Hearing, along with the other senses, has the peculiar ability to conjure memories, evoke thought, and activate even our most primal emotions. Just like a particular smell may take you back to a specific point in your life, certain sounds can envelope you in previously obscured or forgotten memories. Music, in particular, seems to be quite proficient at creating this effect.
Songs manage to hold a wide range of meaning to an infinitely diverse audience, all the while remaining exactly static and uniform in their nature. Audibly, “Bright Whites” by Kishi Bashi is going to sound identical each and every time you play it. More so, everyone will experience its tonal and rhythmic qualities in an indistinguishable manner. Yet it may hold an entirely different interpretation or meaning from person to person.
In summation, I’m trying to convey that we each, as individuals, subject our own experiences upon the music we hear. This, I can hopefully make abundantly clear as I introduce Dashell Meredith-Wilson.
Dashell and I sat down and traded five songs with one another, along with the anecdotes each song carries for ourselves. Modelled largely after KCRW’s Guest DJ Project, the concept illustrates the aforementioned phenomena.
“Lullaby” by The Cure
Credited as the entry into his musical exposure, Lullaby harkens back to days of Dashell’s youth.
Eerily, this song on surface level is about a young boy’s terror as a “Spiderman” (by description and action, not a superhero) comes to him in the night to feed. It’s got a dreamlike melody, and the vocals, airy whispers, enhance the effect.
Introduced to Dashell by his mother, who would play this song on long drives, this song carries a strong nostalgia for him.
“My mother would never play anything else by The Cure but Lullaby, which is a pretty different than anything else they do,” he remembers. “It was one of the first songs I heard and recognized as liking.”
Driving long hours to Crested Butte every summer, “Lullaby” was a guaranteed listen, and a welcome break from the “crappy 50cent” and other songs played by Dashell’s mother.
The contrast between the creepy vocals and funky baseline is credited to his attraction to the song.
“American Idiot” by Greenday
A likely find on many a middle schooler’s playlist, Greenday became one of the most accessible Punk Rock groups nearly a decade ago. I remember my own excitement when, on a birthday, I was gifted an album by a friend (and thus protected from my mother’s strict policy against any album with “explicit” stamped on the front cover).
For Dashell, it sparked a desire to learn guitar. A large part of his identity, especially through high school, he later had the f-holes of a guitar tattooed to his wrist.
The rebellious nature of punk music was attractive to him.
“I heard them and really decided that I wanted to be in a band—I want to be all punk-rock like that.”
“American Idiot” represented the epitome of Greenday’s punk message for Dashell.
“I didn’t have any clue what they were talking about because I was in seventh grade and I just thought it sounded cool to be calling everyone in this country an idiot,” he mused. “I didn’t recognize it as this deep political statement until much later.”
Cortez, where Dashell has spent a large chunk of his life, was full of these American idiots, in his eyes.
He may not have understood it early on, but it certainly set him on a path to get in some trouble.
“Before then I played basketball, mostly because my stepdad really wanted me to play.”
When he started listening to Greenday and playing guitar, he decided to change that path.
“He was sort of a sports fanatic. But when I started to play guitar I was like ‘I don’t really like you or basketball that much, so this is my new thing,’” Dashell recalls.
There was definitely a sense of rejection after this falling out, leading to chaos at home and bad decisions away from it.
“That’s when I started drinking with friends and making stupid, stupid decisions at 15 or 16, all because I wanted to be cool and punk like that—break into houses and drink and stuff.”
He was fortunate, however, and never got caught.
Greenday is very much associated with those decisions. It was in every sense a gateway drug into a culture that valued rebellion and poor decisions.
“Elvis Said Ambition is a Dream with a V8 Engine” by From First to Last
At age 15 before making himself known for Dubstep, Skrillex joined this band, which is consequently why it makes Dashell’s list.
Seeing a young musician make a name for himself in a recognized band was a huge inspiration for his own endeavors to play professionally.
“It also came out around the same time as I was moving to Lake Havasu, Arizona, where I just wanted to get away,” recalls Dashell. “The lyrics of the song are pretty cool if you’re in that situation, if you’re young and trying to do something else.”
“[The song] says ‘if growing up is giving in, then count on me to count myself out’, which itself is cool, sarcastic, and rebellious. That’s all I wanted to be after high school. I didn’t want to do what my parents wanted, I didn’t want to do what society wanted me to do, I just wanted to get out and do my own thing.”
The song really helped that along, making it all the more significant during that period of his life.
“Between the Bars” by Elliot Smith
A lovely acoustic song, with soft vocals and flowing melody, “Between the Bars” came to Dashell at a point during high school when his band at the time broke up.
“I kind of had a band in high school and that just fell apart. Everyone was being a douche bag about everything. I decided I just wanted to do something on my own, so I started listening to all this acoustic music, and learning acoustic music, and trying to learn to sing (which never really went anywhere),” he reflected.
It represents to Dashell his move towards independence and trying not to rely on others, which he credits to his own successes.
“Elliot Smith was the key acoustic artist that brought me into that.”
“Between the Bars” was his first exposure to Elliot Smith and consequently to the deeper meaning that songs can hold.
“You have to dig into his music a little more,” Dashell said.
“Listening to From First to Last it was more a rebellious 'I just wanted to get the hell out of here’, but with Elliot Smith it was ‘I need to start relying on myself.’”
“The Adventure” by Angels and Airwaves
The instant I listened to this pick from Dashell, I was immediately transported into my long-time friend’s muscle car, cruising around Littleton Colorado. We spent hours listening to very similar music while accosting the neighborhoods with the roar of his prized Nova.
For Dashell, Angels and Airwaves became most prominent after graduating high school.
The album was released not long after lead singer Tom DeLonge’s other band, Blink-182, broke up.
“It was [Tom’s] way of starting a new life, and in a way his rebirth after Blink-182 disbanded,” according to Dashell.
After high school, Dashell was thinking in much the same way.
“I really started thinking seriously ‘what the hell am I going to do with my life’, so that album, and that song in particular, really helped out with that,” Dashell recollects. “It’s called “The Adventure” and I guess it could be referencing the adventure through life. After high school, listening to Angels and Airwaves, I started travelling, going to school, and other things I never imagined I’d be doing back in high school. It was all just out of my reach.”
For Dashell, it brought a sense of hope.