I treat Spotify like the radio--I set it to a vibe I'm feeling and let it spin the tunes. A few days ago it spun up "Certain Kinds of Trash" by Chain and the Gang, a song I'd never heard from a band I'd never heard, and when I saw it pop up on the nav screen I assumed they would use the word "trash" in a New York Dolls sort of way.
But no! They use it in a literal Mad Men sort of way.
In something like a spoken word approach, they reminisce about all the garbage you don't see anymore like cigarette holders, magnetic tape stuck in a tree, typewriter ribbons and so on.
I became wistful when, at the very end, the second to last kind of trash they enumerate is porno mags, because I remember in fifth grade when my friend Chris found an exceedingly waterlogged issue of Hustler in the gutter during a rain storm, and he brought it home and nurtured it like a wounded bird until it dried out, at which point it became the size of a phone book and the ink flaked off the pages in some spots but it was still his pride and joy, his dirty magazine that he rescued from becoming trash. Sure, our friend Jesse's father had a huge stack of pristine noodie books in the basement,
but this battered copy of Hustler was like manna from heaven for Chris.
I've found some pretty gnarly garbage in my day and I don't miss the filthy sidewalks of the 70's and 80's, littered with dogshit, gum, broken glass and all the other flotsam and jetsam one encountered on urban walkways. Unfortunately I don't recall finding anything as personally meaningful as Chris's Hustler, but maybe you do. Join me in the comments--what trash do you miss and what's the most important trash you rescued?
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