May 2004 | Tiny dog's bonus songlist

***exclusive bonus content***

Previously unpublished, almost forgotten, and not really finished list of random songs from tiny dog's youth!

If You Leave Me Now— Chicago

This song is my mother vacuuming the shag rug in my Sacramentan childhood living room, some idle summer afternoon, listening to K-108 FM, while I’m playing with the Barbie Penthouse, except Barbie doesn’t live there. It’s Darci, (or was it suntan Jodi?), with the rotating scalp, so you could make her blonde or brunette, or, the Bride of Frankenstein, if you turned it only halfway.

Annie’s Song— John Denver

This was one of the first songs to which I attached a great volume of preteen art appreciation; its earnest, nature-loving folkie flourish and unabashed sentimentality spoke to me by name in the pre-cynical under-12 years. I remember riding around with my dad and friend Beth in an outboard motorboat at Lake Pillsbury (a dusty, random camping spot in Northern California) watching the water and the trees rush past, and thinking of this song; I have no doubts that life has been all downhill from that moment. I know the Nup knows exactly what I am talking about, except for him the song is Driver’s Seat by Sniff and the Tears, and the setting was a car trip to the Manteca water park, or something.

Early Mornin Rain— Elvis, Peter Paul and Mary, Gordon Lightfoot

All of my parent’s favorite musicians did a version of this song, which will always remind me of week-long summer car trips across the country in the green Econoline van to visit far-flung Southern relatives. These trips have entered the pantheon of idealized childhood memories between my brother and me, and represent to us the grandeur of childhood emotions, of all things great and irretrievable, of the bin of rubber bendy guys in the Jackson Hole Stuckey’s, their wire spines snapped from twistings by a hundred car trip-kids before us, the coveting of such things for five hundred miles of open road. Now, in droning meetings, in traffic backups, on page 27 of a software install wizard, the ghosts of I-80, the tumbleweeds and KOAs, the backseat fights over the air conditioner seat, flicker before the power points and droning managers like a desert mirage. Ok not that dramatic but almost.

Still they Ride— Journey

I did not just go to iTunes and download five Journey songs. I deny it. My brother claims to be sending a review of Journey Departure, and I will leave it to him to explain how Journey, also, evokes this econoline van, its radiator overheating at Little America in Wyoming off I-80, while we fight over donut gems and the air conditioner seat, and why this is like a lost city that we will spend the rest of our lives looking for under adjustable work stations and behind bulk-purchased halogen office lamps to no avail, until our deaths.

I Can See Clearly Now— Johnny Nash

This song has always made me cry since it is the soundtrack for a transcendent universe in which none of us will ever actually live, and that means you too, religious people.

For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her— Simon and Garfunkel

High school. Earnest folk Simon and Garfunkel are a total religious experience to me mid 80’s, sulking as I did in the back of high school classrooms in a levi jacket badly embroidered with yin yangs and mystical eyes.

Badge— Cream

A certain 21 year old aspiring guitar hero I worshiped at the age of 17 who shall remain nameless introduced me to Cream, one of the many guitar bands in his long pantheon of rock gods; he admitted later that they were limp, pseudo soul, but this song reminds me, eerily, of his green dodge dart, the weird vanilla smell of its vinyl upholstery, and the little Chinese good luck bag thing hanging from the rear view mirror, and the whole depressing experience of being 17 and driving through droning suburban streets in the passenger set of a Dodge Dart, worshipping preoccupied, aspiring guitar heroes.

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