In little ways

"In Little Ways" from the Let's Active album Big Plans for Everybody--unlike Björk's Homogenic on the first go 'round, this did make my Top 10 albums list. The choice seems somewhat incongruous alongside my other favorites (ABBA and Althea & Donna, for example). It's the most pop-rock of my choices and definitely an outlier, but an exemplar of that 1980s Chapel Hill/Athens Sound that I listened to from afar in Washington, DC.

"Washington is such a Southern city," people would say to me over and over again when I lived there. I probably see their point slightly more now, but it never ever felt that way to me at the time. It felt quite the opposite in fact--"The charm of the North, the efficiency of the South," as the saying goes--but I didn't necessarily have a good handle on Southern Living at the time either. It took me several years away, a return, and a move to Texas before I became comfortable with the South, or at least stop fighting it as much.

And then I messed it all up by moving away again.

I loved and hated Washington, I loved to hate it, and maybe even hated to love it. It's like almost everywhere I've lived--I'm alternately attracted to, then disappointed and frustrated by most places I've lived, always trying to find "the right one," the place where I feel at peace. (Hey, Siri, play "I Still Haven't Found What I've Looking For" by U2.) I'm not sure I ever will, but I'm becoming more comfortable with that idea, too. Or at least fighting it less.

Although, let's face it, Toronto is the new Washington in my life these days, and because at times it feels as though I've learned so little by living here (earned plenty, however, but worked like a dog to get it), I am not living The Canadian Dream, as many seem to.

If only it were a Canadian Dream Season and I wake up in Texas at some point.

Anyway, why all the talk about North Carolina and the South? Well, Mitch Easter, the lead singer from Let's Active, hails from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. (In the video, you'll catch views of Pilot Mountain, northwest of Winston on the road to Mount Airy, in the background. Andy says hey.) He was one of the big players in the "jangle pop" Chapel Hill/Athens Sound back in the day--he even produced R.E.M.'s early records, including the album Murmur and the hit song "Radio Free Europe," along with producing albums by Game Theory and The Connells (another North Carolina favorite), and has had musical connections with Don Dixon, Chris Stamey (The dBs, yet another North Carolina favorite), Marti Jones, Richard Barone (of The Bongos, early New York post punk/New Wave stars), and a whole host of other, "obscure" jangle pop, mostly Southeastern US musicians.

That scene was not necessarily my scene. In addition to not feeling at home most places (or possibly in relation to not feeling at home), as a young gay man and as a person in my head who always seems neither fish nor fowl but ..., neither salt nor pepper but ..., neither Canada nor the US but ..., neither Chapel Hill nor Raleigh nor even Durham, neither Veronica nor Betty but maybe both (or maybe just Reggie and Moose), I don't think I missed anything by not being in North Carolina or Athens during this '80s jangle pop heyday. I think I wouldn't have fit in. At all. And would have been wondering what my life would have been like if I'd move to Washington rather than staying home.

But that sound, Let's Active, Don Dixon, the dBs, were all a great comfort while living in Washington. They were the North Carolina I wanted to live in and might have lived in if I had stayed. They were the movie Junebug. They were the book Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons. They were "Southern Culture on the Skids," North Carolina pop art with a little 'a.'

I still despise R.E.M. to this day, so there's no accounting for my taste or consistency in my mindset. But I live with the South in me every day.