24/365 Did I Hear You Say You Love Me?/All I Do

My sister owned Stevie Wonder’s Hotter Than July, and I listened to it a lot in the spring and summer of 1977. Mostly up in my room. My favorite moment in the album is when they run the end of the first track—“Did I Hear You Say You Love Me?”—right into the second—“All I Do”—with no pause whatsoever, but no overlap either. It’s that tiny breath of no silence I’ve always loved.

And for some reason, it makes me think of that spring in ninth grade, even of a particular day. I’m in gym class with Pat. They call this class Lifetime Sports, making an attempt to offer us only-here-cuz-we-gotta-bees something beyond mangling team sports. Pat and I are off to hack away at some golf balls in high grass, and I think Lee is with us, and his cousin Vince. There we are: me, the saxophonist, two trombonists. Is it the instrumentation of the moment that makes Stevie go through my mind?

See, the thing is, I’m wrong. A couple of years ago I picked up the Hotter Than July CD, only to find that the album wasn’t released until 1980. OK, I guess that whole locked-in-my-room thing applied as easily at age eighteen as fifteen, but the ninth-grade-gym-class-with-jazz-band-
musicians thing? All I can figure is that “I Wish” was playing a lot on the radio that spring. I hope.

23/365 Superstition

When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer.

—Stevie Wonder

From clavinet to brass and sax, this song is so miraculous, it almost hurts.

22/365 Pablo Picasso

How could I not love a song that begins The woman that I love is 40 feet tall . . . ? A great song of delusion, Citizen Cope’s got me all on the narrator’s side of this story. Of course I’d do anything for the only one alive who knows that I’m not crazy.

Mr. Officer, if you’ve come to take her
Then that means one of us gonna end up in a stretcher.

21/365 Into the Groove

This song is Chicagoland partying in 1985, in both straight and gay bars, but mostly at the one under the Marlboro man, where I saw more cocaine than ever before or since. (Afraid of how good it could be—have you ever heard anyone utter the phrase “I didn’t really like cocaine”?—I’ve still managed to avoid it.) Those cowboys sure loved their Madonna.

20/365 Cubicle

Another commercial, another expensive import. Didn’t that iPod ad just make you wanna get the hell out of your cubicle and into some serious headbanging? Dude, the whole song is even better. Rinôçérôse. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

19/365 Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World

This one’s so beautiful it can make me cry. Some toy commercial used the opening bars around Christmastime years ago. Then I heard it at the end of a film, Finding Forester, and I stayed for the credits. Iz Kamakawiwo`ole died ten years ago, but he left behind some great music. One of my gay friends, while listening, exclaimed: “But he’s got the words wrong!” To me, it’s endearing, improvisational. But to him, well, it’s the national anthem. Don’t mess with the Rainbow.

18/365 Struggle

Another car commercial. This time Pontiac. Maybe American automakers know I’ve never bought one of their cars, cuz they’re getting to me with the music. It’s just another song in a minor key with a beat, but I had to hear more. The duo is Ringside. I just wanna move ahead, I just wanna free myself, but it’s a struggle.