New York City Is Forever Kitty

Menahan Street Band “Home Again!” – When I was young and growing up in the Hudson Valley, I listened to a lot of radio from New York City. In part, this was because I didn’t really have many other options — all of the local tv and radio stations were in fact the New York City stations. All of the media was focused on the city and so I became fascinated with this place that was so close, but so completely different from where I lived. I suppose I picked up on the notion that interesting and relevant things happened in this place, and I was stuck living in a town that was nice, but totally boring and unimportant. Listening to the radio became a way to travel to the city without leaving my house, and I slowly pieced together my own mental image of the place based on the news, television shows and movies, comics, and the radio.

In retrospect, out of those things, it’s amazing how much the radio shaped my understanding of New York City, whether it was listening to talk personalities such as Bob Grant, Howard Stern, and Lynn Samuels, or just taking in the names of places on traffic and news reports. I still can recall images and impressions from when I was a kid, and when I encounter things that remind me of them in real life — usually things that feel old and weathered and lost in time — it’s one of the most peaceful and satisfying feelings that I know.

Similarly, when I hear music that reminds of the sounds I associate with this imagery, I can’t help but fall in love. For one thing, whenever I hear the Empire Carpet jingle, I am overcome with a feeling of comfort and nostalgia. Also, any time I hear a version of “Am I The Same Girl,” a song commonly used as bed music at the time, my mind immediately shifts into this grimy, beautiful version of New York that is simultaneously abstract and filled with freakishly specific details, as if I’m remembering some place that’s around here somewhere, but I’ve never really been there. Or maybe it’s someplace where I have been and it’s not really the same anymore?

This song — or really, this entire album — by the Menahan Street Band evokes the same sort of mood. I can’t listen to it without having my mind’s eye flooded with images culled from memories of city over the past fifteen years, all scrambled up to the point that I don’t know what I’m remembering, but I recognize and love every unidentifiable bodega, random subway platform, and anonymous brownstone. It’s not any particular time or place, just an abstract impression based on loving the entire place, and what it represents to me, past, present, and future. It used to be some kind of escape, and now it’s just home. (Click here to buy Menahan Street Band music from Dunham Records.)

Fluxcast #4 – The fourth Fluxcast is ready to go, with music from The Kills, McLusky, Squeeze, Girls Aloud, Out Hud, of Montreal, and others. For some reason, I had a lot of trouble getting words out when I was recording this, so I stammer over easily pronounced words, and at one point, totally screw up the correction of someone else’s spelling. (It’s embarrassing, but I didn’t notice the mistake until well after everything was done, and I couldn’t be bothered to fix it.) The full tracklisting will be on the Fluxcast site within a few days, but for now, you just have to rely on back-announcing.