Valentine’s Day Special Feature.............Staff

Our Bloody Valentine’s Day

NO FIDELITY Speaks Out about Music and Emotion

In order to celebrate the most romantic day of the year, we’ve compiled short musical memories from our staff members. The assignment was “write, at most, 200 words that recount a memory of yours that has something to do with both music and love.” The results are as follows:

Julian Palmer

Top 5 Love Songs “I Could’ve Lied” - Red Hot Chili Peppers It’s a sad love song about the only girl that ever rejected Anthony Kiedis ever. He couldn’t get the girl and is “fucked up now.” Love is tough. “Not On Drugs” - Tove Lo “Baby listen please / I’m not on drugs / I’m not on drugs / I’m just in love!” Man, poor Tove Lo. I mean, how much would that suck if you confessed your love for someone and he’s just like, “Nah girl, you tripping.” “Glass” - Julian Casablancas Jules wrote this song specifically and solely for his girlfriend which is weird because it really reveals a dark side of love: “Pretty baby / Please just get out of the way / We’re insane.” Whoa. “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” - Death Cab for Cutie The lyrics pretty much describe the strongest, deepest, truest love I think anyone is capable of describing. Ben Gibbard will literally follow his girl into Purgatory.

“Suck It and See” - Arctic Monkeys Alex Turner’s lyrics are pretty metaphorical, but you get the point: “That’s not a skirt, girl, that’s a sawn-off shotgun / And I can only hope you’ve got it aimed at me.” ;)

Madeline Garcia

“Bill for the Use of a Body” by Chain and the Gang I first heard this when I was about fourteen. I didn’t have any heartbreak then but knew that it was undeniably and dishearteningly truthful. It might just be the saddest break up song I know, even with its candid and simple lyrics. Take a listen this Valentine’s Day if need be; if not, save it.

Cisco Hayward

I don’t really like having sex to music. Yeah, sure, I break out Merriweather Post Pavilion every once in awhile, but I don’t really see the appeal of it. It overcomplicates things. When there is music playing, you have to keep time, and you have to change pace with the album and hold off orgasm until the crescendo, and sometimes I don’t want to have to think about that. I mean, if you’re gonna go so far as to have music playing, you gotta follow its arc; otherwise why the fuck else do you have it on? Do you have music playing while fucking because you want to truly intergrate the oral and aural experience, or because you want to jack yourself off and the person right in front of or behind you isn’t enough? Admit it, the only reason people have sex to music is because of movies, and you put music on so that your sex looks more like movie sex and therefore you can convince yourself it was better. Furthermore, I don’t really feel comfortable with Brian Wilson or Skrillex watching me fuck. It’s too weird.

Urmilla Kutikkad

10 Mope Songs

“Knife” - Grizzly Bear “Nobody Loves Me Like You” - Low Roar “Love Is All” - The Tallest Man On Earth “I Know It’s Over” - Jeff Buckley (Smiths Cover) “La Chute (The Fall)” - Yann Tiersen “Pink Rabbits” - The National “Phantom Other” - Department of Eagles “Codex” - Radiohead “Sea of Love” - Cat Power “Fade Into You” - Mazzy Star 5 sexxxy cool love songs

“When You Sleep” - My Bloody Valentine “Toxic” - Britney Spears “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” - Neutral Milk Hotel “You Belong With Me” - Taylor Swift “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” - Carole King

Bob Otsuka

Sometimes, when I am alone with idle thoughts, I remember a time in high school when one of my friends was feeling really sad about a breakup, and one of my friends decided it would be a good idea to post a link to “Someday You Will Be Loved” by Death Cab For Cutie on their Facebook wall. This was precisely the moment I learned just how important it is to not judge a song’s message by its title. If you plan on making a playlist for your sweetheart this Valentine’s Day, I urge you to please take care with your selections!

Francisco Castro

In middle school I had a massive crush on your typical pop-punk-angsty-eighthgrade girl. Fresh off the boat from the Caribbean motherland, I was doing anything in my power to fit in. Naturally, I started to listen to My Chemical Romance because my crush was head over heels for Gerard Way. To be honest, I pretended to like MCR while I could not stand any of their music and would rather jam to Bachata in my room. Years later, however, after the release of Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, I gave it a listen and instantly fell in love with the whole concept. Consequently, I binge-listened to their entire discography one hot Houston summer day and ever since then, I’ve been a fan. We were really good friends for a while even though we don’t talk much, but I think it’s super cool that someone can have that kind of influence on you even years after. So yeah, shout out to A.M. Thank You.

Katie Williams

When I was at semester school, I was in a love triangle. I loved him, he loved Creedence Clearwater Revival… I don’t really know what the third part of that triangle was, but regardless, second semester of my junior year in high school was devoted to many late nights playing CCR on repeat in hopes of casually humming one of their songs in our lunch line behind my “novio” to get his attention. It didn’t work, but I’m glad I started listening to CCR anyway. In the spirit of unrequited love, here are 5 quintessential CCR tracks for those of you that are just as angsty as I was/am/probably always will be: “Long As I Can See the Light” “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” “Bad Moon Rising” “Down On The Corner” “Up Around the Bend”

Lily Eisenthal

All throughout junior high and high school, I had a strange, romantically-charged friendship with a lanky, green-eyed boy. Our birthdays were a day apart in June, and it felt like we were twins. Maybe for that reason, it seemed important that we never do anything beyond flirting and joking around. He introduced me to Silver Jews. This boy was incredibly goofy, but when he started sharing their songs with me, he was dead serious about how much they meant to him. I remember sitting down and listening to “Smith & Jones Forever” punctuated by his echoes of lyrics he found particularly poetic. He showed me a video for “Punks in the Beerlight” and burned me copies of American Water, Starlite Walker, and The Natural Bridge, with their titles scribbled on in his bad handwriting. It was all so rad and so different from anything I had listened to before. One day, he paused whatever else we were doing to read me one of David Berman’s poems and I just about died. Whenever I listen to Silver Jews, it brings me back to that intense platonic love and how happily and unhappily confused I was.

Gracie McNeely

A couple months ago, I was getting really into late 1990s/2000s rock. blink-182, Yellowcard, Lit, etc. It brought back some great angsty memories of being like 9 years old. Flash forward to last term. I was hooking up with a guy and told him to put some music on. He asked what band I wanted to listen to, and because I was really into listening to 2000s rock, I said blink-182. He put on “First Date.” It was such a mistake. blink-182 is horrible to listen to whilst making out. Imagine feeling very intimate and getting hot and bothered and then all of a sudden you hear, in that awful 2000 solo voice timbre: “LET’S GO. DON’T WAIT. THIS NIGHT’S ALMOST OVER.” Please take this advice: don’t hook up to Blink

Dan Bollinger

You know how in the movies a couple always has a romantic song that was playing on the radio when they first meet, and then they walk slowly toward each other while the ambient sound fades out and it’s just that song, and that song becomes their song or whatever? Well, my friend from high school and his girlfriend (well mostly his girlfriend) decided that they needed that song and settled on “My Heart Will Go On” by Céline Dion. Her heart might have gone on, but their relationship did not... thank god. Well, I want you all to think back to the summer of 2009. I was a strapping young lad, fresh off my 4th consecutive year with braces and excited about the prospect of finding some summer lovin’ (great pun right). Now, that summer happened to correspond to such groundbreaking performances as 3OH!3’s “DONTTRUSTME” and Shinedown’s “Second Chance,” but one song in particular brings me back. You see, I met a beautiful, wonderful girl who happened to live thousands of miles away (tears). And I still think of her occasionally, whenever I hear that now iconic phrase: “Somebody call 911 / Shawty fire burning on the dancefloor!”

A Noah Harrison

Music shouldn’t be about emotion, and certainly not love. Music should be about everything but emotion. I’m not talking about lyrics; I’m talking about what’s really contained within. Music is supposed to make you think through the experience of listening. Only then are you allowed to feel anything. Happy Valentine’s Day, punks.

Henry Southwick

There is a song by One Republic (yes yes I’m mainstream) that really captures the way I try to live my life. This has never happened to me before; there has never been a song that captures the entirety of how I feel about getting out of bed to take on the day. Love songs sometimes get it right about love; angry songs understand that sometimes I don’t like people, but I have never come across one that gets better at the heart of what it means to be alive. The song, “I Lived” (appropriately titled), is about getting up and making the most of your life. But despite being written in the first person singular, the song is about wishing completeness on other people too, which I find really touching. I dunno, everybody has a piece of music that makes them feel full, and this is mine. I’ll leave you with my favorite lyric: “I hope you say I did it all / I owned every second that this world could give / I saw so many places- and the things that I did / And with every broken bone I swear I lived.” Nice, yeah?

Ben Wedin

“Love” songs that don’t have anything to do with romantic love: “California Love” - 2pac “Winter’s Love” - Animal Collective “All is Full of Love (Howie’s Version)” - Björk “Where Is The Love?” - Black Eyed Peas “Love and Caring” - Crystal Castles “Arpeggiated Love” - The Field “Sweet Love For Planet Earth” - Fuck Buttons “One Love” - Nas “Girls Love Beyonce (Remix)” - SBTRKT “You might think he loves you for your money but I know what he really loves you for it’s your brand new leopard skin pillbox hat” - Death Grips

Professor Dan Groll

Here’s the only song you need for this Valentines Day (unless you are alone, and especially if you have recently been dumped by the love of your life (in which case stop reading now)): “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” by Ewan MacColl and performed by Peggy Seeger. That last bit is very important. This song has been covered many times, but none of them hold a candle to the original performance by Peggy Seeger. Everything about this song is perfect: gorgeous melody, beautiful guitar playing, off-kilter harmonic rhythm, wonderful lyrics and... Peggy Seeger’s voice, which is not perfect but somehow makes the whole song more perfect. Seeger’s voice is plangent. It cuts and kind of makes you screw up your face. But I love it. It’s no surprise, I suppose, that Seeger’s voice works so well with this song: McColl wrote it for her before they got married (and while he was still married to someone else. But we’ll ignore that).

Paco Alvarez

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (But I Will Date Someone Else) Ask anyone who went to high school during the past five years what they remember most about their first relationship, and you’ll probably get a feigned-apathetic bitter chorus of “breaking up” and “Taylor Swift.” After six months of teenage angst disguised as bliss, my girlfriend broke up with me a week before the start of junior year. Naturally, I was devastated but hid my real feelings behind fake hitting on my friends and stealing cigarettes from my ex (we were still friends). I was in the car with two of my good friends, Lindsay and Rebecca, when the now-classic “We are Never Ever Getting Back Together” by Taylor Swift came on. Being the great friend and not total asshole that she was, Rebecca turned the volume all the way up, looked back at me, and shouted that this song was about my ex and me. Normally when someone does this, you reevaluate your friendship and never listen to that song again. Instead, we fake flirted the whole night and not two months later, dated for nearly two years. She was pretty right I guess.

Sam Watson

You can give this romantic playlist to your boyfriend or girlfriend. It is very thoughtful. You can even tell them you made it yourself, especially for them, because they don’t read this zine. 1. “Doo Wop” – Bachelorette 2. “Car” – Built to Spill 3. “Hundreds of Sparrows” – Sparklehorse 4. “The Ballad of the RAA” – The Rural Alberta Advantage 5. “Dark Corners” – Sonny & the Sunsets

Ian Mercer

When I think of my high school romantic relationships, only 3 songs come to mind. Animal Collective - “Fireworks” Grizzly Bear - “Foreground” CANT - “Believe” When I hear these songs now, it’s almost like I’m processing them through an Instagram filter that has upped the contrast and softened all the edges. These songs make me feel the way that an American Football song is supposed to make me feel. I wish I could hear them again out of context, because right now they are a little too steeped in the melodrama of 16-year-old romance. I think I can’t really hear how they actually sound anymore, which makes me wonder if it’s possible for any beloved song to exist outside of the context of where it was first heard.

Professor Andy Flory

I have a great Valentine memory from when I was a young teenager. There was a popular song at the time by Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, and I wanted to impress a neighborhood girl with my knowledge of it. This was before CDs were popular and centuries before you could download or stream a song or simply pull it up on YouTube. Every night for a week I wolfed down my dinner and ran to my room, locking the door and tuning my portable radio to a cool new radio station called Z-93. This was the time of night that they played the topten countdown, and I had a blank cassette at the ready in my little “ghetto blaster.” The record function was engaged while I held the pause button manually, which was the tested-and-proven method of making the machine react as quickly as possible. As the countdown progressed, I waited, hoping to capture LL&CJ’s “Lost in Emotion” in its entirety so I could study the lyrics and casually sing them on the school bus the next day. In hindsight, it was really ironic. The song was about a guy that had a crush, delivered from the perspective of a girl that knew it. But when you’re a kid, you don’t always catch details like this.