Fri 7 Mar 2008
On September 11, 2001 and the days immediately after, what songs did you find yourself playing?
Posted by dw13 answers so far!
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Big Big Question is a Josh Millard project.
Just to get mine out of the way:
“Revelator,” Gillian Welch
“We Float,” PJ Harvey
Wow, nothing at all. Didn’t we all have the TV on for about 3 months straight after that?
I honestly can’t remember. I wasn’t being very musically adventurous around that time, so I’m not sure I have an answer beyond “the usual”, as dull as that is.
To be honest, I was more shell-shocked and feeling a generic dread about what would go on in the USm, in the period after the attacks, than I was tied up directly emotionally to the attack itself. Which is a big other conversation, but that may be part of why I don’t have any really resonant musical memories there.
Yeah, it was TV watching and WTFing.
I don’t remember listening to anything in particular other than WNYC.
I worked for NBC at the time and more or less moved into the office. I don’t remember playing any music.
Huh. I’ve asked that question around here and most everyone has a song. Maybe I just have weird friends.
Mainly cable news or silence or Glenn Gould, but I do remember spinning Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea a few times and finding it even more weirdly comforting than usual.
Oh I know one. I was into Voltaire that summer. I tried to go to a party he invited me to while I was in Manhattan just before 9/11. I played Almost Human a lot. Specifically Feathery Wings. *sigh* Fact.
I don’t remember any music. I just remember driving the next day. I was in the far Chicago ‘burbs, driving west, and there were no planes in the sky. It was creepy. Even creepier, riding along with my girlfriends a day later, because they wanted to see the military plane parked at the local airport. It was there to guard the nearby nuke plant.
That night my friend sent me “Dante’s Prayer” by Loreena McKennitt over AIM. Had never heard it before.
I also don’t remember much about music right after 9/11. I do remember two music events that followed though:
1) At the Super Bowl, U2 played and did a tribute to those who fell from 9/11.
2) Bruce Springtsteen’s “The Rising.” I found, and still do, that album immensely satisfying and rational. I’m not much for sensationalism based on 9/11 (I’m looking at you, 9/11 movies), but I think The Boss did it right.
Howard Stern.
I had taken the train in that day, and needed a lift from work. A coworker lived near me, so took me home. He was a big Howard Stern fan (I’m not), and had him on while we were driving. It made an impact as Howard reported what was going on.