Sometimes, The Michigan Daily Arts section receives review copies of art, from new books to movie tickets for us to see. Unfortunately, the vast majority of this material lies unseen and unreviewed, spread across the Arts desk. But some things aren’t so lucky.
Tucked into a tiny drawer underneath a decade-old iMac are 19 loose CDs compiled over the past 20 years. I doubt anyone has ever listened to them. Until now. We decided to do the unthinkable: listen to all 19 CDs (plus extra goodies) in one night and review every single one. After taking them out of their dusty old drawers and listening to them, we’ve found ourselves gloomy about our corporeality. And we’re going to make it your problem.
—Senior Arts Editors Rami Mahdi and Thejas Varma
CD NUMBER ONE: Economy Class by Frigg
I’m not really sure what got this random Finnish band to send this here in 2008, but I’m more surprised nobody’s ever listened to this. I mean, they’re called Frigg. How is that not intriguing enough? The album cover is a rather dull shot of an airplane at sunset. Whose airplane is this? Why is it here?
I would call this Finnish Folk music but I don’t know enough about Finland to keep my artistic integrity in doing so. The string arrangements on every song make them sound similar, but there’s enough sentimentality in the playing to push it forward.
There is nary a vocalization on any part of this disc, and by “nary a vocalization,” I mean sometimes some large-sounding men are going “woaaaaaaaah.” If that sounds rude of me to say, trust me, I loved when they went “woaaaaaaah.”
So, why is there an airplane on the cover? Well, the album is called Economy Class. Why? Because this was an attempt at fusing bluegrass and Finnish folk into a brand-new genre, crossing international boundaries to create something new. But it looks (and sounds) pretty dull. Don’t judge a book by its cover, of course, but I do see why nobody was itching to put this on.
ROGUE MEDIA NUMBER ONE: Unknown Album by K.
This was already on the Daily Arts iMac — intriguing. Yet, it was just Damn by Kendrick Lamar.
CD NUMBER TWO: Robert Johnson Has Left Mississippi by Krista Detor
This album is —————fjaefne;hfo———wjkebfghwbf————fgnvasfnHAHH. Sorry. That was my impression of the CD. A husky voice and lush guitar-and-piano-driven instrumentation interrupted by constant skipping, turning four minutes into 10 and one word into 50. Damaged decades-old country CD or avant-garde sound collage? Eight minutes in, there’s nothing to be heard but the light crackle of my CD/DVD player turning. I guess it is avant-garde. Wait, nope, I have to forcibly eject the CD. Sorry Krista, maybe I’ll look you up another day. I’m afraid of malware, but what I heard sounded fascinating.
I just wish it was not the dying screams of a medium lying dormant in desks all around America.
(Update: It turned off the iMac somehow).
CD NUMBER THREE: Ancient China by Timeless Warriors and Relics, 1,500 Years of
This is not an album. This is a file of images of ancient Chinese art for a 2008 museum exhibition in Midland. Why was this sent to Daily Arts? Who is it for? Generally, we try to review things released in the past two weeks, and I’m pretty sure these sculptures were made pre-Christ. Ish. The Michigan Daily does not train us to criticize ancient Chinese art. So, not really reviewable.
I’m not sure we’re gonna get any answers to the questions we’ve been asking. None of these CDs are reviewable, or at least, in any way that I know how to. If we’re being honest, though, we’re not trying to review any of this. As interesting as Frigg was, and Krista Detor might have been, we see these as part of a time capsule — a long-lost museum exhibition. In the same way Midland was exhibiting ancient Chinese art, we have our own exhibit, assembled from a hodgepodge of artifacts found stuffed in a drawer at the Arts Desk.
CD NUMBER FOUR: The Politics of Existence by Cheap Nothing
First Impressions: Yeezus vibes. The album cover is a big eye. The disc was pitch black. OK, maybe more Donda. And the track list was separated into three sections: “Reality,” “Utopia” and “Amnesia.” What was the state of social commentary in, uh … 2008? Notable song titles include “I Wanna Die” (on the “Utopia” section), “Noob” (also on the “Utopia” section) and “Elliot Smith M.C.S.” (again, in the “Utopia” section. “Reality” and “Amnesia” need to step up their game. Also, they’ve spelled Elliott Smith wrong.)
The tracklist has Bible verses, black and white images, an abstract dedication to the family members of the creator and some strange musings. Our Vibe Check: frightened.
Wait, this is … kind of good?
The “Utopia” section, ironically enough, features some pretty depressing material. Although occasionally tinted with bright, folksy sounds, at other points it veers broodingly lo-fi. (Joker voice) Maybe Utopia is not so utopian after all.
There’s a secret track on this. “Track 16.” It’s chill. I feel like a real ’00s kid sitting in silence waiting for the secret track to hit. Man, I miss that feeling. Are kids even going to know what secret tracks are in a decade?
ROGUE MEDIA NUMBER TWO: “9-20-17” by Rob
Found in the deepest corner of the Arts desk iMac was “9-20-17 Rob.” This is presumably 15 minutes of the eponymous Rob freestyling over a Roots-y jazzy beat. Not sure how we feel about this. The beat’s kinda running away from him at points. We’ve returned to the unanswerable questions. What the fuck is this? Who is Rob? Why is this on here? Again, why is there a random copy of Damn on here?
OK, Rob just said, “If you saw me messing up on the last one, it was because I tried to keep it PG.” Sure, man. He then says, “I’m gonna do an a capella real quick to mix it up.” No, Rob. Don’t do this. Do not, under any circumstances, “do an a capella real quick.” Opinions aside, I think we can both agree that this is certainly an enigma. Yes, nothing unique about a man randomly freestyling, but there was probably a reason for this to be on the computer for the prestigious Daily Arts section. Perhaps he’s behind the scenes now, ghostwriting for your top five. We’ll never know.
As silly as this was, I can’t help but admire it. I hope wherever Rob is now, he still does these little gigs. Thanks, Rob. We’ve enjoyed our 10-ish minutes with you.
CD NUMBER FIVE: Chrome Dreams II by Neil Young
This is the album Chrome Dreams II by famed musician Neil Young.
First impression: Daily Arts fell off, man. How the fuck did we get Neil Young sending us shit? It’s time to hit the reset button on the Arts Desk receiving big-name CDs.
“Beautiful Bluebird” is swell, I guess. It reminds me of home — if home were somewhere in, like, bumfuck Kansas. Ironic, because he’s from Canada.
He grew up in the Six, bro. Why does he sound like this?
CD NUMBER SIX: Brooklyn Is Love by Creaky Boards
The intro track, “The Songs I Didn’t Write,” rips its opening riff directly from “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay. Truly, a song they didn’t write. Otherwise, it’s a pretty hokey tune filled with a mishmash of instruments and found sounds, feeling less like a tightly written song and more like a group of friends freewheelin’. In a good way. As hokey as it is, it has real sincerity. Sometimes we do need that indie cheese.
This album was made by theatre kids. That much I know for certain. The second thing I know: These people were not born in New York. This album has transplant written all over it.
We are not from New York. We do not identify with this.
The opening line of the final track: “I’ve just moved to New York.” Transplant Music™ confirmed. Despite their proclamation, the only place they’ve moved to is the Arts Desk in Ann Arbor.
CD NUMBER SEVEN: Blue Cheese & Coney Island by Bizarre
“ATTENTION, weirdos, juggalos, serial killers, cobainiacs, animal fuckers, great dick suckers. Welcome to Blue Cheese and Coney Island!”
This is now how I will open all emails.
CD NUMBER EIGHT: Sunday Morning Circus by Souldub
Have you ever wanted to listen to Alex Turner sing reggae nu-metal fusion? Well, have we got the CD for you.
I know how strange that might sound to you. Can you imagine how strange it sounds to us, the people who are actually listening to it in the real world? Can’t say we expected this from “Souldub.” We’ve heard some really strange stuff so far, but this is —by a long shot — the weirdest thing on this desk.
I hate Alex Turner. This guy’s chill, though.
We adore this disc’s novelty. It might not be The Beatles, but it has major juice. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and allows itself to play around with goofy hooks and rapid tone shifts. And it knows what it is. Even though we might not.
ROGUE MEDIA NUMBER THREE: “dreamy” by one of the Arts editors
Hey, man. Thanks for sending me your demo. Really cool dream pop! It’s now a part of history, alongside Damn and “9-20-17 Rob” in providing wonderful tunes when everything goes offline.
Maybe in 15 years someone will do what we did, going back through the logs and finding your song. Hopefully, they’ll like it as much as we did.
CD NUMBER NINE: Dear Summer by Teddy Ruck-Spin, hosted by Yoshi.
This is just someone’s mixtape of their favorite songs. There’s no CD in it. I wonder who stole it. There’s a “Crank Dat” remix and “Stronger” by Kanye West. Hours into our deep dive, I’m beginning to get nostalgic for 2007. One of my only memories of that time is a picture from my fourth birthday party of me sobbing because I couldn’t open my Shrek figurine fast enough.
Looking at this honestly makes us really sad. In looking through the “tracklist,” we start to get a feel of who the mysterious Teddy Ruck-Spin is: his life, his interests, his passions. And here he is. A CD that might’ve played in his used 2001 Ford Taurus the first time he took it for a spin after he got his license. The thing he listened to after his uncle who got him into this type of music died on a Thursday night in October. This is one of the few things he brought to this university after saying goodbye to his parents and driving up to Michigan listening to nothing but his thoughts and T. Pain.
What about our memories? As I’m graduating, my own temporality appears in front of me like a ghost of Christmas. Have I done anything with my life? I feel like it’s only been recently that I’ve genuinely felt like I’ve lived. My own uneasiness and inability to ever feel at “home” has left me an empty shell, only finding myself in (probably) temporary digital artifacts.
Teddy Ruck-Spin is here. In a drawer. At the Daily Arts desk. Where no one has seen him for more than a decade. At least he has something to leave behind. A decade from now, what will be left of me?
Yes, I have my playlists. I have my Letterboxd account. But will I ever have my own Dear Summer, hosted by Yoshi?
CD NUMBER 10: This American Life by Ira Glass and Davy Rothbart
Holy shit, it’s an episode of This American Life! If you don’t know what this is, it’s an NPR-produced radio show-turned-podcast that chronicles silly, everyday stories.
For tonight’s featurette, we have a special episode by Davy Rothbart, a University of Michigan alum and Ann Arbor native whose mother started to believe she was communicating with a spectral, 1000-year-old Buddhist monk named Aaron.
And some other stuff. I don’t know, we weren’t paying much attention. It’s all a bit nonsensical. But what’s the issue with nonsense if it’s helpful nonsense?
CD NUMBER SEVEN AGAIN: Blue Cheese & Coney Island by Bizarre
“Ay yo Bizarre, lemme ask you a question man, is it gay for your boy to have something on his mouth, and you take YOUR thumb, and you lick it and put it on the spot where it is then wipe it off?”
IN UNISON, ALL ELSE: “That’s gay.”
CD NUMBER 11: You Are Only as Tall as the Grass Grows by Bird Dog
Attached to the CD was a handwritten note with a name, contact details and a website. Bird Dog seems to be a local band led by someone named Alex. His email is domain is umich.edu. Whoever Alex was, he was one of us.
The album is standard indie-rock fare — jagged guitar riffs, sparse instrumentation and soft, yearning vocal tones — but it has personality. “Track 07,” charmingly enough, has some vibrant if muddled synths peeking through the curtains. It’s LCD Soundsystem if they played in your best friend’s garage.
We ended up finding him online. His LinkedIn is about what you’d expect of a 30-something U-M grad. After leaving Ann Arbor and letting his guitar get dusty in his basement, he jumped around a few places before landing at a furniture company. He makes chairs now.
We found something else when we looked him up. An 8-year-old Reddit post.
The Reddit user then goes on to say that they loved Bird Dog’s first album when they were in high school. Someone out there really liked Bird Dog, enough to search for them online after the members went their separate ways. They were looking for an album by the name of You Are Only as Tall as the Grass Grows. They can’t find it anywhere, they say. And sure enough, scrawled in thin-tip sharpie on the front of the CD in front of us: You Are Only As Tall As the Grass Grows. We only saw it there after taking the disc out of the CD player, looking back at us like a cave painting from millennia ago.
There’s a real shot this is the last place this album exists. Hidden behind rows of unread books and piled-up newspapers, in a drawer we only checked for the fun of it — this was someone’s college experience. Along with it was, evidently, someone’s high school experience.
We went to DM the Reddit user that we had the album. Their account was deleted.
CD NUMBER 12: The Hole Story by Richard Desjardins
This is also not a CD. This is a DVD, apparently about Minnesota’s mining industry and a giant hole in the ground. So, yeah, “The Hole Story.” Why didn’t Film cover this? Do we not love the environment?
ROGUE MEDIA FOUR: Size Small Sweater by Banana Republic
This is not a CD. This isn’t a DVD, either. This is a Banana Republic sweater, tucked behind the iMac at the Arts desk. It was really dusty. I wonder why this was left here. Did whoever left it just not care enough to pick it up? Did they think it was ugly? Was it their last day in Ann Arbor and they only realized they left it on the train ride home? Anyway, after I found this recently, I jokingly shouted out, “Who here is a size small?” Turns out, someone else at the desk! I gave her the sweater. I wonder if whoever left this here, however many years ago, expected it to ever be worn again.
I hope my friend takes good care of it.
CD NUMBER 13: Things You Must Do to Get to Heaven by Virgil Moorefield
This album is scary — intentionally so. It’s a dissonant modern classical piece with harsh drum hits and sharp strings like broken glass to the ears. “Subliminal” begins with the most frightening chimes we’ve ever heard. If we were listening to this when we first started a few hours ago, then I’d call this silly and trying too hard. It is now 2:00 a.m. We are scared.
CD NUMBER 14: A Whole New Way of Makin’ it Happen by Caesar Pink and the Imperial Orgy
Found in the digipak that came with the CD: “Instructions: 🎧+ 🌿= 🙂.”
It sounds like you’d expect. It’s a psychedelic hodgepodge of sounds, and dear god is it fun. Funky, rugged and suave all at once, it’s ’60s and ’70s psych rock worship but, hey, it’s not bad (if you can get past the weird hippie-revivalism shit, that is). We enjoyed it, but how are you trying to rip off your parents’ generation in the 2020s?
CD NUMBER 15: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Tim Burton
This, again, is not a CD. This is a movie. A loose DVD with no case or cover. We kept trying to skip the pre-movie trailer and kept getting caught in a loop. Then, we realized: This is a movie trailer.
On the front of the disc was a sticky note:
“Found this in our file drawer — from ’08! Thought u might like. – statement”
I’m not sure when this message was written. Or who it was for.
CD NUMBER 16: The Future In Reverse by Jeremy Frey
At points, Jeremy Frey attempts to evoke a David Byrne vibe; at others, he weakly belts his hooks. There’s nothing “bad” here. But there’s nothing especially interesting here, either. In a booklet that came with the CD, Frey is pictured with his brothers. They’re smiling.
It came with photos of Frey’s family and a sticker of the album cover. We gave it away to a Michigan in Color writer.
Like the Statement-gifted trailer earlier, we, too, passed it forward. She will not have the same experience with the sticker as we did with The Future In Reverse. We did not have the same experience with the “Sweeney Todd” trailer as The Statement might have. But at least we had an experience. Despite these being removed from their original contexts — there is no cover for the trailer and no album for the sticker — both tangibly exist independently of each other. What is left after yet another commodified streaming service goes under, or when films are unceremoniously axed? The movies nobody watched, the songs nobody heard, won’t even have the privilege of being destroyed like the unwanted CDs they might have been. They’ll just stop.
The clock stops ticking.
CD NUMBER 17: Dollar Day Afternoon and Amy Strikes Back by “10 Items or Less” by TBS
Believe it or not: This is also not a CD. It is also not a movie. It’s not even a movie trailer. This is the first episode of the second season of a TBS comedy show about some grocery store. There’s also the sixth episode of the second season. These are the only episodes on this disc. The show is not funny. Neither of us had ever heard of it. In spite of us or popular memory, the show had three full seasons. “10 Items or Less” is utterly devoid of purpose.
And yet. It exists. And is immortalized on mass-produced DVD sets. And Bird Dog isn’t. Funny how that goes.
By the way, I don’t think a single person in this world could be convinced to buy groceries from somewhere named “Greens and Grains.”
CD NUMBER 18: Trailer #2 (STEREO) by Iron Man
As the smarter among you may have realized, this too is not a CD. It is the second trailer for “Iron Man.”
Today, I feel like if you had a random misogynistic bit five seconds into your trailer, you’d only get a weird legion of men on X (formerly Twitter) defending it as “the end of wokeness.” Back then, though? Par for the course, apparently. (This writer knows Tony Stark is supposed to be a womanizer.)
CD NUMBER 19: Trailer #1 Revised (Stereo) by Drillbit Taylor
For our final CD, we do have not a CD. This is the first trailer for “Drillbit Taylor.”
Is this not just “Superbad?”
It’s kind of anticlimactic that we end with this. I don’t care about “Drillbit Taylor.” No one cares about “Drillbit Taylor” — nobody important, at least. Even the trailer bases it off of “Superbad.” It’s only on Showtime, and it’s safe to say nobody’s watching. We’d never heard of it before, but we remember. Because of the DVD.
FUNERAL: “Me, You and Everyone You’ve Ever Known”
Our journey with these CDs was like looking at old photo books. My mom took pictures of damn near everything. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t care about, but there’s a lot of stuff I cherish. To rediscover all of it is meaningful. Corporeal. When I look through my photo book, I see the work of humans. The spine is crumbling, the pages are yellowing. Every page I turn, I stumble upon a memory I hadn’t thought of in years. When I see the photo book, I don’t just recall the memories of the photos, but the memories of the photo book itself. When I look at my photos app, all I see are pixels.
Take CD Four: The Politics of Existence. There are no secret tracks anymore, or secret anything. Instead of finding things, you’re simply given them. Nobody crate-digs in a random record store; you simply scroll through Spotify-curated playlists and autoplay recommendations. The Politics of Existence can be found on streaming — the hidden song cannot. There’s a certain beauty in the fact that they exist, tangibly, with their own quirks and mysteries. You might as well find it on Spotify, but as I hold it in my hand, I’m moved by its physical existence. Who held it before me? Who else has this CD? We don’t know, and we may never find out. But at least we have 16 years of “Track 16.”
I am haunted by my materiality. There was always an inclination to distance myself from myself. I preferred to play imaginary, taking on the personas of other people. I watched ’00s teen movies, in awe of their vibrant rooms full of posters, trinkets and other indicators of a personality, mad at myself because I never took the liberty to form an identity of my own. Why? I’ve talked about it at length before — am I really being watched by everyone? Probably not. But the fear lives through me, consumes me, ravages me from the inside and out, until I’m nothing more than minced garlic on a wooden cutting board, bleeding into its insides. To ascribe anything to myself — this frail, lumpy, self-conscious mess of a self — is to ascribe it personhood, something I didn’t feel deserving of.
I’m at the Arts Desk. As I look at my surroundings, I see signs of life — the CDs we went through, a copy of the new Judith Butler book, a bottle an editor uses to store Diet Coke. A little bit fun, a little bit weird. People existed here. Hey, there’s my empty Coke Zero can! It’s not much, but it’s a reminder that I’m here. I’ll throw it away soon.
I’m now home, eager to dig into my Indian takeout. Butter chicken and garlic naan — the white people special. I look around. There are books for school. Random home essentials. Ah, shit, I need to store that plastic bag somewhere. This place feels abandoned. Someone used to live here, but there’s not much to go off of. What were they like? I step into my room. Dust is collecting on a desk I barely use. The walls are a dreary white. There could’ve been posters there. There’s a mirror. I see me. I see nothing.
A decade from now, what will be left of me?
What will my friends, the ones I hugged after a night out, the ones I argued with over pub trivia answers, think of me? Twenty years down the line? After I die? I have, what, pictures as a kid? My favorite one isn’t even there — the framed one with my late mother and me at Somerset Mall — because my old landlord threw it out after I forgot to take it when moving out last summer. There are a couple of CDs from artists I barely listen to anymore. There are SD cards filled with videos of the person I never was.
Maybe it’s all a little materialistic — egotistical, even. Do I really need these artifacts to define myself? Is being “remembered” all that it’s cracked up to be? Maybe not. All I know, though, is that I do not want to be an empty shell, a person known for concealing their existence inside a portable brick.
What is left of us is online. We talk about our “digital footprint,” the collection of fan accounts, silly messages or gacha game purchases that convey a potentially thorough representation of our existence. I have offloaded everything onto the internet. I love being online. There is a weird sense of impermanence in exploring my interests online that gave me comfort; to love something without attaching it to my material existence, which felt like tainting it. I fought everything I hated about my physicality by detaching myself from it. It’s not like that was entirely horrible; I’ve found comfortable spaces and made friends.
But those friends, those footprints, can be taken away from you at any time. We do not exist in any meaningful capacity beyond the servers of random companies that may collapse at any second. Even in writing this article, we are scared to delete sentences, because we are scared to be forgotten. We fear that everything that is left of us will be gone or in a digital void operating from some random fucking computer in Silicon Valley.
And it’s not just who we are that can vanish. It’s who we were. I’m reminded of Rob and his stupid freestyle. It was dumb, objectively. But it was fun. And it was human. He was probably some old Daily Arts writer sitting where I am now, goofing off with his friends in college. That was seven years ago. Where is he now? At an internship? Working a 9-to-5? Does he still make goofy freestyles? Does Teddy Ruck-Spin still make custom playlists on CDs for friends? Are they dead? Does Bird Dog know they have fans? Do they care?
In 50 years, will I care? Will I care about who I was — rather, who I am, right now? Will I care about this article, the one unlikely to be put in print, stuck on The Daily’s website? Will I still write? Will I remember how I wrote?
We are destined to become parents, salespeople and salaried employees — veritable grown-ups. And that’s OK, maybe even good, and yet I’m still afraid. I’m afraid of death. Not the death that might come in my sleep half a century from now, nor the one that could come in a tragic accident three decades from now, but instead the one six years from now when my face hardens and I no longer know why I enjoyed watching “Captain Underpants” with my roommates so much. I am afraid of my current self being trapped within the hippocampus of someone else, allowing my hopes to become faded dreams. I am afraid of my darkest secrets being told to future friends as light-hearted memories. I am afraid of the person I am now being betrayed by a stranger wearing my face.
Again, that isn’t even necessarily a bad thing. Change can be — and often is — good. I don’t dispute this. What I will dispute and damn until the day I’m forgotten is my memory being buried in an unmarked grave. Being cast aside the moment “the next me” decides it’s his turn. It did not use to be this way; we did not leave ourselves in shallow graves. Once upon a time, we built ourselves mausoleums made of CDs, cassette tapes, Polaroids and other analog ephemera. We built monuments to ourselves found everywhere, including the 19 found in this museum of a desk on which I currently write this.
Pieces of pottery and clay figures from halfway around the world have survived 2,000 years to be seen on a dinky old Mac in Ann Arbor, Michigan. With it are 18 other CDs, left without context, only to be decoded and unraveled by two ne’er-do-wells. Creaky Boards could have robbed a bank, Frigg could be FP supporters, Bizarre could be a so-called “Cobainiac.” None of that matters when all we have of them is their art, made immortal through plastic discs whether they wanted to or not, speaking to us decades later. The author has died, and their corpse is trapped in a CD in Ann Arbor, frozen in time in perpetuity. I have no CDs made in my image. When I die, how will I speak?
I remember Rob. And Teddy Ruck-Spin. And Alex. And his band Bird Dog. And their CDs, setlists and memories. Do they?
I’m reminded now of the sticky note on Bird Dog’s CD. In chicken-scratch handwriting is contact information — a number and an email.
I sent Alex a text. He hasn’t responded.
Senior Arts Editor Rami Mahdi reached at rhmahdi@umich.edu and Senior Arts Editor Thejas Varma can be reached at thejasv@umich.edu.