love, love, love

When I was working on my undergraduate degree oh so long ago (the mid-'90s seem like yesterday, don't they?), my parents encouraged me to travel for a semester. They were thinking overseas. But since I'd never really left my hometown (at that point I'd barely left the neighborhood -- my first apartment was in the Student Ghetto a mere four blocks from my parents' house), I really wanted to go to New York. They protested, but I insisted. So I applied and was accepted to NYU for the summer of 1997.

It was one of the best summers of my life. I lived in a dorm one block from Washington Square Park. Ate amazing meals. Saw phenomenal bands. Bought tons of records. Met interesting people. Most importantly, I walked almost everywhere I went.

I wanted to SEE the city, so I rarely used the subway if it was somewhere I was going for the first time. Copying most New Yorkers, I began to listen to my Walkman (tape version) everywhere I went. One day I got a package from tw with a mix tape inside titled "Pop Side of the Moon." Its cover was a black & white picture of Rockefeller Center (my obsession with the RC Christmas Tree was already in full bloom), and the bands included such indie greats as Small Factory ("So What About Love"), Incredible Force of Junior ("Blue Cheer"), Air Miami ("Airplane Rider"), and Low ("Over the Ocean"). I listened to it so much that the songs on this mix tape are still, to this day, some of my favorite songs.

However, there was one song that I absolutely hated. It was stupid, atonal, and the lyrics made no sense. But since this was a mix tape and not a mix CD, it was a pain in the ass to fast forward through without missing the song after it, which is one of my undeniably favorite songs of all time, Courtney Love's "Uncrushworthy" (Courtney Love being the early 90s band fronted by Lois Maffeo, not the obnoxious Hole singer). So I suffered through it time after time.

But the hated song would just not go away. Unconsciously, it started to grow on me. I began singing it in my head. It popped up in the shower or when I was trying to fall asleep. Then, I found myself fast forwarding to GET to this song. Finally, I began searching for other songs by this artist, amassing a small collection of dubbed tapes and 7 inches. New York City became the place where I began my love affair with what would become my favorite band of all time, the Mountain Goats.

The stupid, atonal song with the senseless lyrics? "The Monkey Song"