2009 in music Photos

2009 in music

2009 in music
Image by erin m
On last year’s music post, Scott wrote "if i posted about music i’d have left out so many other things that are so important to me."

Music is so much more than a list. It’s a mood, it’s nostalgia, it’s being transported to somewhere other than where you are.

In the scramble to get out the door in the morning, I sometimes weigh the merits of what I’ve left upstairs against how late I am. I won’t turn back for a mislaid hat or my lunch or a book I’m just about to finish. But I cannot get through a single day without music.

People complain that we’re a city of zombies, tuning out the world with our earbuds and shuffling from metro to office and back again. But when the music is good, it makes me want to smile at strangers, to spread the soundtrack of my day.

Top 5 musical happenings of 2009

Avett Brothers, "I And Love And You"
Oh. My. God. It’s just…I’m in awe.

Alejandro Escovedo, everything.
When I got into Chicago late one night last fall, I went for a short walk in Grant Park, intending to get straight back to the hotel and crash. The city instead offered up a free Escovedo show, and I watched a girl in a bridesmaid’s dress dance in her own private world.

Soundtrack, "(500) Days of Summer."
It almost collapses under the weight of twee hipsterdom, but then it doesn’t.

Elvis Costello, "Secret, Profane & Sugarcane."
Yep. When I saw him at Wolftrap this summer, a banjo sat to the side of the stage for the entire show. No one touched it. It just taunted us. Also the man is just charming.

Film, "It Might Get Loud."
See what I did there? I called this musical happenings so i could get away with this. It’s just one 90-minute musical experience anyway. But good god is it wonderful. The storytelling, the journeys home, bizarro mini-Jack White, the inability of White and the Edge to smother the childlike glee when Jimmy Page picks up a guitar in front of them … (go on, look at ‘em smile). This is a movie made for music-lovers.