M is for Mockingbirds

I missed posting yesterday due to having been traveling all day and being up since 5am Friday. I'm figuring this coming week's music is going to be music that I equate to the years I lived in the Boston area.

Grant Lee Buffalo's "Mockingbirds" from autumn 1994 was in heavy rotation on WFNX, right about the time I'd moved out to Allston, so I always equate this to the year I was living out there. Plus, the opening line "Davis Station at last, finally we meet" reminds me of Davis Square in Somerville, about three blocks from where we're currently staying.

Davis Square is a smallish yet somewhat trendy area and the next-to-last stop on the T's Red Line. The Somerville Theater is there, where I used to go see a lot of indie movies, and the Spike & Mike cartoon festivals. Down the street on Elm is the Rosebud Diner, which I wrote about in one of my first articles for the Berkeley Beacon (Emerson's old college paper, named after the intersecting streets it used to be at). I remember going to a cartoon festival up there with a few friends and playing Chinese Fire Drill on the Red Line on the way back (switching cars at every stop).

In the autumn of 1994 I was still working at the Brigham's Ice Cream that used to be on Cambridge Street, though I'd be leaving that job soon enough to work at the Sony Theatre in Somerville. Moving out to Allston was kind of a good idea, considering it was cheaper to live with roommates, as well as being out in the sort-of-suburbs instead of in Back Bay, which was becoming more and more expensive. Back then, the T still cost about 75 cents a ride, and I would buy a monthly pass to get around town. Those were lean years all right, but it also had its fun moments, as my writing habits really started to kick in then.