We heard from would-be rock critics, effusive poets and love-struck admirers (of Aimee Mann, that is). We read stories of heartbreak and hooking up, road trips and remembered concerts.
In the end, it was a tough task to pick three winners from the many entrants to On the Town’s “Meet Aimee Mann” contest. But if our three top finishers shared a common bond, it’s that they were able to passionately relate how Mann’s music has moved them–and continues to do so.
In third place, writer Molly Moynahan of Chicago shares a poignant story of how Mann’s music helped her find footing during a time of personal crisis and creative renewal.
In second place, doctor Julie Goldstein of Chicago relates the special kinship she felt with the movie “Magnolia,” and in turn the songs Mann wrote for it.
And in first place, educator Constance Gartner of Lincolnshire told us how Mann provided the soundtrack to her story of love lost, found and lost again–a saga bittersweet enough to have been culled straight from a Mann lyric.
For her efforts, Gartner has won two tickets to Saturday’s concert and the chance to meet Aimee Mann backstage. Look for her report on the experience in next week’s On the Town.
Honorable mention also goes out to these three contestants:
Denise Balsis of Tinley Park
Randi J. Layne Scheurer of Lindenhurst
Rhonda McNear of Waukegan
Thanks to all who entered our contest–and be sure to read the winning entries that follow.
— The On the Town staff
FIRST-PLACE ENTRY
Jack was my college sweetheart, and along with long games of Scrabble and cold beers in dark bars, we shared a great love of music. Like many college romances though, ours didn’t last after graduation. Many years later, I had the chance to reconnect with him during one hot summer weekend in Columbus, Ohio. It was easy to fall in love with him again.
In his small apartment, we listened to our old songs, drank our cold beers and played Scrabble. He shared with me his current favorite CDs–one of them being Aimee Mann’s “I’m With Stupid.” During the course of the weekend it became clear that, despite our continued love for each other, a future was not going to happen for us as a couple. When he dropped me off at the airport, we both knew that we would never see each other again. And, as the plane roared away, a melancholy settled over me like a shroud. I realized I needed that Aimee Mann CD. I needed it more than I needed oxygen to breathe. Upon landing in Chicago, despite the late hour I drove the city trying to find a music store that had it in stock. When I found it, I opened it immediately and played it on my way home as great and heavy tears fell. The music was a cooling salve for my restless heart.
I have since become a fan of Aimee’s other CDs, but I save playing that CD for those nights when I’m feeling especially tender and lonely.
And it brings me back to a time in my life when I enjoyed a great love. I never imagined that my first boyfriend would end up being the love of my life.
— Constance Gartner, Lincolnshire
SECOND PLACE
I read that [the 1999 film] “Magnolia” evolved for P.T. Anderson from a line from [the Aimee Mann song] “Deathly”: “Now that I’ve met you, would you object to never seeing me again?”–a line repeated by one of the central characters. I had a kinship with that movie and its music. This was due in part to my being a hospice/ palliative care doc, and one of the central stories revolved around a man who was dying at home, suffering, finishing his business, but being treated by some health care providers who didn’t quite “get” how to care for him (and, gratefully, one who did). All of which I work to improve for the patients and families in my professional life. I actually re-discovered Aimee Mann, having listened to ‘Til Tuesday quite a bit through medical school. Even now, Aimee Mann pulls on a vine that has woven through my personal and professional life.
I went through a period when I listened to nothing but “Bachelor No. 2,” which lived permanently in my car CD slot. “How Am I Different” has a line that contains an expletive. I was very attached to that song, so that even when my girls, then small, were in the car with me, I was unwilling to skip it. I habitually twisted down the volume to skip the word, which appears a few times in the song: “Just one question, before I pack … when you [silence] it up later, do I get my money back?” The line elicited a specific feeling from my past, of caution and abandon strung around each other and yanking and pulling on me as I headed into a new relationship. So distant from the life I was living now, and yet, remembering those feelings from long ago, reminding me where I came from and bringing me back there for a moment. Years later, I decided to leave the volume button alone, and even sing along. Loudly. Liberated! And from the back seat, “Mom! Is that appropriate?!”
Maybe not, but the first time they feel that cautious abandon for themselves, I wouldn’t be surprised if they remember the lyric, and I’ll be forced finally to give up my kelly-green CD to the next generation of Mann fans.
— Julie Goldstein, Chicago
THIRD PLACE
After two years of living in Dallas, I was ready to drive my car through a shopping mall. I didn’t like football, heat or how people said everything was bigger in Texas. It was 1994, I had a baby under a year, no job and a husband who left every morning murmuring something about “finding some friends.” My social life consisted of getting my hair dyed progressively blonder so I could talk to the nice guys at the salon, going to the gym and pretending to be a Christian mommy. I had left Manhattan, a glamorous life writing novels and four seasons a year to live in a place where women wore makeup to put their garbage out. For love.
So I ran away. I accepted a writing residency in Taos, New Mexico, told my husband to bring the baby to his mother’s in Kansas, informed him that we had to accept a job offer to transfer him to Chicago but I would not be around to help sell the house. I drove like someone being pursued by Furies, stopping once to call my husband (now ex) who informed me I was an irresponsible monster and my child would be permanently damaged. “What about suicide?” I screamed. “Wouldn’t that be sort of damaging?”
The morning after I arrived in Taos and settled into the pueblo cottage I was given, I nearly went home. But I set up my typewriter and I put a cassette in my Walkman and I started to run in the dry New Mexican heat. I had gotten fat; baby and depression had piled on the pounds. Who was singing to me? Aimee Mann. What was she singing about? Freedom and art and how to survive, what it feels like to be silenced and the importance of telling the truth. She had helped me see this when I was in my 20s in New York dating a rich guy who told me what to do. I listened to “Voices Carry” and told my boyfriend I wasn’t interested in becoming his trophy wife. Now she did it again.
The song I remember best was “Jacob Marley’s Chain.” For some reason it made me feel like I could shake off my fear and do what needed to be done. We moved to Chicago, separated and divorced. I became a high school English teacher and two years ago my first novel in 13 years was published. I say Aimee Mann is an original, gorgeous, difficult talent who has outstripped nearly all her contemporaries to represent something truly unique. She should be proud of herself.
— Molly Moynahan, Chicago
Aimee Mann
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Skyline Stage on Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand Ave.
Price: $35-40; 312-559-1212 or www.ticketmaster.com
