CIVL Station Manager Aaron Levy presents four songs here in memory of his mother, who passed a couple of hours prior to this writing. Thanks for being there to watch things go round through this quaint column over the past decade, UFV, and sorry for the trauma-porn.
Smashing Pumpkins – For Martha
Billy Corgan’s ode to his mom. I bought this on CD when it came out, famously, as I say, at the same time as I purchased Ma$e’s Harlem World, and Puff Daddy, and the Family’s No Way Out. Odd combo, but I was 13 and that’s what I dug.
Run the Jewels – A Few Words For the Firing Squad
At the end of what might be their last record as a fearless and dynamic duo like none other, El-P’s opening verse gives way for Killer Mike to talk about where he was and how he felt when his mother passed. The song ends declaring ‘fuck you, too,’ haters.
Count Basie and Frank Sinatra – Fly Me to the Moon
My mom, obviously, loved family outings, as parents do, and as an adolescent, I was not a fan of said outings to theme parks and the like. Ingrate that I was, I do still appreciate my mother’s caricature from one such excursion, where she sings this song in text quotes. Classic Mom.
Rocky Horror Picture Show – Sweet Transvestite
If there’s one thing that directly ties together both my childhood as a whole, as well as the influence my relatively conservative, NDP voting, lifelong public servant mother had on me and my brothers growing up, I’d have to say it’s exposing us to culture like this. Love you, mom.
