TOP 40
by Bryan Borland
In the days before iTunes,
I courted every song released
as a single. Cassettes were $1.99
with the radio hit
and a throwaway B-side
that saw less play than my high school girlfriend.
I made Billboard lists ranking lips
to ass, my crushes paired with albums, my own
Hot 100. These are things
you need to know, children:
that all the music in the world
wasn’t available with a point and click,
that the relationships we cultivated
with our idols lasted longer
than a television season. That we made love
and gods of our rock stars
who knew what we needed to hear,
what we needed to say
to the boy next door who we imagined
watched as we replaced our tongue-tied muzzles
with the confidence
of a hairbrush microphone.
© Bryan Borland
Nice nostalgic piece of writing, Bryan.
It’s funny, but now music is merely a click away I listen to it much less than when I had to physically put it on a turntable or pop in a cassette. (Or eight track LOLOL)
Me too! And for some reason, my passion for it has decreased. Music used to be my life, but then, I don’t think I was writing or living honestly then, so it was my outlet and my voice.
When I was redoing a room in my house a friend suggested that I really didn’t need all the Cds and old records lying around…I could just download everything and it would make the room easier to design…I decided that designing a space for all those “old” things was more important than a few more feet of space that would just acquire dust any ways.
Really enjoyed this poem and loved the line “a throwaway B-side that saw less play than my high school girlfriend.” Really had to laugh aloud on that one.
I suggest to myself the same thing often… what to do with the hundreds of CDS… but they’re like photo albums for me. I know when I bought them, who I was infatuated with, the frame of mind I had then. I can’t convince myself to box them up. What happens if my computer crashes? So much of my music from 2004-present exists only in digital form. (I backup, yeah, but still…)
Well…since I collected old antique record players when in high school…whose sale… paid for part of my college education…I still have single sided records from my collection…which I shall never part with…and I will continue to buy some physical representation of the music…like I buy books to hold…because my digital reader just doesn’t have the same feel of the flesh of paper.
I’ll say it like this: I’m glad I’m old enough to have experienced this too. Particularly love the part about how the instant availability of music has changed the art of fanhood.
Here, I could start a long, rambling story about my days as a cassette archivist of the pop of the moment, but I’ll refrain. But in my mind, I’m now back in the early 1990s.
I can totally picture you as a cassette archivist!
i second this response!
i never had a lot of tapes because i never had much in the way of money but i did make crappy recordings from the radio. those tapes, however, were not hard to get rid of.
My CD’s however? Well I bought most of them in college and they are still in a nice container in my house. I also can remember when i purchased most of them or who gave them to me.
ah..music
I remember spending an entire day making a mix tape! Geeze… there are a changin, and fast. Thanks for this!
Mix tapes. I *heart* mix tapes.
Now mix tapes have become playlists. It doesn’t really have the same magic. I’d spend days making them too… and giving them to the object of my affection. “Here’s what I really think of you,” was what I hope they conveyed.
Oh God, yes . . . mix tapes. Sigh Sigh Sigh. So much consideration went into them. Yes, DAYS spent on each one, giddy thinking about the person receiving / listening on the other end. Every lover, every road-trip companion . . .
I fucking love this one B..I could go back further, but who wants to here about 78′s and player pianos…Okay, maybe not that far, but I did have an 8 track player once. Right in the middle of “whole lotta love” by Zep..Bam..track change….Sigh..No doubt where my angst and cigarette smoking started.
I wanna hear about your 8 tracks!!! I bet you build an entire novel around them, Bindo.
I am reading this and watching a Johnny Cash special *tears flowing*- I never, did I say NEVER collected music in any form or fashion; it was a luxury to a poor girl where I grew up, only country music radio my parents listened to. Does that mean I lived a country song- lost my dog, my truck would not start, a boy broke my heart, then play it backwards it will say the same. As Johnny says, “If I could start again…I would find a way, but do it all the same”…
I like this though, it helps me understand my own kids obsession with music- I think it is because you did not have a voice, so the music spoke for you. Once you gained that voice, the music became the step-parent that waits, because one day you will return home…
I see my parents, and I am waiting for my son…
E Stelling
http://tmi-chef.blogspot.com/
I bet you’d be surprised… although not a “collector” like us… I’ll be you could rattle me off the soundtrack of your life pretty easily. And, hey, Texas girl, ain’t no shame in country music. Me and Dolly? We go way back.
I am a young lass again… with Andy Taylor posters hanging on my wall holding a hairbrush and singing ‘Girls on Film.’ This is great. Thanks – Sue
“lickmypoetry” – if that isn’t the best name I’ve ever seen. Suck my simile! Nibble on my hyperbole!
Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, can we expect to see a video of you doing “Girls on Film” on YouTube anytime soon?
It is a definite possibility. More likely one of me reading and preforming at a fundraiser next week. : ) Troll by our site?
“that saw less play than my high school girlfriend.”
Made me laugh out loud.
All my 20+ years of collected music got left behind when I walked away with a suitcase.
That sounds sad, but I don’t miss my “things” that much, leaving it all behind made an infinite amount of room for the joy and quiet I needed to come into my life.
And boy has it.
These days I don’t even need a hairbrush, I just open my heart and sing. :0)
No hairbrush for me, either, Sister-Friend. Maybe me and you can do some karaoke someday?
i miss my hairbrush microphone. badly. i still make mixes for that special person, but you’re right — a “playlist” isn’t the same as that good old cassette. inspired by this, i might just take myself to the store and find a double-deck boom box and some blank tapes. thanks for sharing; i’m glad i stumbled across your blog!
Welcome okbobok! Inquiring minds want to know… what would be on that mixtape you’d make?
I know there was recently a prompt at Read Write Poem about putting your iPod on shuffle… and once I posted about and linked to an online contest with a mixtape theme…. but what about mixtape poetry? Could we do something with that idea?
bwahaha. it really is a new mix every day… in terms of poetry, i’m thinking there’d be some adrienne rich, dorianne laux, mary oiver, madeline defrees and frank gaspar.
that’s just off the top of my head. OR, i might just take all my favorite lines and “mix” them into a mixtape poem. OR, if it were a BLOG POET MIXTAPE, there’d be some pearlnelson.wordpress.com, a little postcardsfromdoggerland.wordpress.com, maybe thedasslereffect.wordpress.com…
clearly, an area to think about! if you have any inspiration this way, i’d love to hear about it.
Satisfy the need of a greatest hits album AND a mixtape with a Best of the Blogs anthology… Now that’s a project that puts a twinkle in my eye. Wonder if I know anyone with a small press who can put out a book – oh wait – I bet that talented guy over at http://www.siblingrivalrypress.com could do that!!
Ah the memories. Love this one and ‘my crushes paired with albums’ is great (so is the third stanza as commented by others). Who hasn’t used a hairbrush as a microphone.
I was worried I was indulging too much in a cliche’ with that line, but sometimes you can’t deviate from the truth and you want the reader to have that connection, too. So hairbrush it is.
I waited to comment on this because in addition to going through my ‘green’ period, I’m also in the early stages of my last person to comment period. This way, it’s less likely this will be replied to and thus, my words are final.
I won’t list the songs I know, Famous musicians I’ve imbibed with or concerts I’ve been to, because it would take too long. Lets just say, pick a genre and I’m on it like a fly on shit. You wrote a lovely nostalgic homage to music Bryan and it rocks, jives, shakes, twangs and beats. 
HA! Dhyan took away your glory, Val.
I can see you as a groupie… in the backs of tour buses, performing duets…
Literally, of course. I’m sure you had great pipes by then. Meaning a great voice. GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER!
i was thinking a lot this week about the way i consume and listen to music. how it has changed with the mp3, digital, revolution. it is great to have the ability to reach so much in so little but sometimes i feel There is something missing. some connection that one builds when listening to the same album over and over again, perhaps until there is enough money to buy another one, or perhaps until the people around start to get to anxious.
You’ve hit my point exactly. Do we even have time to bond with our music these days? It was a quest to get a song, an album, back then. Now it’s at our fingertips, and we don’t have that big buildup.
If sex became nothing but an orgasm, would it still be worth it?
LOL no glory seeker here Bryan and honey bee, I did that so I WOULDN’T be the last to comment and to ensure you would answer my comment. I’m very cagey mon amis.
No groupie here either, I married the guitarist silly! Dave was brilliant…
[...] mention all this to prepare you for my great friend Bryan Borland’s recent poem Top 40. It’s about how we need and use music to express our innermost feelings, but more than [...]
This one had me reaching for the hairbrush indeed!
Now you know I couldn’t have you just sing, Maxine. I’d require one of your fantastic poems!
now i can’t sing but i’ve reached for a hairbrush many a time and sang with vigor. very nostalgic piece. hope all is well.
I was never really in to singles. Hard to gets and occasional collected hits were more my style.