the giveaway

how can you tell how old someone is? oh, they can hide it: they can look great, be fit, stay outta the sun, have a great plastic surgeon... or they can be leathered and fat and greasy... there are plenny of ways to look older and younger.

but. usually. not always but usually, there are some giveaway signs that the person is showing to you without even knowing it, that will at least give you a five year span of, "ah ha, so that is the age group you fit into."

the less common but most obvious of these is the hair cut. the hair cut giveaway, however, only works with those who "peaked" at an early age (say late teens or early 20s). these people may have moved on with their lives, but their hair has kind of stayed stuck in the same year.

another is music. it seems we all have a certain type of music that for us... man... it just nails us. maybe for you it is nirvana. doesn't matter what happens, but when you hear nirvana you are just transported back to that summer, that feeling... and for you it will always be it. sure, you've moved on and play the foo fighters. but for you there is something just so nostagically delicious about nirvana that they always turn up on your playlists, on your mixed cds, etc.

i got to thinking about this, because for me, one of my defining bands is camper van beethoven. and while i don't listen to them that much, when i happen to hear an old song, i get an urge to literally put their cds in my mouth and chew them right up. for me, it doesn't matter that they are so 16 years ago. it doesn't matter they've been broken up forever. it doesn't matter that david lowry became cracker (okay, yes, i have cracker cds too). what matters is how i feel at even the mention of their name.

transported. santa barbara county bowl. they opened for 10,000 maniacs. or how they were on every damn mixed tape i made for about five years (and still wind up on some play list every now and again). they hugely influenced future music i would love from old poi dog pondering to the waterboys (hey, both of those bands date me, too) to uncle tupelo and even the eels.

so you can imagine the smile that spread across my face when i saw that apple's itunes are offering up a camper van EP. you can imagine the crinkle in my eye as i saw that cvb did this EP as a protest against current political climates...

you can check them out in itunes.

meanwhile, my favorite cvb cd is our beloved revolutionary sweetheart. and my favorite song is one of these days.