Making Room For Paul Westerberg

This is meant to be a comedic blog, but there are two things I don't joke about: the size of my penis, and how much I love Paul Westerberg. Last night, I downloaded his new album.

For a while now, I've thought of Westerberg as a musical version of AAA, coming along whenever I'm stranded at the side of the road and irritated at myself for never having learned to change a tire. Hearing The Replacements changed my life, and this new one, which I'm loving, came out just when I was starting in on another music-listening-rut (my enjoyment of INXS' greatest hits had become a little... XSive?)

At this point, listening to a new song from Paul Westerberg is like being sung to by an old friend. A lot of times I can tell what chord is coming next just by knowing his music. But not in a Goosebumps/M. Night Shyamalan way ("Ya know that main guy who hates robots? I think he IS a fuckin' robot!!!"). No, his music is still surprising; exciting even. I can't believe the second song, which I think is called "Keep Rising," wasn't in my life until yesterday. It's really changing my flat tire...

I don't want to get into too much detail about what I love about his music and his perfect lyrics. I know a guy who talks about music like that, and he's really hard to be around (part of me would love to include a link to his Facebook profile here, but I'm here to build, not destroy).

The new album is called 49, because the songs are compiled into one 49 minute track (though it's actually 43:55) and it costs 49 cents. As it turns out, making room for 49 minnutes of music on my ipod is a pretty tall order these days. I had to go through and make some serious choices about what still had a place there and what needed to hit-the-road-Jack, and be relegated to the graveyard of my computer's itunes library.

I came up with two main categories of interest: "DELETED In The Name Of Progress" and "Stuff I Considered Deleting Because I Never Listen To It, But DECIDED TO KEEP Because I Like To Think I Might Still Give It A Whirl Some Day To Broaden My Horizons."

*DELETED In The Name Of Progress:

-Anything by The Shins (didn't get laid much Freshman year and that guy's annoying voice only reminds me of that)

-Carole King's Tapestry album (still haven't listened to it. still not gay.)

-All Squeeze songs besides "Tempted," "Pulling Mussels From a Shell" and "Black Coffee in Bed." I like this band but they're greatest hits was just taking up too much space, and I still haven't listened to it all the way through.

-All Cars songs besides "Just What I Needed," and "My Best Friend's Girl," but I might delete that one too...

-John Mayer (Not the music but the person. And not from my ipod. I tracked him down and killed him.)

-Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full. More like IPOD ALMOST FULL!

-The Buena Vista Social Club Soundtrack. The bus ride where this seems like a good idea just hasn't happened yet.

-A Nils Lofgren album my dad gave me. I'll just have to keep hearing his playing drowned by too many keyboards in the E Street Band.

-All Eric Clapton aside from his self-titled 1970 album. Keep in mind that this excludes Cream and Derek and the Dominoes. Maybe I should rephrase: All clean/sober Eric Clapton was deleted.

*Stuff I Considered Deleting Because I Never Listen To It, But DECIDED TO KEEP Because I Like To Think I Might Still Give It A Whirl Some Day To Broaden My Horizons:

-Pavement

-Any Jazz

-The cd by a girl from class I wanted to have sex with (it could still happen) (you're dreaming!) (fuck you)

-Randy Newman. People are always tooting his raspy horn.

U2 went untouched. I have a U2 ipod...

All in all, I found this process to be fitting. If I'm going to delete music that isn't important to me anymore, it should be for The Replacements/Paul Westerberg. I went through something similar earlier this year when I had some Replacements bootlegs burnt for me and needed to make some 'pod-room. I take this band's name pretty seriously, because when I got into them they literally replaced most other music I thought was good. If they do it in my heart, they should do it in my 'pod.