My Cancer Mixtape - Avett Edition

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MrPleistocene
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Location: San Diego, CA

My Cancer Mixtape - Avett Edition

Postby MrPleistocene » Wed Mar 18, 2015 1:48 pm

Music is one of the most important parts of my life. I don't get paid for it or even praised for it, but it is, without a doubt, one of my favorite parts of the human experience. Earlier, there was a thread of cancer sayings, and it reminded me of some posts I wrote to facebook about some Avett Bros. songs, and what they meant to me at the time. One of the songs had a mantra which we live by in our house, and it was crucial to treatments and peace with difficult decisions and situations.

Just do your best.
It's the only way to keep that last bit of sanity.
Maybe I don't have to be good,
But I can try and be at least a little bit better than I've been so far.


Anyway, here they are in their entirety, I hope the download links still work.

My Cancer Mixtape - Avett Brothers Edition

I like music. I like to ramble on... and on. I wouldn't say I have time on my hands, but this is something I can do while laying in bed to entertain myself and possibly provide a little diversion out there.

I'm going to try and pick a few songs that tickle my fancy for one reason or another, write some long winded accompaniment and throw it up on facebook. I hope it is fun.

The Avett Brothers
1. Living of Love
2. When I Drink
3. I and Love and You
4. January Wedding
5. The Perfect Space
6. Laundry Room
7. Swept Away[/list]

Living of Love

With a surgery date settling in, the only thing that is approaching sooner is Coachella. For the last several years Steph and I haven’t missed a single edition of this enormous music festival in the desert. Liam has even been twice already. This year we are leaving Liam with Papa and Gram and bringing along Savannah. She is about the same age I was when I got that Van Halen record. (Panama-a-a-a—a-a-a-a!!!)

For those that aren’t familiar with Coachella, it is a three day festival held just outside Palm Springs. It will have nearly 200 bands, from the hottest new acts to the biggest names in music (Liam slept through Sir Paul there). To prepare, our friend Ravi creates a selection of music highlighting most of the bands on the bill each year. Using a coarse understanding of linear algebra combined with a lot of listening, I whittled the list down to a few bands I thought Savvy should know before we hit the festival.

The first band on the list is The Avett Brothers -

I did some research online and found they rarely start their sets with their heaviest material. Instead we have a quiet, and emotional track. Nothing tremendously gripping, but the first salvo from their emo honky tonk world. We see a landscape in front of us. One where some of your roads might be gravel. The rational stoic meets a youthful optimism at once cynical and filled with the joy of possibilities...

To walk ahead and leave the pain behind
If the days aren’t easy and the nights are rough
When they ask you what you’re thinking of

Say,"Love."


Living of Love by The Avett Brothers (right click + save as... to download)

When I Drink

Let’s start with a digression. I liked the oncologist we met with at City of Hope from the first meeting. When he found out that Coachella was an event that Steph and I go to every year he asked if I had played music. When I answered in the affirmative, he naturally asked what kind.

I said,”You know how people say,‘Anything But Country’? Well, I played country too.”

Trying to sort out why I included country, I did a quick inventory of my formative years. My dad had a banjo. On that fateful road trip, my Simon and Garfunkel cassette split equal time with The Oakridge Boys. Folk, Rock, Pop and a dash of Motown were the key ingredients in our record cabinet back home, but somewhere I learned to appreciate country music... every once in a while.

I’m still pretty picky about my country music, but The Avett Brothers are the sweet spot for me. I see how it might be too rough hewn for some. Either way, it has become a significant part of our soundtrack through treatment.

Here we have a classic take on the country confessional. The damaged hero lists his flaws, cleverly bolstering his appeal to the audience, especially the lady folk. Kind of like Sawyer on Lost. (“Stay away from me, Freckles. I’m ornery and allergic to shirts.”)

But then it comes... Just do your best. A generation’s response to the warring spectacles of Just Do It and Just Say No. A grudge match between Bo Jackson and Nancy Reagan. Ideological analogs with a stridency and opposition that beat a trail to padded cells and white coats for all Pragmatists; particularly Radical Empiricists.

Just Do Your Best... It’s the only way to keep that last bit of sanity.

It might not be the only way, but sometimes, it might be most compelling prescription. One of the many mantras Cancer has brought into our house. Just do your best.

Maybe I can’t be good, but I can try be a little bit better than I’ve been so far.

But we only get so many days... Now I have one less.

Just Do Your Best.


When I Drink by The Avett Brothers (Right click + Save as... to download)

I and Love and You

This is it. The Big One.

Load the car and write the note
Grab your bag and grab your coat
Tell the ones that need to know
We are headed North.

The final omen in choosing our surgeon. I joke, but that line always hits me first thing on our way to City of Hope up I-15. Maybe it is the way they are willing to mix common melodrama with occasional glints of delicate brilliance. It makes the breaks from convention seem that much more poignant.

The punch line of the song, and the album title (three words that became hard to say/ I / and love / and you) is pretty weak. A word trick, like those beer commercials where he can say he loves his beer but can’t force out the same words about his girlfriend. It is decent in context, showing the fine line of the deteriorating conditions that led to the break that has set them a drift, but on its own its less than stellar.

The real star is the ante-chorus. Pitch perfect not only for cancer patients, but for a lot of people in tough times. When you are holding it together because that is the only option left. That necessity starts to isolate people sometimes. The drive wrings you out and you look for comfort to ailments you’ve never known before. Growing pains in reverse.

What you were then I am today.

An awareness of the common. An awareness that wisdom might not flow downhill (I forget that exact proverb ;) ), because it certainly ain't at the bottom. Move forward. Find. Find it in the journey. Find it in your fellow man. Find it in hope itself.

I and Love and You by The Avett Brothers (Right click + Save as... to download)

January Wedding

I thought this was a guilty pleasure, but from observation I can tell everyone out there, it is OK to like this song. You aren’t the only one.

But why? It is so simple?

With a few words, that coy subtlety draws a vivid image of their relationship. The mix of idyllic simplicity and fear of the scary Big Bad world out there. Again, I josh, but it is so specific about the emotion with so few specifics of the participants. It lets every partner imagine the sun shining on that bird serenaded morning and imagine their own parallel bond, so pure and childlike. Taking hold of romance in the face of an insane world.

Line that always makes me think of Steph - She knows... the names of the trees where they’re performin’, in the mornin’.

January Wedding by The Avett Brothers (right click + save as... to download)

The Perfect Space

The perfect space. They seem to lull us into a comfort zone thematically and then lyrically drop such shiny flecks, we stay at the river panning . What could be a sullen song of self pity, mixes in a folksy cleverness. It tastes like honesty.

We start with a beautiful and frank sentiment. An awareness that his life has changed but he isn’t comfortable with the new digs. He switches right from a rather grumpy outlook to another gem.

I wanna grow old without the pain
Give my body back to the earth and not complain.


Ain’t that the truth!

Again, the intensity of the mid-song break is a bit roughly shod, but they make it up by coming back with gold star, bumper-sticker ready genius of a line.

I wanna have pride, like my mother had,
But not the kind in the Bible that turns you bad.

The Perfect Space by The Avett Brothers (right click + save as... to download)

Laundry Room

These lyrics are like Bob Ross, the PBS painting instructor, encoded into mp3. A beautiful story that paints such a vivid picture of time and place in very few words. I can picture that laundry room layout in the song. I encourage you to sit down and listen to the lyrics sometime. But rather than muse about how crisp this track is, I thought I’d dig up a journal entry I wrote shortly after I was diagnosed. The line about the shooting star in this song always reminds me...

Nov 17, 2009 -

The Leonids were tonight. Steph is a Leo. After she had gone to bed, I woke up and slipped on my jeans. Sneaking out of our room I kicked Liam’s Cookie Monster toy and it shouted “Cowabunga”. So much for stealth. Downstairs, I checked the coat closet and found a couple my size. Grabbed my shoes (no socks) and headed into the cold November night.

Earlier, I had recommended a potential viewing spot to a neighbor. Alone and without a flashlight I knew I couldn’t make it there. I strolled down Chapala Canyon Ct and made the right, then left that takes you to McGonigal Canyon. I followed the road beneath the power-lines to the right. When I reached the mesa’s edge I pulled out my phone and called up the astronomy app and told it to point me at the Leonids. It spun me facing into the apartment complex I had hoped would be at my back. New plan. I walked back the way I came and up to the power line tower perched at the edge of the canyon. A clear view to Leo rising above our cul du sac. I set to staring directly at Mars, already a good ways up in the night sky.

I stared for a long time. Passing planes stirred up false alarms. On that cold hill top I thought about Stephanie, a decade earlier in Italy. She went out to see the same meteor shower, knowing I was probably doing the same back home. Cosmic dust being slowly cleared from earth’s orbit with every passing year.

I still can’t explain it, but I’ve always been drawn to meteor showers. I was probably 6 years old when one dusk, we saw a brilliant streak in the sky. My neighbors had a blooming century plant and I remember thinking that the cactus had something to do with it. The whole family was there in the front yard, and that old yellow van. A scene sealed in my memory.

I also remember as a kid setting up an army surplus cot in our backyard in Texas. I would run an extension cord out there and listen to AM radio and stare at the sky all night. I might see 15-20 good ones. Keeping count seemed important back then.

Tonight I saw one. I didn’t stay much longer. I’d made my wish.


Laundry Room by The Avett Brothers (right click + save as... to download)

Swept Away

Come on. I mean, everything isn’t really that sad, is it? With Swept Away, The Avetts prove that they have real chops as bluegrass songwriters. Back in Houston, there was a period of time when I would drive across town every something-th Tuesday to Bluegrass Night at the Steak and Ale. There was something there that just put a smile on my face.

Many people associate bluegrass with a distinct lack of refinement. If you take some time, sit down and really peer at a bluegrass band, you start to see passion directed with laser focus at skill. It is nothing but refinement. Everyone is responsible for harmonies, even in the most humble bluegrass band. Each instrumentalist is crisp, popping those strings with twang that flaunts assertiveness. There is no where to hide, except inside the group. For whatever reason, the result is a strong awareness and respect for craft and skill. Other than that, you just have to let go hand have a good time. Rugged individualism expressed as an irrefutably communal act.

While country music is saddled with the stereotype of cheating hearts, loyal dogs and alcohol with a propensity for melancholy, the bluegrass wing of country music has a hidden secret. Joy. In their otherwise decidedly chest-heaving catalog, we see the brothers go back to one of the pillars of great country music for some of the good stuff. That Joy that bubbled up in the Smokey Mountains when Appalachia was the American West. An amalgam of transatlantic folk musics, warm nights and hard drink spilled from the still at night to the steeple in the morning. With Carolina on their minds, The Avett Brothers are back at the well giving us the sickly brooding love songs we secretly love, but smuggling in the joy of a moonshine lit Carolina Hootenanny.

Swept by The Avett Brothers (right click + save as... to download)
DX 11/09 RC Stage IIIb
12/09 Chemorad w/Folfox
Surgery 4/10 LAR, Removed Seminal Vesicles
Clean Margins, T3N2M0, 4/19 Nodes
FOLFOX 6/10-11/10
6/10, 10/10, 1/11 Clean Scans, Normal CEA
12/10 Bi-Nephrostomy
12/10-2/11 HBOT
2/11 Reversal

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