Sorry I've been such a turd about posting lately (I do this a lot, don't I?), but work has just exploded in my face like some comical cooking experiment gone awry in an old cartoon. I wish I had a chef's hat.
Anyway, I woke up in a piss poor state of mind today. Just sick of work, sick of me, sick of pretty much everything. and to be honest, I welcomed it. Bad moods are bad moods. I've been told that I get especially bad, but to be honest I think I just get quiet more than anything, but who knows. Maybe I set fire to smartcars in my sleep. Maybe I'm actually a I don't know.
But sometimes, especially after several days in a row of being in impossibly high spirits (and being surrounded by people in particularly foul moods), one such as myself is due for a rotten spell. And so I take it. It's hard to appreciate good times without feeling the bad ones. So when they come there isn't much to do except wait them out.
But this got me thinking about that sort of music that one listens to when they want that retreat. When they're actively trying not to be cheered up. What to you listen to when you want to stay in a bad mood?
I was trying to think of a good base.

Soft
(no).
Heavy
(no).
Loud
(no).
Brooding
(shut up).
Feedback
(myeh).
Morrissey
(seriously, why are you still offering suggestions? You should be slamming your hand in a drawer).
I don't know. What about one of those new age guys? that... that guy-
(don't say it)
-Yanni?
(...)
That guy Yanni?
(...)
(...this demeans us both)
Who are you talking to?
(*)

My typical way of music is just skipping around song by song. Given my hatred for the ipod shuffling formula and penchant for comedy, there's no way I'd be able to continue my bad attitude. So I'm stuck rooting out albums.
compliations are pretty much out along with whatever other loose change is floating around.
So Hank Williams. Is there anyone better to listen to whilst feeling depressed. Oddly yes. It's pretty easy to forget how many honkytonk songs that man had time to record. Neil Young sometimes makes you feel oddly content or worse, patriotic. I thought about all these genres of music I've spent decades listening to as a way to both express and regulate my mood. Like an idiot, I get to this point before I think "hey you stupid shit. Listen to the Blues". right.
My problem is this. Even the best of the Blues (especially the best of the them) are still at their core a form of entertainment. They are a tale. a tune.
To hear it certainly elicits an emotion, but that its to say it's one of sadness. Or woe. or getting cheated by the devil, or stones in your passway, or the hoodoo man blues.
A lot of people think that acoustic blues are depressing, that they're supposed to be. They're an expression of pain, not pain itself.While the blues definitely instill a sense of melancholy, but not of sadness.
and then I realized what my problem was.
and took off the headphones for
----ging phone-
-ringing phone-
-ringing phone-
-ringing phone-
-ringing phon
and reminded myself why I was in such a bad mood to begin with.

I've cheered up fantastically, if you're wondering. Pork medallions with rosemary and vegetables are okay be me. Then I went on to some Solomon Burke to bring me home.