To Expect Is to Be Disappointed

Album: Mark Erelli, Untitled EP, ca. 1993

Best Track: "So Lonely" (I figure that's the name, anyway)

Lasting Memory: As I wrote about 10 days ago, my then-roommate Toby dubbed this EP for me because he was a friend and former classmate of Mark Erelli's at Bates College. I may have also mentioned that Toby taught Erelli how to play actual songs on a guitar. I'm too lazy to check, but this my bit of the multiverse, and I'll repeat myself if I want to.

Truly, the pupil surpasses the teacher, but since Toby is on the tenure track in science education at UC-Davis and Erelli is paying the bills as a working folkie, I'll score their lives a draw for now. Certianly, their respective career paths prove that Toby is a good teacher and Erelli is a good student.

But that's not the lasting memory in any event. What I most always have in mind when I think of this homemade cassette is how I didn't think about it for probably 7 years until I moved from DC back to Virginia Beach.

I was given it, I played it, I filed it, and completely forgot I even had it until I was sorting through things for the big re-lo --to throw in some obnoxiuos realtor slang that shows up in a lot of crossword puzzles.

Having rediscovered the cassette, which also holds Greg Brown's Dream Cafe and a CD-single of R.E.M.'s "Near Wild Heaven," I slipped it into my boom box not really knowing what to expect, and I was very pleased with the sounds produced.

Revisiting this piece of magnetized plastic over the weekend, I was less pleased, but only because what I thought was, and remembered as being, the great lost Mark Erelli EP was only one and three-quarters worth of songs. Dagnabit.

But that's what I get for expecting more. Nothing is ever the way you think it's going to be. When I expected nothing, I was happy with what I received. When I expected something: DISAPPOINTED!

The upshot is that I have little to report on Erelli because I don't have enough of his music in my collection to go on.

So while I practice my Zen desirelessness and wait only a few days before posting another entry, you all enjoy this randomly selected sample of Erelli's music.

I wanted to be desireless so frickin' bad ....

Up Next: The Feelies, The Good Earth, 1986