166. Song No. 2,494: “Dial Up,” Ted Leo and The Pharmacists
The Tyranny of Distance, 2001

I discovered this song in a friend’s car as we waited to leave the traffic-choked hellscape of a parking lot that dominates Hamilton Station during its unscheduled peaks. It was some ungodly hour and we’d just come back from a concert in New York, two frequent city-goers usually unfazed by the time and traffic individually but absolutely gobsmacked by an unexpected combination of the two. But when you’re immobilized in a vehicle on a late-summer night, that’s when impromptu car-concerts shine.

This was the first thing Tahlia put on, knowing that I was still too powerfully obsessed with Shake the Sheets—my introduction to the homegrown musical wizardry of Ted Leo, despite it being his fourth album—to have delved into his and The Pharmacists’ previous stuff. It remains one of my all-time favorite songs, and it being preceded by “Under the Hedge” is one of those magical moments where two consecutive songs both merit a few infinite repeats, like how two of my favorite Zeppelin songs converge on III.

It hit a little differently after she died, of course, like any piece of entertainment or pop culture or art does after the person who introduced us to it is gone but the thing they lovingly shared still remains. The line I’d first misheard as “You can dial up / But you can’t phone” especially made a habit of flickering across my conciousness whenever I’d scroll past her name and number in my phone.

Tahlia’s birthday is this month, and hearing a song that she dropped in my life roughly a decade before her too-soon departure from it at a time when I’m thinking about her a little more than usual was a welcome reassurance that the people we love are never really gone as long as the memories and shared affections remain, and I’ll certainly raise a remembrance High Ball to that on what should have been her 36th birthday.