Senses of nostalgia

I remember being annoyed when an English prof in my undergrad days opined that there must be a circuit in the brain programmed to switch off at age 25, making it impossible for a person to appreciate new styles of music, but as I age he is seeming more and more to have been onto something. It's not that I have no appreciation for new music, but I respond to the sounds of my youth with more passion and intensity than I do to anything more contemporary. In my year of iPodding I have been constantly borrowing CDs from the public library to rip and upload, many of them albums I either used to own on LP or tape (my LP collection has languished in Toronto since I moved away in 1997--actually since my record player died a few years before that--and my tapes have gone to magnetic heaven) or that I never owned but knew very well because friends had them. I have also been listening to new music, mostly indie rock, and old music that is new to me, like Townes Van Zandt, but for the most part I've been on a blinding nostalgia trip, getting wrapped up in songs that I had not heard in fifteen or twenty years that I used to listen to every day. One thing that makes my personal experience of music particularly nostalgia-prone is that the CD was introduced just late enough in my adolescence that I already had a big collection of cassettes and records when I got my first CD player (I was fifteen). For me this means that there are thousands of songs that were basically gone, that never entered my mind any more.

The first popular songs that I loved were AM radio hits of the early 1980s. After Neil Diamond's Jazz Singer soundtrack ("Everywhere around the world/They're coming to America!"), the first records I owned were the K-Tel compilation Rock 82 (Juice Newton, Rush, .38 Special, REO Speedwagon, Huey Lewis and the News, Billy Squire, Kim Carnes), then the real breakthrough, Billy Joel's Glass Houses, which was once my favorite album in the whole world. In the few years after that my collection grew. Much of it was music I learned to like from watching videos on Canadian music shows like The New Music (hosted by J.D. Roberts, who as John Roberts has become the new Aaron Brown) and Toronto Rocks. There was Duran Duran, Culture Club, The Police, Genesis/Phil Collins, and Michael Jackson (my brother always liked him better than I did). Eventually my taste became more sophisticated, under the influence of a Rolling Stone subscription and many smart and musical friends, and by the time I started buying CDs instead of LPs or cassettes I had outgrown the top 40 songs and albums of the early part of the decade.

When I listen to this music now, especially to things you never hear any more like Genesis's self-titled album of 1983 ("That's All," "Mama," "Illegal Alien," "Taking It All Too Hard," and "Home By the Sea") I feel immensely satisfied. The pop-rock style is passé and Phil Collins's romantic persona can be a bit much, especially when he cackles lustily after the choruses of "Mama," but I don't care. One thing I love about this record now (and also its followup, Invisible Touch) is how much it sounds like the Police albums of the same vintage, a similarity I never noticed before. Hugh Padgham produced both bands and you can tell that they came from the same shop . As different as they seem, "Synchronicity II" and "Illegal Alien" are almost the same song: "Synchronicity II" has a minor chorus and "Illegal Alien" is mildly offensive, but both songs have the same tempo and rhythm, the same synth, guitar, and drum sounds. Until the past few weeks I always felt more affection for The Police because I liked them better in the 80s. I never owned Genesis; I just listened to my friends's copies and heard the hits on the radio and at dance parties. But I bought Synchronicity when it came out and listened to it like crazy. After Genesis broke up and Phil Collins became a huge pop star we all decided that he was an obnoxious poseur; it took about six or eight more years to get the same feeling about Sting, whose late-80s solo albums are mostly pretty great (that song about the Russians loving their children too, which my friends and I thought was profound, is now unlistenable). To an extent, I love Genesis because I used to listen to Genesis all the time. It was part of the soundtrack of my youth. Genesis was the first band I saw live in a stadium, in 1986, when I was fourteen and had never smelled marijuana. It was fun but it was really my friends who worshiped the band, not me. Now I can't get enough. Nostalgia isn't rational.

And it seems to work differently with different senses. Lately I've been trying to make the same kind of trip back in time through my tastebuds and it isn't working. At the movies I tried Milk Duds and they were disgustingly chewy, sticking in my back teeth and making my mouth feel all tense and weird. So I had some Junior Mints instead and they were sickly sweet and artificial tasting. I used to love Milk Duds and Junior Mints. At a burger and custard place I had a cheeseburger and a chocolate malt and the combination, which I had been dreaming about for weeks, seemed idiotic. The malt was too sugary and the dessert-with-your-main-course thing was so unappealing. I didn't even finish the malt and I felt a bit silly to have ordered it at all. Then the other night we went to Boston Market, which reminded me a lot of a Canadian restaurant chain called Swiss Chalet that also serves rotisserie chicken. The poultry was juicy and well seasoned, but, well, too well seasoned. It was salty and the skin wasn't crisp. The sides were plentiful but amped way up on salt and fat. I loved this kind of meal in the days when I used to listen to Genesis, but the distance in time has made me accustomed to a very different kind of eating. The old kind of food no longer appeals to me even as the old kind of music really does.

Why today do I like to listen to "That's All" over and over again but not to have a burger and a chocolate malt? It seems counterintuitive but I think it might be because post-sell-out Genesis is actually good and a burger and a malt is actually not. Feel free to spread the word.

More music: my brother on indie rock and racism.