Music Firsts

The first real CD I ever owned was a Hillary Duff CD. 

My first concert was an outdoors Boys Like Girls concert.

Hillary Duff and Boys Like Girls are not who I really want to talk about.

Firsts don’t really matter, unless you were actually in love.

So the first CD I ever fell in love with was Jack Johnson’s “Sleep Through the Static.”

A close friend in high school gave me a copy.

That was probably the CD that made my CD player give up the ghost. It was too much.

I didn’t even know music could be that good. I listened it when I was doing homework, when I was eating, when I was folding laundry, when I was cleaning, when I was doing nothing at all.

It’s still one of my favorite albums. People tell me his earlier stuff was better. I don’t care.

I have his earlier stuff, and I like it.

But nothing comes close to “Sleep Through the Static.” It was my first.

I didn’t start getting into live music until a couple of years ago. The Boys Like Girls was kind of a one-time deal during my high school years. But there was this one time I went to the Minneapolis Basilica Block Party last summer. I watched The Head and the Heart. This concert. I’ve liked live music for as long as I’ve been into it, but man. This concert. I fell in LOVE. I’m telling you, love.

Oh, people make fun of indie folk-y music and bands like The Head and the Heart, but I don’t care. I will forever love them.

They get a “Get out of jail free” card. You don’t desert people who’ve sung straight to your soul just because the going gets tough. I will forever stand next to them unless they somehow happened to 100% lose their musical integrity—like turn their back on the Holy Ghost of music kind of lose their integrity. They would have to descend into the depths of Nickelback and Ke$ha and stay there. And that’s when I would have to sadly walk away, heartbroken.

But until they do that, I’ll be there for them.

To be fair, I’m more a sentimental appreciator of music. Not a music critic.

But then, music’s meant to touch your soul, not your mind.

Yes.

So anyways, that’s why I’m sitting in a little hostel in Lilongwe, listening to “Sleep Through the Static” and The Head and the Heart tonight. They were my firsts, and I’m still digging them.