The Music Project

Since the start of July, I’ve instituted a weekly tradition wherein I email my 14 year-old sister Slammer a new song for her to download. The song may not be new in and of itself, but my hope is that it’s new to her, and she’ll get some unseen value out of listening to it. Whether its by her loving it or by her just hearing things that her older brother deems quality music, the point is that I’m on a mission to broaden her musical exposure.

My plan is to do this every week for 52 weeks, all of which I’ll be giving her an Itunes gift card for so as to sponsor the “musical journey.” Part of me is doing it out of brotherly love, while the other part is insanely jealous, in that I’d get a total kick out of someone forcing me to try new things every single Sunday evening that doesn’t require extensive sporting equipment or a change in my ethical structure.

Below is this week’s email to her and this week’s selection… chosen as such because it summed up my entire outlook on Saturday.

“S –

This week’s song comes to you on the heels of a weekend spent seemingly mired in nostalgia… a Saturday afternoon spent accomplishing a large number of tasks all beneath the weight of vivid memories, recollections, and a dash of déjà vu.

Such is the course when you’ve sort of locked yourself in for serious self-discovery, I suppose.

Many years ago, I was your age, and when I was, this week’s song was having a run of popularity. It’s by the band Weezer, which has been around for a fair amount of time by this point, and while I own 3 of their albums I can’t confess to being a big fan of theirs. This is jarring to me in a way, because in the back of my mind and on the periphery of my pop-culture immersion, Weezer strikes me as a band that should be a bigger deal to me.

This is different in the way that, say, U2 is in my opinion the most important band in the world. (Not to be confused of course with the band Radiohead, who I will widely argue is the only band that matters anymore.)

No, Weezer should be a bigger deal because they’ve been around awhile, and they’ll always have this song to take me instantly back to when I was a sophomore in high school who just got his driver’s license and blasted this song with the windows down – blissfully unaware that life at 17, and at 18, and at 25, and more, would be rushing past and before long this very song would serve as little more than a vivid memory… a recollection… or in Saturday’s case, when it came on the radio I rolled the windows down and cranked up the volume and was oh so aware of the déjà vu at that very moment.

“Come Undone (The Sweater Song)” by Weezer.

Enjoy!”