I just spent half an hour carrying out the BBC's online Musicality experiment. My results weren't very surprising: I am very enthusiastic about music but have very little by the way of talent. These things I knew. However, I was surprised that I only scored 51% for Emotional Connection. Lots of music means a lot to me, and certain records to places and people. Evidently there's more than that to an "emotional connection". Or perhaps I just didn't answer the questions honestly enough. Either way, here is a record to which I had a strong emotional connection best forgotten.
I got this record as a present from my ex-girlfriend (by the time it arrived it was a belated six month-iversary present). I'm a big fan of Jonah Matranga's music and had been since I bought a copy of Tin Cans With Strings to You nearly 10 years ago. I've seen him countless times and have albums of his under more names than I can count. This record though has always been my favourite. I first heard it years ago when Hugh brought the cd round to my house. I enjoyed it, but forgot about it a bit. A few years later and a few weeks after we moved to Cardiff, Jonah was playing in Spillers. We went along, watched the show and got him to sign some of our cds. Hugh had Thriller on vinyl by this point (which I was quite jealous of) and got it signed. I'd been listening to it during the day (I was still jobless at this point) and remembered how great it was. Rarely are there so many incredible songs on one album. Some months later (now with a job) I was in Generation Records in New York and found the cd for $2. I was very happy with this purchase.
Fast-forward a few years and I was having a conversation with my now ex-girlfriend about how jealous I was of Hugh's blue vinyl of Thriller. We'd been to see Jonah together, and taking on my comment she sought out a copy as a gift for me. Thoughtful as it was, we of course broke up (not long afterwards) and somehow this record got caught up in my negativity and how much of a dick she was being, so I didn't listen to it for ages. I'd flick though my records but skip past it because I thought it'd remind me of her and annoy me all over again. Eventually I realised this was stupid and played the record. Despite the connections I'd made to it, it was still awesome. I may have made these associations in my head, but the record is so good I forgot all about them.
Lukewarm is one of my favourite of Jonah's songs and I'm glad he plays it live so often. When I got the cd I was already getting bored of my job and knew I should do something more interesting. That songs became a bit of an anthem for finding a career I liked more and getting on with it. The whole of Side 3 is amazing. I love how Weary Progress brings it all back after the slow Better Than Ever. I also love Better Than Ever and Better Than This as a pair of songs, each closing half of the album, and how great Better Than This is as a closer in general. I'm not quite sure whether calling this a "Jonah album" is massively underplaying the role the band had in the recording, but it's an incredible record either way (I'm a big fan of Texas is the Reason too, a band I got into entirely independently). Jonah's live shows with an acoustic guitar are great, but I think his voice works so well with a full band behind him. I've had the good fortune to see full band shows a couple of times and they're treats too.
The colour of the vinyl is probably a factor in why I now own this record. I like to have my favourite albums on vinyl, so I probably would have picked it up on any colour eventually, had I seen it. The blue is lovely. This one was shipped over from the states, and the sleeve took a minor battering it seems.
So maybe the BBC experiment was right. If I can completely ignore an emotional connection for the sake of good music, maybe I don't associate emotions with music that much. Or maybe the associations I thought I had were just really insignificant in comparison to the ones I'd made years before about how great the music is and the positivity of songs like Lukewarm and Better Than This.
Format: double 12", insert
Tracks: 11
Cost: free, second hand
Bought: gift
When: 06/01/11
Colour: Blue
Etching: none
mp3s: no
