Exceed, excess - Part I

I've not hidden the fact that I tend to get obsessive about listening to a track I like, much to the dismay of people living with me (although, I don't really subject them to my current indefinite repeat unless they are driving in my car or hanging out in my office (i.e. the open area living room)).

I'm just as likely to get obsessive about listening to an album, too, of course, but that's almost often been a case of it resonating strongly with a particular ongoing situation or period of my life. I always find that later, when that time has come and gone and whatever was going on has resolved itself or morphed into something else, I can enjoy the album on two different levels: a new appreciation of the songs without all the associations and, yet, a very fleeting but very, almost physical reaction to the memories it stirs just at the beginning few notes of each song. More often than not, though, there'll be that one song that I just can't separate from the time I first listened to it and am less inclined to listen to even with all the distance between. And sometimes there'll be another song that seems to be almost adaptable to a new situation, and stand alone as its own entity, almost.

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All that by way of saying that yesterday I suddenly heard this song from the Ringleader of the Tormentors album by Morrissey, which first threw me for a loop--April 2006 (definitely the cruelest month, that year and that's saying a lot) flashed before my eyes--and took on a whole new meaning, all over again.

You Have Killed Me - Morrissey





It's still not easy for me to listen to this, though:

I Just Want To See The Boy Happy - Morrissey



Not a coincidence that both songs are ones Morrissey collaborated on and cowrote with his new guitarist, Jesse Tobias, by the way--the change in sound for this album, which is one of the reasons I liked it so much, is directly attributed to Tobias' influence. You may not know his name, but if you're a Buffy fan, you've heard his music both on the show (where he performed with his wife Angie Hart as part of the Splendid) as well as his musical arrangements for the Buffy musical (i.e. Once More With Feeling). Angie Hart, by the way, is from the band Frente!, who did a pretty well known acoustic cover of New Order's Bizzare Love Triangle. Got that? There'll be a quiz on it later.