Credit: ERNEST JENNING RECORD CO.
Credit: SHRIMPER
I was perfectly ready to live on campus for my second year. The housing application was turned in; my roommate and I were already planning where the television and general awesomeness would be.
About a month ago, I walked into my room to this statement: “I want to live in an apartment, are you interested?” Stopped like a deer in the headlights, I regrouped and said sure.
From that point on, my life became the “Let’s Figure Out Where We’re Living” show. Like any television drama (yes, the show is a drama), this show needs a soundtrack.
For first-time apartment explorers, the process of finding an apartment is all excitement at first. You’re moving out of the residence halls into the more adult setting of an apartment.
“Meet Me In the City,” a song by The Babies off their self-titled album, which was released on Jan. 25, expresses this wonder well. = Though this song is full of boundless and youthful energy, it lacks the control or restraint that results from the music-making experience. Amid the sounds of raw garage rock, these lyrics sing: “Hey, meet me in the city! Hey, won’t you meet me right now?”
That is, more or less, how we felt. We wanted to dive right in, to find a place and move in the next day (no, we didn’t actually want to move in the next day). We found a place through my best friend. All of a sudden, the five of us thought that we were set.
If this situation were a cartoon, the next sound viewers would hear is a car screeching to a sudden halt.
Then came the monstrous task of understanding the entire process of leasing an apartment, let alone understanding the small textbook of a lease that we needed to sign.
Cue the angry and confused music that is “(Doing the) Math,” a song by Lifeguards off their album “Waving At the Astronauts,” which was released on Feb. 15.
This song is also an example of garage-type rock, but it’s a bit more polished than that of The Babies. It’s up to the listener as to whether this helps or hurts the music. For many, after all, a raw sound is the sign of truly organic music. I happen to like the more polished sound that Lifeguards has produced. The band’s front man sings, “Take out the thinking cap. Dissolution, dissolution. Turn on the big display, can’t see it anyway. No resolution. Doing the math.”
The big smiley faces a la Walmart commercials plastered on our faces were quickly streaked by tears (figuratively). We barely understood anything we were looking at. The entire process seemed so needlessly complex, almost as though it were created just to trip us up.
Our reactions ranged from me calling the leasing office seven times in an hour with miscellaneous questions, obviously making me the office favorite. My roommate dealt with this stress by crouching in a frog-like position and jumping up and down in our room.
Finally, after countless more calls and visits to the office, calls to parents and calls to each other, my friends and I were finally ready to sign the lease.
So, we signed it. It was one big “let’s sign away a year of our lives” convention. When we were done, though, we felt such immense relief that the entire horrific process somehow became worth it. In a few months, the apartment was going to be ours to make a home.
The perfect song to accompany this triumphant moment is “Houses Sing” by Danny Schmidt. Off the Feb. 8 album “Man of Many Moons,” the song is a soft and tranquil four minutes of acoustic guitars and harmonized vocals. Listening to it, you can’t help but feel at peace with whatever issues had been plaguing you before hitting the play button.
During the song, Schmidt and his female accompaniment sing of the potential of a house to tell its own story. He sings, “(Buildings) only tell beginnings, they’re yours to tell the end. Can’t you hear them houses sing? Can’t you hear them houses sing?”
Corny, yes, but true to a certain extent. There’s not much to a building except wood and concrete until people move in. That’s when it becomes a home. That transformation is something I can’t wait to see with my friends. That and the big-screen television that I see covering the wall in my daydreams.
If hunting for apartments stresses you out, e-mail Bain at abain@media.ucla.edu.