Deep Dive: Elton John

File this under Nostalgia. And Wasted Youth. And We Live in the Age of Miracles and Wonders.

In recent years I've taken to playing catch up with some of the amazing music that I missed out on the first time around, or that has fallen through the cracks as my media consumption has transitioned from LPs to Cassettes to CDs to MP3 to streaming. For a while I was picking up some of the Original Album Series on Amazon - 5 classic or seminal CDs from an artist that I either missed the first time around (Bonnie Raitt and Little Feat) or had in various formats and never replaced (Warren Zevon). As a kid, standing over record bins, flipping through albums was almost an art form - the equivalent of web surfing today - either as a way to kill a few hours out of the house or something to do when mom dragged me to a department store. And when music was consumed primarily through albums, one would pore over* the album art, credits, lyrics, etc. if only because one needed to stay close to flip over the album. So having the reproduction album covers in the Original Album Series is nice.

A while back I picked up a Kindle Fire for the sole purpose of storing my voluminous collection of albums in digital format (many 100s, I added a big chunk of memory) and to stream music (mostly via Amazon Prime). And I've found myself on occasion getting a hankering for some artist, and spending a day listening to old albums, in order of release.

Oftentimes this is triggered by a death - Steely Dan was such a listen a while back. Othertimes, I'm just in the mood. A few days ago, Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding popped up on Sirius 70s on 7 and it made me smile (and crank the volume). So this morning, Elton John got the deep dive treatment.

A somewhat random selection, listening sequentially to Madman Across the Water, Honky Chateau, Yellow Brick Road, and Captain Fantastic. I was 10 when Madman came out, 14 when Captain Fantastic came out. Was probably consuming music primarily via AM/FM radio at the time, so the many hits are imprinted in my head and even the deeper cuts are familiar, although I only recall owning Yellow Brick Road on vinyl, and nothing on cassette or CD. I had moved on musically, and the brilliance of this artist did not bubble up for me (on the culture) for many years.




These deep dives are complicated. My modern self is reminded how amazing access to music and technology is these days. Pulling music out of the ether (i.e. the internet) at will, electronically dumping it to my stereo, playing it throughout the house. I'm a bit of an Alexia resister, or I'd be able to call this stuff up via voice command. Not quite yet....but still, 70s Jude would be impressed.

I also want to rent a time machine and go back to that younger version of myself and leave some breadcrumbs for all the amazing music that was around in my youth, that I either missed completely or never really got past the hits. Then again, perhaps a course in Bowie and Elton John and Mott the Hoople and Velvet Underground would have led me into all sorts of places I might not have emerged from unscathed. Not so bad to come to this stuff when I was ready to listen.

As I get older, I have come to appreciate the scope and breath of my lifetime. I think somewhere in my youth, I conceived an ideal afterlife where I might "go back to any era or period and just explore" thinking of human history, natural history - dropping in to observe, to study, to witness. These days, sometimes just being here to witness the 57 years I've been a part of sometimes seems big and awesome enough.

Question 3 in Massachusetss

To be clear, Question 3 will have almost zero impact on my life, as a transgender woman, living in a neighboring state. 

I've been gifted a pretty solid hand in terms of passing privilege, economic privilege, educational and intellectual privilege. I've jumped through all the hoops in terms of legal and physical gender transition. I am exceptionally well-behaved, the "good tranny" so to speak who never feels entitled to date, to enter women-only spaces. And I came up and out in a far less enlightened era and learned how to move through the world without making waves; I transitioned without the benefit of legal protections, insurance coverage, etc.

All that being said, it's good that the legal system in one state that I move through, that I once called home, and that my family mostly still lives in recognizes certain rights and protections. It makes me feel ever so slightly less cranky about the world.

And getting meta here, had Question 3 been voted down, had transgender rights been rescinded or downgraded in that state, it would have given me one more reason to feel separate, embattled, pissed off from the majority of the population, cis-gender folks both straight and gay.  So I'm happy that it passed.