In The Mix: The Farewell Edition

“People say I’m the life of the party cause I tell a joke or two.”

So this is it, the last regular issue of Arts of the school year and thus the end of the self-indulgence that is this column. Or rather, the end of my self-indulgence, since In the Mix will continue to appear in your weekly edition of Crimson Arts, only with different writers. (It’s nice to have started what one hopes will be a regular part of this paper.) Time for me to graduate, which means time to lose this soapbox, so pardon me while I launch into nostalgic reverie. Yeah, I’m ending not with a bang but a whimper. May is the cruellest month.

“And anyone can tell, you think you know me well, but you don’t even know me.”

In the Mix started last March, as a means of making some musical points, commenting on goings-on in the world of popular music and introducing artists that deserve wider recognition. As such, I’ve tried to avoid focusing on myself throughout this column, choosing to write instead about music news, although I suppose one can never really escape talking about one’s life or biases. “You can’t hide from yourself,” as Teddy Pendergrass once sang. So I suppose it’s alright to write just one column that’s personal. Hey boys hey girls superstar DJs here we go...

At various points in the past few years, I wanted to be a regular editorial columnist, and make some points about the world at large. I wanted to be a fashion and style columnist, although goodness knows how that would’ve ended up. (Ah well, here’s my two cents’ worth—Botega Veneta: Cool but a bit too early-2001? Prague: So 1990s. My Philippe Starck lemon juicer: Eternal.) I guess I could’ve been a sports columnist, although knowledge of English soccer and Formula One racing probably wouldn’t cut it in a college newspaper. I even wanted to discuss punctuation and other matters of style, á là Fowler or Safire.

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”

But serendipity being what it is, sometimes you stumble onto some things that take over your life, which in my case was becoming music editor here at The Crimson and writing this column. Still, stumbling sometimes is the best way of finding things. If In the Mix could be said to have had any underlying philosophy, it was to support musical omnivorousness and discovery: Appreciating both popular music’s past and present, dissecting both the very popular and the undeservedly obscure, stumbling onto tunes that would become new favorites. As regular readers will know, the column takes its name from a line in “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” (a song by Indeep) and it’s a reference to the art and craft of mixing. So as much as possible it’s been a celebration of disparate songs and musical forces—an attempt to say that hip-hop and Motown and the Beatles and monster ballads and house music and easy listening all deserve slots on our musical mix tapes.

“Teenage angst has paid off well, now I’m bored and old.”

Musical inclusiveness has its price, though: Eating from the tree of knowledge leads to the fall. Sadly, the more I listen to popular music the more I know I’ll never re-experience the initial, Promethean moment of personal discovery of the very concept of pop music. I’m sure that’s not a unique feeling. Oh, to be 15 again and have music mean everything and be certain about my musical opinions. To know that when Michael Stipe sang it was the expression of my inner voice, and then to resent the fact that other people knew about this private meaning, and then to resent yet other people for not knowing about REM. To be so vain I probably thought the song was about me. To have walked around with my discman, wearing the fact that I was listening to the new Sonic Youth as a badge of pride, angling the CD player so that it caught people’s eyes. To be in the mosh pit of a Pearl Jam concert. (And yes I know all those references date me as an early 90s teenager rather than a late 90s one.) Or to be 18, going three times a week to clubs, hands in the air for songs that were favorites within those particular clubs but that were completely obscure in the outside world. To hear a song, look across the room to someone else and see the simpatico look of special recognition. To know my parents would never understand those songs I listened to, just as I thought I wouldn’t understand theirs.

Oh, for days when musical taste was the shibboleth that marked the good from the bad, for days when I could wield “mainstream” as a snarling epithet, for days when I didn’t know better and didn’t know so much good music existed and didn’t know I would never ever be able to listen to everything because time marched on inexorably. When I imagined there was a canon of musical great works that was fixed, not one that kept growing (and that will keep growing). When I wrote down lyrics of my favorite songs on sheets of paper, as though imbuing those sheets with incantatory power. For days before I became more Catholic in my tastes, or before I learned to recognize that musical taste is only a small part of what makes a person. For the Reformation, when Kurt Cobain, my own (private?) Martin Luther, nailed his lyrics to the door and changed what I thought about music (hell, before that, I owned both Wilson Phillips albums), not the Counter-Reformation that restored orthodoxy and maturity. It was simpler then. Before Trent and all that. Before I became Pollyanna. I know a lot of it may be just pose, but I walk by the Pit kids and I’m envious of the certainty of their musical allegiances.

I know I’m happier now. I just can’t help feeling I lost something along the way. Ever had nostalgia for tunnel vision?

“If you don’t expect too much from me, you might not be let down.”

Ah well, I’m not gonna get too sentimental like those other sticky valentines. I’ve had the chance to write about music once a week, which to me is as lucky as anyone gets here on campus. (If anyone wants to offer me a column somewhere else, my e-mail address is still dsng@fas for now. I don’t even want to think about being dsng@post.) It’s weird to think so much has changed in the world of pop music in four years. When I first came to Harvard, “MmmBop” had just been the hit of the summer. Who knew then it was a marker of a seismic pop-cultural shift towards boybands? The Hanson boys did, after all, play their own instruments. But it’s been fun chronicling those changes these past one-and-half years and to get in the occasional dig at Puffy and Britney. My thanks to all the Arts writers, to Thalia for allowing this column to go on and to anyone who sent in comments or who came up to me with suggestions. And thanks for reading.

Respectfully submitted,

Daryl Sng

Tired of responsible journalism being held hostage?

E-mail dsng@fas.