F-Word Fridays: On the Ones and Twos

About a month after we met, Maggie and I had our first agreement. Not our first disagreement. That was the night we met. I mean our first agreement, our first meaningful shared opinion. It was about a song.

Shortly thereafter, we started giving each other music….I gave her a copy of my favorite album of 2005, and she responded with a goofy, eclectic mix filled with stuff I’d never heard that had me grinning and drumming on my steering wheel in no time. We realized that, minus a few exceptions, we had mostly similar tastes but somehow listened to mostly different bands. We kept on giving each other mixes, and still do. And they never disappoint. Maggie gave me my latest one earlier this week, in fact (and as per normus, it’s excellent. As for "as per normus," I just made that up, so don’t go using it around your scholarly friends). What’s more, we both love live music, and Dallas has some great small venues. In particular, I/we highly recommend The Palladium, The Granada, and HOB*, where we’ve been privy to more than our fair share of great shows over the past few years: Dylan, Morrissey, Counting Crows, Bloc Party, The Shins, The Bravery, Iron and Wine, Of Montreal, and maybe a dozen more, all with 500 or fewer people in the crowd. I’d go so far as to say the live music scene is our favorite thing about Dallas.

So, given our ingrained love of live music, we made the obvious choice when it came to our reception band: we hired a DJ. Because there are no bands on the Outer Banks full time, and paying to bring one in is obscenely expensive, we went with Soundwavz (love the spelling btw….they sound like a fictional band Zach and Kelly would have formed on Saved By the Bell). They were the DJ company that everyone recommended. Which isn’t saying much, since everyone in the Outer Banks Wedding Mafia recommends everyone else in the Outer Banks Wedding Mafia. And as far as I can tell, Don from Soundwavz is the Marlon Brando of the Outer Banks Wedding Mafia.

Long story short, we’re in charge of being very explicit about what songs we do not want to hear (there are many), and which gimmicks we actually want the DJ to employ (there are very, very few. Like maybe one). And by "we," I mean me, because Maggie has 412 other details to worry about, and I want to make sure I continue to do my .0024% part of making this wedding come together. So I’m pretty much going to put together a four-hour Maggie and Trevor Wedding Mix. It’s not easy. As John Cusack said in High Fidelity, “the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do’s and don’ts. ” But I’m on it, because as a rule I don’t trust wedding DJs. Even when he’s the head of the Outer Banks Wedding Mafia. Maybe we should have bought an Ipod instead…

[Voiceover: On next week’s all new F-Word Friday, Trevor takes a look at some possible choices for the first dance, March Madness bracket style. There might even be the potential for some reader participation, if he can figure out how to add a poll on Blogger. All this and more, next week on F-Word Friday...]

*The only thing that sucks about these shows is that they all seem more inclined to email your tickets rather than mail actual ones, so no fun ticket stubs to stumble across months and years later.