Moose sent me another three mixes! That man is prolific. Do you know he’s also writing his dissertation, applying for professorships, serving on cool committees, conducting research for other historians, etc, etc, etc? Well he is. And somehow hes like, “Well yes I will make three volumes of amazing music from the 1970’s and send them through the mail to Willow. Oh and while I’m at it I think I’ll create a cool mix-of-the-month club where I’ll thoughtfully curate a mix on a theme and send it to 20 or so of my closest friends. But gosh that could get spendy so I’ll just send a SASE along with the first disc and ask people for a humble $6 to help cover costs.” That is what Moose is like. That project he’s doing is real and it’s awesome. It’s called Music from a Farther Room and the first disc just came in the mail! I listened to it every day on my commute during my last week of school and it did me so right. The last song, We’ve Come a Long Way by the band The Good Old War is maybe the best love song ever made. Maybe.
I also got a mix in the mail from my friend Chuck in D.C. All of the songs on that mix were about getting older which is definitely something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. Chuck and I went to college together and used to make each other lots of tapes. Actually now that I think about it he made lots of tapes for me. I hope I made lots for him! I might have been intimidated about that because he knew so much more about music than me. He made some cool zines back then, including some punk music zines. In the letter he sent along with this most recent mix he reminded me of the Hot Water Music show he took me to in college. On the way I was like, “Is this going to be hardcore?” He was like, “Um, kind of.” And then we got there and it was so hardcore!! And loud!! And there were so many Dudes there! At that point I was a “punk fan” in that I liked Bouncing Souls and Tilt. I was not very hardcore. But Chuck shepherded me through the badassness with patience and good humor. And ten years later he put this song on a mix for me, it’s by the HWM frontman Chuck Ragan (thus the pseudonym, btw):
I also really like this one that came about halfway through the mix. It’s by Liam Finn and it’s beautiful and brutal:
The best part of this whole power year thing has been reconnecting purposefully with old friends. Moose, Chuck and I live in different states, we have different friends, we go years between visits. But swapping letters and songs just brings back, in the deepest way, how much I love these dudes and how crucial they were in forming my adult person.