An Acoustic April
My top songs from April 2024.
I wrote about April’s playlist in early May. I haven’t started May’s playlist, and June’s probably won’t be done until mid-July. I have lacked the energy to sit down and write or edit anything for a while. My mental health was at a pretty low point up until recently, and it was tied heavily to my job and living conditions.
So, I quit my job as a full-time journalist and took a part-time job at a summer camp, where I now take photos and write the blog. I love it. I love this job so much; it is hands down the most fun I’ve spent working. My mental health has been infinitely better since I work alongside very positive people who don’t pay attention to the news like I do, and kids who have no idea what horrors the world contains. It’s done wonders for me.
I’m still looking at the news every day, though. I’m still a “glass half empty” type of person. I always have been, I think I’m just wired that way. But this job, I’d say, has made me understand that the glass can be “half full.”
To work here longer, I’m applying to go back to school and get my Masters because my Bachelors turned out to be a colossal waste of money. $15 an hour to be the editor of a newspaper is all I got out of it. I make more as a camp counselor/media assistant than an editor. Crazy.
After some time, I’ve returned to this piece to try to get back into the swing of things. April’s playlist includes several country songs to soothe a heart that hurt, a body that ached, and a mind that could no longer handle the stresses it’d been handling.
Cancer, Jesse Welles (2024)
The first time I heard the word cancer was in the fourth grade when a classmate named DJ died. He had Leukemia. I knew he was sick, but I never wrapped my head around what it was until he died. I’d never heard of it before, but after he died, cancer seemed to be around each corner. My friend’s grandparents died or dealt with it. In some cases, it was their parents. In the seventh grade, it took another classmate.
Eventually, it came for my grandparents, taking a grandfather and grandmother, while three types of cancer currently attack another grandfather of mine. In college, students I didn’t know on a personal level, but my friends did, were taken by the disease. Most of the people I know or knew, who were diagnosed, have been kids or young adults.
I’ve never processed death too well. Until writing this, I pushed DJ out of my head, but I remember what he looked like when I met him, and the last time I saw him. I usually laugh despite nothing being funny. I can’t remember DJ, and others, not smiling despite it all.
This song made me laugh in that morbid sort of way. It captured exactly how I’ve felt since realizing how common cancer is. It made me think of my stepdad and when he learned his father had cancer. He and his dad, Don, made a joke about how Don should stop smoking, saying that it can’t be much help while dealing with three types of cancer. Don was in the middle of enjoying a Pall Mall and just shrugged. Excluding the obvious warning cigarettes give, it seems as if cancer is as inevitable as death itself. It’s in everything, caused by anything, and cured by little to nothing.
Cancer isn’t anything new. We’ve known about it for a very, very long time. Welles’s song states it’s getting meaner, and it is, without a doubt, getting meaner. More and more young people are being diagnosed and losing their lives to the disease. But this disease that’s been around for so long is so damaging to families, and affects everyone around the world, has no cure? The why is pretty obvious, as Welles points out.
“Cancer is as lucrative a business as a war
So if you ain’t expecting peace, then why expect a cure.”
- Jesse Welles
I love the feeling of “what can we do?” that the song leaves me with. I mean, as of right now, what can we do other than be there for those we love, support those who are diagnosed while we wait for our diagnoses, or kick the bucket because of it?
Cheap Cocaine, Willi Carlisle (2016)
“You smoke weed, right? Like, you are a cool guy and smoke that, right? Ain’t no fuckin’ loser, right?” He asked.
“Yeah, I smoke. I’m a cool guy.”
Those were some of the first words a coworker asked me when I started working for a tree service in 2019. Upon hearing that I smoked, he produced a blunt from behind his ear and handed it to me, telling me to light it up.
I worked as a groundsman, while “Z,” the tree-man, would climb up oaks and cedars and recklessly cut off the tree’s limbs. I’m not sure if the recklessness was because he was baked out of his mind or if it was that “secret” other thing he enjoyed doing. All I know is I spent every day dodging falling limbs while trying to move the ones he had cut down seconds before.
“If you ever think about doing coke, just go ahead and buy some meth. It’s the same shit and you will save yourself a lot of money. I used to be addicted, but now I only do it, like, two, three times a week. Just a couple hits, it ain’t bad for you. You get some acne but otherwise, ain’t nothing to worry about. I couldn’t go a week without it, but that ain’t bad.”
- Z
He was really adamant about it not being bad for him or being a problem. I didn’t know what to say. At the time, I had no intention of trying coke, and I can still say, with absolute certainty, that I have no intention of smoking meth.
He told me a lot about “cheap cocaine” on the way to each job site. He never stopped talking about it unless he was talking about weed, jail, or women. He told me how to make it, where to sell it, who to sell it to, and how to sell it without being predatory. He wanted me to “start a business” with him, which I guess is why he told me all of this information. None of it stuck since his weed left me so paranoid that I doubted I could work, let alone move. Good stuff, if I wasn’t at work.
I feel the need to make it clear that I am not down with doing anything that he told me, nor am I down with the things he did, nor am I condoning or trying to convince anyone of anything. His life is his life. I’m only writing about my brief time in his story since Carlisle’s song made me think of him, the job, and those conversations.
“When I was dealing, I didn’t sell to no one that clearly had an issue. Ain’t right to take from those who have nothing to take,” he told me.
“So what did you do if they did have a problem?”
“I didn’t sell to them. Some people do meth because it’s cheaper than coke. They do the same thing. Lotta rich people ain’t worried about the negatives, so I got no issue selling to them. If they got a problem, it ain’t my concern, they got the cash to deal with it.”
One morning, Z told me how after he was released from jail, after his “old lady” left him, and after he landed the job at the tree service, he got out of selling and using “like he used to.” However, during one of his many angry outbursts, where he threw his chainsaw from the tree top, cussed and spat as he climbed down, and grabbed his jacket before he disappeared for an hour, the other groundsman, JB, told me that Z was still using. To him, it was clear as day by the round object in Z’s pocket and the smell of “cat pee,” that emanated from him.
“It ain’t his fault, not entirely. I lost my kids and wife because of that shit. They left me because I had a problem, and while it wasn’t my fault I got addicted, you know, I didn’t mean to. I was at a low point in my life but it was up to me to get clean. I need Z to stop asking me to join him because that temptation don’t go away. Never. It’s why he still uses, and it’s why I don’t like working with him. It never goes away.”
- Some of the last words JB told me before he went to jail.
I hope they’re doing alright. I really do.
Don’t Fence Me In, Bing Crosby (1936)
The Fallout show was released on Amazon, and I have loved every second of it. As a long-time Fallout fan, I felt the show did a phenomenal job of bringing the series back to the Mojave-centered location where the first two games and New Vegas take place.
Funny enough, I was born in the Mojave, and I grew up in Boston, where Fallout 4 takes place. They have been integral to my writing, my music taste, and so much more. Fallout is a series I’d recommend to everyone, but I’ll gush about it elsewhere.
One of the things Bethesda’s Fallout games and Amazon show do phenomenally is the music. It’s jazz and early rock and roll from the 1940s-1960s, with each radio station in every game having its own unique disc jockey and a selection of songs. Many of this month’s playlist songs are popular within the Fallout games/show. My favorite radio host and music is all in what’s often considered the best Fallout game, created by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda, Fallout: New Vegas.
“Heartaches by the Number” was immediately added to the playlist of my favorite songs when I first heard it in 2018. Guy Mitchell’s heartbreak and disappointment can be felt as he talks about being led on repeatedly by the same woman while addressing that he is tied to this pain while he loves said woman. To stop counting the heartaches would mean he’s moved on, which is often hard to do.
“Let’s Ride Into the Sunset” by Jerry Burnham and Tony Vice was another favorite. I remember thinking, every time it played, how lovely it sounded to do just that with someone. It’s a song full of love, a central theme to the games and show. In each game, and now the show, love for family, spouses, friends, or the world itself is as clear as a mushroom cloud over the horizon.
After some time, “Don’t Fence Me In” took the number one spot. Like my all-time favorite song, “A Horse With No Name,” it captures a love and desire to be outside and not boxed in. To be where the sun can be felt, rather than be inside, surrounded by four walls and artificial light, like some kind of vault dweller.
As I edit this almost two months after writing it, I’m working at a summer camp. Like I said at the start, my mental health has been the best it’s been in a very long time. I couldn’t stand being in an office anymore, especially one where I was seeing some of the worst humanity had to offer. I loved being a journalist, but it took a really big toll on me, and I didn’t realize it until I came out here. It would be worth doing if I were paid enough to deal with such things, but that just isn’t the case.
A friend and fraternity brother, who also came up here to work, told me that I looked like I was doing better. He told me I looked happy for once and that he and many others were worried about me for a while. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t see how much the job weighed down on me until I left. I don’t think I can go back, either. I am so much happier working outside all day and writing positive stories at night. I feel free and, I think, happy even.
As Crosby sings, please don’t fence me in.
If this is just a game, David Allen Coe (1978)
David Allen Coe’s “You Never Even Call Me By My Name” was my fraternity’s closing song. It played over the speakers and was everyone’s sign to go home, the night is over. To tell the truth, I couldn’t stand it at first. But, by the end of my freshman year, I’d end my weekends belting out the song with my brothers, tears in my eyes. After four years, on my last night out, I shouted the lyrics with my closest friends as those tears ran down my face.
Coe’s an artist who, when I visit my brothers for our weekly Dungeons and Dragons session, plays over the speakers as we set up the mat and dice. There was an evening where, as we set up, “If This Is Just a Game” played.
It reminded me a bit of Fleetwood Mac’s “Love That Burns,” one of my favorite songs by the band and this month’s playlist. I spent a significant amount of time with someone who realized they weren’t in a place where they could continue talking to me. I should have seen the signs when they talked often about how they were afraid of commitment and how certain things felt “too relationship-y” to do.
I don’t want to spend my time with someone who does not/cannot/will not (whichever best fits the situation) be with me. I’m not upset with them anymore, but when I told them “goodbye,” I meant it. Given how they made me feel after it all, I don’t want to see them again. I know it was not intentional to hurt me, but at the end of the day, I felt like a player in a game I wasn’t playing for fun. I know they weren’t playing a game, but sometimes that’s hard for me to believe, given everything that happened over those several months.
There’s more to the story, as with any story, but I want it to be known that they aren’t a bad person. I don’t think so, despite it all.
I like how Coe’s song sounds more “positive” in tune despite the lyrics being on par with Fleetwood Mac’s heartbroken sound. That’s what country does best, and why it’s my go-to “healing” music. Achy breaky hearts need something to lift them and soothe that burn, and pre-9/11 country applies the coolness the heart needs. Mac may help me wallow in sorrow, but Coe had the words to pick me back up.
And reach out to friends. Coe’s song reminded me that I have a Dungeons and Dragons group, multiple friends, and fraternity brothers who are my support system and who are there for me. I often forget I have that, so hearing Coe’s songs reminds me there are people there for me.
Good Directions, Billy Currington (2006)
I forgot this song existed for a very long time. I would honestly say it’s a top 10 favorite song, a list I need to revisit after a year and a half since it was assigned as a final.
I don’t like sweet tea. Or anything fried, with pickles, okra, and some fish being the exceptions. I’ve tried it all on more than one occasion because I refuse to say “I don’t like that” without trying it. When I tell people that I don’t like XYZ foods, they always tell me that I just haven’t tried it the “right way.”
“Well, you just haven’t had Mama’s fried chicken.”
“You need to try Miss So-and-So’s sweet tea.”
“You say that, but my granny makes the best slaw.”
Every time I’m told that, I smile and nod, telling them that I will have to try it. Every time I try it, I expect myself to hate it just as I had before. That homemade touch of love you only get from Mamas and Misses and Grannies really makes all the difference. In my 10 years in the South, I’ve learned never to turn down food when someone says that mama made it, miss so and so, granny, pops, pa, or “deddy.” Most of the time, their cooking changes how I feel about the food from a strong dislike to neutral or kind of like, which I consider a good thing.
Except for coleslaw. Seriously, I’d rather lick the bottom of my shoe where excrement and mud cover the bottom like the freckles on my face and shoulders. I’d throw up just as much in doing so. I have never had any slaw that I enjoy. It all tastes as bad as the name sounds, “slaw.”
I never would have considered eating food cooked at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Not the ones with a fast-food place next to it, but an out-of-place grill in the back. One day, during a long drive, I got desperate and walked into a gas station for a pack of cigarettes and something to eat. An old woman was working the grill and waved me over as I looked at the selection of cold sandwiches that you’d find at any gas station. She smiled and asked me what she could get me, adding sweetie to the end of the question. I hesitated, but her smile made it impossible to say, “I’m good.”
It’s been two years and that is still the best burger and potato wedges I have ever had. When I pass that gas station, I always stop by to get something.
There is so much food here that I know, for certain, I will miss dearly when I leave. It’s such a long list of foods that I tried in Massachusetts and hated but moved south and loved. I avoid fast food and chain restaurants, instead going straight to mom-and-pop restaurants that leave me beyond satisfied. And to find food as good as it is here, all that’s needed is a good sense of direction.
Ohio, Neil Young (1971)
I’ll keep it brief since I said everything when I wrote about my March playlist. It’s crazy how, around the anniversary of the Kent State Shooting, students were being beaten and attacked by pigs in riot armor, delusional Zionists, “journalists,” the wannabe corpo-rats who run the schools, and the cockroaches in office.
“Inquire. Learn. Reflect.”
Pretty clear who listened to that message and took it to heart, and who never cared. It’s a shame that those Colleges who have prided themselves on “the right thing” spend their time defending a genocidal regime and attacking their students. As disappointing as it is, that’s the America that I, and the rest of the world, know. Profit over humanity.
Despite it all, I do believe that it is only a matter of time before Palestine is free, from the river to the sea.
Thank you to The Riff for publishing and you for reading!
