Challenge Day One. The Favorite.

While rummaging around on a blog, I found a 17 day song challenge.  Anyone who knows me...at all...knows music is my bliss; I'm known to crank it higher than my daughter; it's almost as essential as air (lowercase, not my kid) to me, and I like almost all of it--from Patsy Cline to Skinny Puppy to Squirrel Nut Zippers to Bauhaus to John COUGAR Mellancamp to X, and everything in between except boy bands, hair bands, and Lady Gaga.  I am in complete awe with musicians--not in a groupie way, but in a DO YOU REALIZE HOW SUPERNATURAL YOU ARE FOR TELLING A COMPLETE STORY IN A 4 MINUTE, 16 SECOND SONG?! kind of way.

As a writer, I also use music to channel certain characters out with specific bands/songs.  I learned how to listen to, and choose, music that I normally might not have, because it just works--for some reason--for my characters.  (The rule, though, is that I can only--at ANY time--listen to music from the manuscript's playlist.  Try being on board for listening to the same songs for...um, say A YEAR.)  The majority of songs on the Degrees playlist came from Radiohead, Kasabian, The Cold War Kids, Meiko, OK Go, and (my favorites) Remy Zero and Spartan Fidelity.  Since finishing Degrees and beginning work on Game Changer, a new playlist has made its way into my daily life, and there's very little crossover, which means I'm once again finding brand new treasures (I've stumbled upon The Airborne Toxic Event, The Out Crowd, The Kills, and Wolf Parade, among others).  On an aside, I discovered something frustratingly new this week because I've been cheating on my protagonist's playlist, and my mojo has tilted off course in ways I never could have foreseen--apparently he's not a fan the new band I'm obsessed with--I'm completely off track, and my ideas have come to a stuttering halt--yes, stuttering; not total, but almost like a lost sneeze.  Could this be why baseball players wear the same socks for a whole season? 

So, for seventeen days, I'm going to indulge my need for music variation and jump back on the blogging horse, after my almost two-month hiatus, at the same time.  Here's how the challenge will go:

day 01 - your favorite song
day 02 - your least favorite song
day 03 - a song that makes you happy
day 04 - a song that makes you sad
day 05 - a song that reminds you of someone
day 06 - a song that reminds you of somewhere
day 07 - a song that reminds you of a certain event
day 08 - a song that you know all the words to
day 09 - a song that you can dance to
day 10 - a song that makes you fall asleep
day 11 - a song from your favorite band
day 12 - a song from a band you hate
day 13 - a song that is a guilty pleasure
day 14 - a song that no one would expect you to love
day 15 - a song that describes you
day 16 - a song that you used to love but now hate
day 17 - a song that you hear often on the radio

Day 01--My favorite song:

Okay, I'm starting out of the gate in a bad way, because my actual favorite song--the one that I actually can and did listen to for a straight year and beyond--isn't on YouTube ("Such Green Velvet Pants" by Spartan Fidelity), except Cinjun's solo version (and I need both Tates for the magic), so we move along, and I cheat with two...

"Now/Here" by SPARTAN FIDELITY (NOT TABULA RASA!!!)--Now, when watching this video, one has to get beyond the fact that some freak used the best song in the world as a soundtrack to his video game and gives Tabula Rasa (the game) more credit than Spartan--unfortunately, this is the only way I can share this gorgeous song in the confines of YouTube.

My current can't-stop-listening-to-it fave--"U.R.A. Fever" by The Kills.  Why?  Just listen to it!

(This was too HARD, because ANYTHING by Remy Zero or Spartan Fidelity is my favorite, by automatic default.)