When the song ended, the questions began: “Who is that?” “What’s that song called?” “I’ve never heard that before! Can I tape it?” and then the one that stopped me cold, “What else does he sing?”

What else does he sing? I simply didn’t know. I had a cassette entitled, “A Donny Hathaway Collection” but I was embarrassed to admit I’d never listened to any other song on it. I felt like I had just failed a major musical test and imagined the disappointment on the faces of my father and uncles.

With a mere eight hours until an astronomy final for which I was ill prepared, I layered myself with winter gear and made the short walk from my dorm to one of the 24-hour computer labs on campus. It was full of stressed-out students attempting to absorb the final nuggets before their exams, and those painfully squeezing out just enough words to hit the page count for required essays. Not an empty computer to be found. Damn. At that moment, my need to know more about HIM was so great that I would not be deterred.

I went back into the cold heading for another lab that was farther away and then it clicked. I was on the grounds of the University of Virginia and we had an amazing music library!! I hustled over to the Peabody Library and could not believe that I hadn’t yet made this magical place like a second home. I dove in and found myself falling down the rabbit hole – microfiche articles, reel to reel and albums recordings, and digital photo images with more information on Donny Hathaway than I ever expected to find.

I was excited, intrigued and saddened by all that I read and heard. Never had I heard and connected with an artist in the way that I connected with Donny Hathaway. The beautiful timbre of his voice was like that of a warm flannel blanket on a bone chilling winter night. It warmed my heart and soul like that of a long lost friend and lover. The loving quality of his voice was wrapped in equal layers of pain and despair. I couldn’t ignore the pain. The raw emotion that was woven through each song caused my tears to flow without warning. That night, I fell in love with Donny Hathaway.

I would go on to read about his musical beginnings, his love and marriage to his college sweetheart, their two daughters, his friendship and musical duets with Roberta Flack, and eventually his death. Reading the hazy details surrounding his death pained me as if I had known and loved him during the course of his life. The official narrative is that he completed suicide, but I’m a stubborn believer that his fall from the 15^th floor of the Essex Hotel in New York City was a tragic accident. Although he had suffered from depression in the past, family and friends, specifically Roberta Flack who was with him that very day recording new music, report that he was in great spirits that day and very optimistic about the career developments on the horizon. He was known to remove the screen from hotel windows and sit in them in order to get fresh air and hear the pure sound of his own voice.

From that night in December 1993 until today, Donny Hathaway’s music has occupied a prominent place in the soundtrack of my life. The compilation, “A Donny Hathaway Collection” is my go-to recording when I need a dose of Donny. His catalog is much more extensive than just this collection, but it’s the one that I keep in rotation. He speaks of life, love, heartache, passion, pain, heartbreak, joy, happiness and regret. If one were to just hear, “This Christmas,” they might take him to be a joyful one-hit wonder, but he is so much more than that. He is an artist that wrote to release his soul and he unselfishly shared it with the rest of us.

Many know of Donny only as the male singer on the popular duets that he and Roberta Flack sang together, especially “The Closer I Get To You” and “Where Is the Love.” While I can appreciate those, they are but one small facet of the gifts that Donny left with us. A few of my favorites that stay on repeat are “For All We Know” which speaks to a pair of lovers who have a moment in which to share their love with the idea that they may never have another.

“You Were Meant For Me” which speaks to him loving a woman and vowing not to let anything tarnish their love. One of his most special recordings, “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” which caused him to cry in the recording studio upon its completion. My painful favorite is “Giving Up.” It always pushes me to the verge of tears.

Donny’s talent was passed to his daughter, Lalah Hathaway. I’ve followed her career closely and I hope to one day be able to tell her just what her father’s music does to my heart and soul. All of his songs move me in different ways, and whenever I need a creative push, I know that this collection will give me what I need.

In late 2008, I was 39 weeks pregnant with our first child, and it became evident that I might not begin labor on my own. My obstetrician decided my husband and I needed to schedule my delivery, so we sat together to look at the calendar for January 2009. She offered me a range of dates between January 7 and January 14. Without a moment of hesitation, I selected January 13, 2009 – 30 years to the day that Donny Hathaway’s musical genius left this planet.

I often wonder what other treasures Donny would have given us had he not passed away at the young age of 33. Yet I am forever grateful and thankful that he shared as much as he did.

Nancy 33:56

One last write-in from a listener, and that’s Arnell Kilian talking Song to a Seagull by Joni Mitchell. Arnell writes, “I played it a lot in my teens. It comes into rotation when I’m sad or moody. It lets me play with my emotions and then it makes me happy. After that, I continue to play it simply because her voice is so pure, the lyrics so vivid and the melodies so lovely. I’ve been listening to it on and off for a couple of months now.

I just finished by the way reading Brandi Carlile’s memoir called Broken Horses and her devotion to Joni Mitchell is just lovely. There are some great stories that she shares about Joni kind of taking notice of her and inviting her over to jam, and Brandi’s reaction to it, as I think all of our reaction to it would be, is she just does not think she’s worthy. It’s really pretty cute. I loved Broken Horses. I recommend it if you’re a Brandi fan.

And one final “Still in Rotation” from the Archives comes from Laurie White, writing about the 1992 album Black Eyed Man by The Cowboy Junkies.

Laurie White 34:56

I wish I could remember the day I first discovered Cowboy Junkies’ Black Eyed Man, because it just seems right to remember when my most important and enduring relationships began. Taking a kinder view of my mental capacity for a change, I think it’s just one of those things that feels like it’s always been there, so maybe the particulars aren’t that important.

I listened to the album, as close to how I used to as I could, minus a couple of vices and a newly broken heart, to try and remember. I crashed on my couch and turned it on — Spotify, not a scratched cd I scrounged off of my car floor, I cannot tell you how many copies of this I loved and lost — and let it play. No cigarettes now. No extra-long twin bed (why are these beds extra-long?) in a drafty Ohio grad school house. No Ohio at all. No none of that. Tonight it’s just Margo Timmins singing her way into the corners of my living room and through some sort of Southern gothic alt-folk landscape that no one I know of outside of real country music can create like her and her brother Michael, who plays guitar and writes the lyrics.

I used to like to think of when they first realized it worked so perfectly, and what it’s like to be that creatively tied to your brother in a way that’s in any way sustainable, on the road even, for decades. I followed them obsessively for a few years on their usual circuit of mostly restored theaters with columns and curtains and small listening room-type spots. Michael sits to play guitar, Margo always has a stool for the occasional sit-and-chat, plus tea and the eternal bouquet of flowers sent by a fan. They may as well be performing in different rooms, their approach to the experience is so different, but she still looks at him and back at the band (another brother is the drummer) with what I identify as affection, so that’s good.

When I found them, people were all about their remake of Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” on 1988’s The Trinity Session. They are into homage via cover song and guest appearance, and this song loved them back. I liked it a lot, and had a long communion with “Misguided Angel” in particular, probably because of some over identification at the time with the protagonist, but it wasn’t until Black Eyed Man that I bit and hung on.

It kicks off with “Southern Rain,” a gorgeously made and sung song with a groovy guitar hook that sets the mood you need to get through this. Still gets me every time.

It’s all mini-stories like this, of crimes of passion, old loves waiting on trains, a woman fleeing pain to ride her horse every second Sunday. The title track details a black eyed man taking the fall for poisoning a well because he happened to piss his girlfriend off, which in Michael Timmins’s mind you apparently ought not to do. The last line of the last verse, “It ain’t the water that’s not right around here,” is still one of my favorite lyrics.

And so it continues, for almost 45 minutes. “Lilly’s just waiting for the trial to be over/ Rosy’s just waiting for the axe to fall.” (Townes van Zandt wrote that one, and they covered it. He’s all over this record.) Trial for what? Axe for why? Murder, tonight, in the trailer park. Who? Don’t know. Something strange is generally afoot, and, love or killing or both, Margo rolls through it. It’s best not to ask too many questions, like the people in the songs. Once you’ve heard her voice — speaking or singing — you won’t, anyway. Candy, the weightiest kind. Magic, in your face and your ears. I met her once, and she was just as I’d have wanted her to be. I don’t like to meet performers I love, usually. Ruins the illusion, and I need to keep a few. In this case, I’m glad I made an exception, because I have a picture, and it is happy. That was a good night.

It’s been easy to take this album with me. It doesn’t need to recapture anything it or I was when I had it on repeat during a long heartbreaker of a first year away from home, in the shambles of a first love, smoking too much and crying too much and I don’t even know how I’d have survived it without music, you know? I remember sitting in venues by myself, watching them bring it to life on stage, taking me into and out of myself. Certain music is one of the only things that can change my brain, zero to 60 in one track.

The last song is a cover of Townes van Zandt’s “To Live is to Fly.” This one is different. The stories are over, and you’ve got a mission now: to move on. It’s hope that has gone onto so many of my mixtapes and playlists. It means different things all the time, but it always works.

“But it don’t pay to think too much/on things you leave behind.” I didn’t believe this at all when I heard it the first time, but I wanted to, so much. It’s good to catch up with Margo now, to hear her say it again, to keep pressing play, to see what stuck.

Nancy 39:06

“It’s good to catch up with Margo now, to hear her say it again, to keep pressing play, to see what stuck.” That’s the line for me, right there. Keep pressing play, and see what stuck.

So I was thinking about how I would answer this question kind of looking at it from a 2021 perspective. What’s the album that’s Still in Rotation? For me during the pandemic it’s been Peter Gabriel’s SO.

I was thinking about it, and I realized I’ve written about that before, not for MidlifeMixtape.com but as a guest post on a different blog. And so I’m going to share that with you – this got published on therumpus.net back in 2012. It’s not so much about why the album sticks with me now, but rather why I gravitated toward it in the first place.

Whenever I felt the waves of homesickness approaching during my semester abroad in Vienna back in 1987, I knew what I had to do: button up the grey scratchy Tyrolean jacket I’d bought at a flea market, tuck my yellow cassette-playing Walkman into its breast pocket, and press “PLAY” on Peter Gabriel’s So. I’d never been a fan of Genesis growing up; on our family radio dial, my sister held down Country, I ruled over New Wave, and my brother’s territory was All Things Rock. We were gleefully opposed to each other’s tastes out of principle and liking anything by Genesis or Gabriel would have felt disloyal to the Cult, Echo and the Bunnymen, and New Order.

But one high school summer during which I worked as a camp counselor, far from a radio signal, a Peter Gabriel mixtape lettered in my brother’s handwriting somehow ended up in my canvas duffel bag. I played “Solsbury Hill,” hit rewind, played it again, and again, and again, stopping only to listen to “Biko” and “San Jacinto” a few million times each. By the time So came out in ’86, I was one of the first people in line at the college record store to buy the cassette.

As a person who had decided at 14 that she would have a career in international business, I was as surprised as anyone to realize during my junior year in college that I hadn’t ever been abroad. My German was passable and Vienna seemed more exotic than Munich, so I found a program there and moved academic heaven and earth to make it happen for spring semester. My advisor let me know I’d have to double up on required courses before and afterwards, but while I was in Vienna I could coast with electives like Viennese Opera and Austrian Artists of the Viennese Secession.

Predictably, the first three weeks living in Europe were thrilling, a mélange of new challenges and strange customs and easy classes and, it being Vienna, pastries. But reality arrived in a rush of record-breaking winter storms, short-tempered sales clerks, expensive groceries, and an accent that scoffed at my textbook German. That my landlady rented out the single bathroom in our flat to Turkish guest workers who needed a quick bath only added to my sense of isolation.

The only thing that could put me back right was a long walk in the cold along the Danube, with Peter Gabriel singing in my ear. The first bars of “Red Rain” always coincided with my hasty departure from the apartment, which was on the top floor of an ancient building with no elevator. The wide, unheated concrete staircase was always dark, and you had to hit a timer light on each level to see your way down. I’d smack the light switch and pound down the stairs in time to the driving beat of the song, cursing the stupidity of the Viennese for not installing proper lights, by which I meant American lights that stayed on. Through the prism of time I can now appreciate this energy-conserving lighting system, but at the time? “This place is so quiet, sensing that storm…” I was the storm, baby. I was the mother-effing Red Rain.

I’d plunge into the cold and walk a few blocks to the icy Danube cabal, and by the time I descended to the walkway that ran alongside it, “Sledgehammer” was playing. There’s not a better song to get the blood pumping, warming up the digits and exposed facial skin that the Viennese wind was trying furiously to frost. My gait to “Sledgehammer” was the ultimate defiance; I would not let Vienna ruin my study abroad experience.

And then ethereal Kate Bush would chime in with Gabriel to chide me gently. “Don’t Give Up,” she’d sing, “you’re not beaten yet.” It was usually at this point, fifteen minutes or so into my heart-pounding walk, that my shoulders would lower and my jaws unclench. Not quite ready to lay down my bag of self-pity, maybe, I would at least start looking around me instead of at my pounding feet.

As “That Voice Again” and “Mercy Street” flowed past, I began to notice the details: the cute punk couple walking their dachshund in its little green coat. The apartment building with Viennese Secessionist embellishments that reminded me of something our art professor had told us about Otto Wagner. Graffiti written on a bench in German whose irony I actually understood. I’d execute a pivot step here and start heading back for home.

You cannot listen to “Big Time” without an inward smile at the blowhard narrator, who’s praying to a big God as he kneels in his big Church. It’s a song that reminded me not to take myself too seriously.

So studying abroad isn’t perfect. So the landlady offered you a tray of home baked cookies that you devoured, and only realized in watching her recreate the recipe later that she formed each ball of batter in the palm of her fresh-licked hand. So you blew your entire food budget for the month on a pair of pony skin leopard combat boots. If nothing else, I was collecting good stories.

I’d be nearing the steps to climb back up to my street when that hundred-pound gorilla of a song, “In Your Eyes,” came on. As any woman who was a teenager during the ‘80s will tell you, the sight of Lloyd Dobler holding his boom box aloft for Diane Court to hear this song pour out ruined us as romantic partners forever. Unless a guy comes up with a line as stunning as “In your eyes, I see the doorway of a thousand churches” (which one might reasonably argue is an unattainable task) he will always be a little bit of a disappointment.

Yeah, so maybe I’d gained the Viennese Twenty thanks to the wurst stand and the gelato shop that I passed on my way to school, not to mention the “Herzlichen Glückwünsch” cookies that conveyed “Best Wishes” and about 3,000 calories each. But up here in my eyes? I’m a freakin’ cathedral, man, with stained glass and kneeling benches of emotion.

Right before I left for Vienna, I ran into a classmate of mine for whom I pined, at a frat party that was coming apart at the seams at three in the morning. So was on the stereo, and when “In Your Eyes” came on, he silently put his hand on the small of my back and pushed me to the center of the empty dance floor, its perimeter marked by drunken students flopped on couches. Maybe this guy saw my basilicas! We swayed into one another through the very last note, and it became our song even if I left for Vienna before there was time for an “our.”

So even today when I hear “In Your Eyes,” I send a silent Herzlichen Glückwünsch out to my classmate, and to Peter Gabriel, for giving me a reason to keep going.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 44:51

I’ve been trying to figure out why this album is suddenly so high in my consciousness again in 2021 and I think the common thread is anger walking. I have spent so much time walking in the past year just because it’s something to do. I recommend it. Give it a try.

Let me know what you thought of today’s episode – maybe you have a “Still in Rotation” that you want to share after listening today? Drop me a line at [e-mail], or send me a message via Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @midlifemixtape.

I’m still scheduling virtual events around the topic of gratitude letters and my book, the Thank-You Project – for school groups, community organizations, libraries, and workplaces. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in learning more about, or if you know of a conference or organization that might be interested in learning more, please let me know at [e-mail]! If I book an event thanks to you, I’ll send you a signed copy of the thank-you project! I really appreciate the support.

And hey, Mother’s Day is coming up on May 9 – have you written your Mom – or aunt, or daughter, or sister, or fellow Pod Mom – a thank you letter yet? Write it now, hand it over with a copy of the book, and BAM time for mimosas.

Have a wonderful week, everyone!

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 96 Listeners’ “Still in Rotation” Albums appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .