One of the better second dates I’ve had took a detour through the now-defunct Tower Records on the Upper West Side. As we walked up and down the aisles, I tried to stifle my OH SWEET MOTHER OF BUDDHA SHE CAN’T POSSIBLY BE THINKING ABOUT BUYING A SOUNDGARDEN ALBUM impulses and limited my comments to “no, I haven’t heard that one” or “yes, that Usher fellow sure can cut a rug.”
Then, in one of the quirky gestures that came to define her, the girlie turned to me and asked, “Okay, what am I buying?” She had enough trust in my taste, or perhaps in my ability to glean what she did or didn’t like, to put me in charge of her inconsequential purchase. I swooned.
Looking back now, this was not the leap of faith it seemed at the time. Let’s say I’d chosen a Limp Bizkit CD. $11.99 is not an exorbitant sum to pay for the knowledge that your potential mate is a boob.
Figuring her for somebody who liked acts that were under the radar but not too far beneath it, I headed towards the ‘J’ section (come on, you knew where this was going). Unfortunately, the Freedy Johnston record that I would’ve chosen - Blue Days Black Nights, with its warm ’70s vibe and melancholy portraits of romantic disrepair - was out of stock. I ended up selecting The Jayhawks’ Tomorrow The Green Grass instead. I’ll never forget the girlie’s answer when I asked her about it a few days later: “Oh, uh, yeah, I listened to it. It’s good. There are definitely some good ones on it.”
I failed her first test. She didn’t hold it against me. So, on a FReedy FRiday when I’m inexplicably wallowing in nostalgia, here’s a track from Blue Days Black Nights, While I Wait For You. Buy it here.
