The Way Things Used To Be: Babybird

Maybe it's my age, maybe it's my place in life, or maybe it's just the way things are in my culture right now...
I'm thinking back to the way things used to be in the mid-90s. I'm thinking about a lot of things but I'm specifically thinking about music. Throughout the majority of my teenage years, I listened to the radio and took notes.

I took notes. Who does that?

Seriously. Did you do that?

It started when I lived downstairs and I'd listen to the nightly countdowns on the DC pop stations. I'd call in and vote for my favorite songs, too.

At some point, I must have stayed in Charlottesville because I discovered that their pop station (Z95) turned into some nationally syndicated cooler pop station at night. I think it was called Music Channel One. After that, I would intentionally stay at my grandmother's house and play with the antenna on the radio in order to hear the station. I wrote down everything I liked and marked everything with checks, pluses, stars, and whatever notes I thought up. I also wrote down things I hated.

At some point, I came across 91.9 WNRN and it changed my life. The Ska Punks, No Losers show changed my life. Bartley changed my life. I would sit in my upstairs room adjusting the antenna and listening to the radio through the static. I always took notes and commented on Bartley's drunken antics. My mom would always get mad at me for staying up late and making long distance calls to a radio show that "sounds like it's being broadcast out of someone's basement".

In the closet at my mom's house is a big purple bin with all of my Notebooks in it. They're filled with diary entries, lists of music, and musical commentary. I haven't looked at them in years but now all of a sudden I want to.

Without a job or classes, I've been flipping through the internet and learning bits and pieces about things I only sort of knew. Old television shows, the Chernobyl disaster, how sweet oil works, polydactyl cats, King Missile, and......I just remembered something in those Notebooks that I never followed up on. Babybird.

Babybird. I remember their name written a handful of times in my Notebooks. I remember turning up the radio when they came on. I remember looking for their album at the old location of Plan 9 in Albermarle Square.

That's it. Blip. Gone.

They just popped into my head an hour ago and GOOGLE, WIKIPEDIA, YOUTUBE!!! away I went.

I didn't even remember what they could have possibly sounded like or what songs I used to like or anything really. I guessed. TYPE TYPE TYPE YOUTUBE

The sounds that fill my ears now are incredibly blissful and distantly familiar like an old middle school classmate.

These videos are quite obviously not my work but they were at one point part of the soundtrack of my life:









For the past hour or so, I've been listening to these four songs. I'm not really sure what I'm doing. I'm trying to remember them but I don't. I remember writing them down. And I remember that they were important and good because I wrote that they were. But I still don't remember them.

I am writing things less and less. I am not making lists of shows, I am not photographing everything under the sun, I am not documenting how my money is spent.

On the one hand, I am sad because there are so many things I won't remember because they're not documented.

On the other hand, I am starting to not care. This used to bother me a lot but maybe not so much now. I am glad that there's a box of books at my mom's house that enabled me to remember this band tonight but I'm also somewhat glad to be free from The Way Things Used To Be.

As far as Babybird, I am obtaining a cd straight away and making it brand new again; here's to driving with the windows down in spring of 2010!