September, 2003. I’m wandering around Boston, and it’s raining. I’m a withdrawn college freshman, painfully shy, recently broken up with, and just looking for… activities. My high school friends are scattered across the country and my college friends don’t really exist yet, but I have a chintzy backpack, a few T tokens, and a Walkman with big gaudy earphones that says that there’s a new Outkast record out and that’s likely to make it all better.
I duck out of the rain — I have not brought an umbrella because I’m 18 years old and seem physically unable to do anything right — into an alley, down a winding staircase to the closest music store I could find. (Sounds like science fiction in 2015, the notion that big cities were so populated with music stores that I was forced to make an actual choice. Kids, put this review in your time capsules, which I assume are completely digital now.) Several feet underground, this music seller’s music cellar is heavenly to me, warm and packed tight with racks upon racks of used and new CDs. Outkast is mine, I know that, so I tuck the crispest copy of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below under my armpit without another thought and move down the rows. Rhino’s slow-rolling two-disc Elvis Costello reissues, so I add Armed Forces and Get Happy!! to the ranks. An on-the-cheap De La Soul greatest hits is on sale for five bucks, so that’s going home with me. And there’s a listening booth — a pair of sweaty headphones dangling from a display of Michael Franti’s Everyone Deserves Music record — so I shrug, and give it a go. What else am I gonna do, go hang out with my friends? Go on a date? Please.
The Spearhead comes home with me, too. It’s too good not to. I confess, I’m swayed by the Gift of Gab feature advertised by the album’s packaging — I’ve been greedily devouring Blackalicious’s discography for the better part of a year at this point — but I’m kept around by Franti’s lovely, slightly off-kilter baritone, and the sheer versatility of his music and his message. He raps along with Gift of Gab on “We Don’t Stop,” sings a potent, slow-burn power ballad in “Love, Why Did You Go Away?”, belts a sweet, simplistic message of positivity on the title track; it’s everything I love in music, it’s soul and hip-hop and rock and pop and disco meeting in the park for a jam session followed by a hugfest. It’s kinda beautiful, actually.
It soundtracks my walk back to the subway, where I immediately switch to Outkast and Franti is given the short end of the stick. (I love this record, I truly do, but… I mean… have you heard Speakerboxxx?) I never really forget that moment, in the rain, with Michael Franti.
2007: I’m out of college for good now, and working at a chain restaurant in New Jersey. Eventually, they’ll cancel their XM subscription and install a TouchTunes jukebox so the locals can proudly show us how bad their music tastes are, but for now it’s a curious combination of indie rock and ’80s hits, peppered with weird little ’90s flourishes like Eagle Eye Cherry and Cathy Dennis. There’s lots of INXS and The Decemberists, and The Jayhawks and late-period Bowie, and one night I groove really hard to a song I don’t recognize. It turns out to be “Feelin’ Free,” from Everyone Deserves Music. Upon Googling the lyrics and realizing that I just forgot it existed, I rediscover Everyone Deserves Music one late night, dusting off the record for a post-work drive through the state’s back roads.
March 2008: I’m excited to pick her up; we’re going to drive around and listen to music, which is only boring if you’re boring. She lives down a wooded side street, and as my headlights crest her driveway she bounds out, triumphantly thrusting a CD into the air. She’s made a mix for the occasion, as have I. Both have custom artwork, liner notes, hand-designed discs, and sleek jewel cases. The first voice on her mix is familiar, but the song isn’t; it’s Franti again, with a beguiling, dusky acoustic number called “Oh My God”. I laugh and point out that Franti’s on my disc, too, but with the reggae-flecked Everyone Deserves Music cut “Pray For Grace”. We continue to make each other mixes, long after we get married.
June 2015: I’ve assembled a ragtag little website that nobody really reads and am counting down my favorite albums of the 2000s, one by one. As I cross the Dresden Dolls off my master list, I realize that I don’t remember much of the Atmosphere album I’ve scheduled myself to write about next. I listen to it and realize that while it’s a perfectly enjoyable record, it’s position is arbitrary, and I’m not intimately connected to it in any way. I lazily scroll through the rest of the master list to see if I’ve forgotten anything, and upon not seeing Everyone Deserves Music, decide to write about it immediately.
Once again, I’ve given Franti’s record the short end, and once again, it’s reared up to remind me that I love it. I sit down to type and fear that the review will be too short.
Playlist track: The title track. “Even our worst enemies, they deserve music”; it’s somehow a tough pill to swallow and a sweet, inarguable sentiment all at once.
Drew's Album of the Day 