headphones/walkman - perfect moments

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Sometimes with headphones on everything falls into place as if reality was simply a script for your music (or vice versa).

I was just reminded in the Godspeed thread that one of these moments happened to me when walking along a frozen China/North Korea border in winter. After those 12 minutes of Godspeed among the concrete and ice I thanked Kim Il Sung for spending 50 years preparing his country to be a perfect backdrop to my walk.

I can think of many other such moments ... often, the link between music and setting isn't quite as direct as this one ...

...but friends, I come not to bore but to listen. Will you share yours with the Board?

Testify!

― jon, Monday, 2 September 2002 07:24 (twenty-three years ago)

Although this is not headphones/walkman related I thought I'd just shamelessy plug The Walkmen's "Wake Up" as one of the best songs of the year so far.

― Marco Mattiuzzo (Psycho Ant), Monday, 2 September 2002 07:35 (twenty-three years ago)

what a great thread. i might as well have my headphones surgically attached to my ears, i wear them so frequently. the most recent perfect moment i can remember is walking towards the riveside with james' "seven" playing. or riding a train listening to the go-betweens. actually i've done that tons of times... for some reason, last saturday was... perfect. (end of boring post).

― cecilia, Monday, 2 September 2002 12:11 (twenty-three years ago)

I can't remember much about the moment. Basically, I think it was me walking out of a boring class on a Wednesday and going through the halls so I could get to my car so I could drive home and do nothing once I was there, but "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" seemed to fit so nicely...

― My name is Kenny, Monday, 2 September 2002 15:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Somehow I enjoy complex rhythms much more on headphones than through speakers. Especially with music bordering on complete chaos (a few 1993 jungle comps, or Cryptopsy/Absu/early Immortal) everything finally falls into place. Anyone with similar experiences?

― Siegbran Hetteson (eofor), Monday, 2 September 2002 15:51 (twenty-three years ago)

I like listening to Arvo Part's Alina in an empty DC metro station. Any modern(ist) composition influenced by minimalism heard in a building of the same aesthetics is good. I tend to think that metro stations are the best place for architechtbrutalism because they are underground and don't destroy the streetscape.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Monday, 2 September 2002 16:46 (twenty-three years ago)

I fell asleep on a night train from France to Italy with the Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld playing on my walkman. It was one of those stereos that flips over automatically. I woke up in the middle of the night, disturbed by moonlight. We were passing through the alps and outside I could see snow and stars. "Spanish Castles In Space" was playing.

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 2 September 2002 17:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Flying over the Canadian Tundra, looking down on Yellowknife, then Uranium City, then nothing; "69" - AR Kane.

― Taylor Parkes, Monday, 2 September 2002 19:53 (twenty-three years ago)

I played "Maxinequaye" on a loop on one long bus journey on a school trip to Greece. When I played it for the first time after returning to Ireland, I could remember lots of sights and moments from the bus journey that I had completely forgotten about. It was like the music and the sights had become so entwined that it took the music to bring them back into my memory.

Still, enough sentimental mush. If Marco can use this thread to shamelessly plug things, can I just say that the Boa Morte album is great and more of you should have it? Thanks.

Sonic Youth's "Washing Machine" + Boo Radley's "Giant Steps" = hours of walkman enjoyment.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Monday, 2 September 2002 21:07 (twenty-three years ago)

Frankly, Marco is not that off base mentioning the Walkmen album. I'd listened to it several times before hearing it on my walkman and I think it fits quite well in this thread. There were little bits of pianos and other blips I had never heard before and, after checking, noticed were quite inaudible on my home stereo.

― sammy, Tuesday, 3 September 2002 02:52 (twenty-three years ago)

one day as i was leaving work to go to my drummer's house i put mogwai's 'rock action' on my headphones. his place is only about four blocks away, so i was listening to the second song 'take me somewhere nice' (i think that's what it's called) as i came up the stairs and in the door of his apartment. as i was taking off my headphones i got this weird delay/echo thing between my headphones and the room ... he was listening to the SAME album and was on the SAME song, only he must have pressed play about ten seconds after i did. we couldn't believe it and we stood there for a couple of minutes with my headphones cranked listening to this miraculous coincidence. what are the odds of two people with hundreds and hundreds of cd's between them putting on the same album within ten seconds of each other?

― fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Tuesday, 3 September 2002 17:01 (twenty-three years ago)

Walking around Northeast Portland in one of the most brutal rainstorms I ever experienced while living in that city (known for its rain), listening to Cat Power's The Covers Record, which had just come out. It's completely cold and wet, and the trees are thick and heavy with soggy branches and slick leaves, and the sidewalk has gone from a medium grey to a few shades darker... I'm hunched into myself, squinting my eyes to keep the water out, and all the Taco Bells and 7-11s become a blur through my ratty hair and my fervent desire to get wherever the hell I'm going. Then I'm stopped dead by Chan Marshall's an echoey minor block chord. Her voice follows, smooth and crackly like old vinyl: "Love me, love me / Say you do / Let me fly away with you." And the sustain of the piano seems to have the same overtones as the atmospheric hiss outside the musical moment. I've never been able to re-create that.

― Jody Beth Rosen, Tuesday, 3 September 2002 17:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Chan Marshall's an echoey minor block chord

Read that without the "an."

― Jody Beth Rosen, Tuesday, 3 September 2002 17:34 (twenty-three years ago)

just to piss certain people off (and because it's true), I will say that little has felt as fucking good as emerging from the no. 6 train onto Astor Place on a sunny spring day with the chorus of U2's "Beautiful Day" on full blast did last year.

― M Matos (M Matos), Tuesday, 3 September 2002 19:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Listening to XTC's "Nonsuch" on a bus back home. The day had been fairly overcast until I put the CD on, then the starting chords of "Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" seemed to open the sky up.

― Vinnie (vprabhu), Tuesday, 3 September 2002 20:51 (twenty-three years ago)

5:45 in the morning totally wired on coffee with no sleep trembling around in hopes for fresh air playing Nurse with Wound's Soliloquy for Lilith.

― Honda, Tuesday, 3 September 2002 21:32 (twenty-three years ago)

oh yes!
I am the resurrection - the guitar wig out at the end - at full blast will sitting alone on the top at the front of a national express bus with a wraparound front window. somewhere between Tuanton and Bridgewater. black wraps the glass, fast movement.

― jon, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 10:25 (twenty-three years ago)

I've two from London actually, the first was soon after I arrived this summer, walking down the mainstreet just outside Forest Gate tube station the day that England beat Argentina, I'd been drinking for a while, a great day really, enjoyed the match and all, and I had Soulwax-2 Many DJs in my discman, I remember coming out of the station as Vitalic-La Rock 01 began to begin out of Adult's Hand to Phone, I guess I was crossing the road just as that fucking unholy climax had got into full gear with the evil snares and just as the whole visceral techno feel had kicked in fully, I had to wait until I was walking under the railway bridge and noone could see me, or less people at least, before I fucking thrashed my fist as hard as possible into the air, it just NEEDED some physical reaction, that's the only problem with discmen, I just want to fucking move to some things, particularly when they click for the first time.

The second one was also in London, I'd just bought Viva Bugged Out, the mix I reviewed for FT, I fell asleep on the train home and woke up in Ilford, the station was really packed so I jumped off, I'd not heard the album before and just as I was crossing the platform to go back to forest gate this massive samba drum started kicking, I'm talking one of those really brazilian signature samba drum rapid fire parts, complete with whistles in between, I remember lighting a cigarette and seeing my face in the mirror of the train and thinking I could have been a character in some "white man in Rio" movie, even the fact I was in London gave me the lack of familiarity, and made me feel out of place in finding it all so hot.

Classic.

The tune on Viva Bugged Out was Sambana by United Eye by the way.

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 10:36 (twenty-three years ago)

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