I had a horrible day today. The kind of horrible day where everything starts going wrong the minute you walk out the door. In truth, my troubles really did start then, because when I closed the door and left this morning is when I locked myself out of my apartment. That was just the beginning, but I won’t bore you with the details. The one good thing about today, though, is that it gives me the perfect excuse to post a song that I’ve wanted to write about for awhile.

DJ Shadow: “Six Days” (download)

I’ve heard a lot about DJ Shadow, but I’ve honestly never really listened to the guy. Or at least I hadn’t, until my friend Clay put this song on a mix CD. I was listening to it on the LIRR one groggy morning on my way to my internship at the Stone, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Shadow captures the monotonous grind of the work day in such a perfect way in this song — of course, the main difference being that this song is pleasing, while work days are often not. It’s the way the song changes in-between verses, the tone of the woman’s voice as she cries, “it’s only Mondayyy-ayy-ayy.” The whole song is so hauntingly effective. But here’s the thing. It skips over Wednesday, and I’ve always wondered why.

I’m 99.9% sure that my theory is incorrect, but it reminds me of my introductory business class at Hofstra, during which my professor said that Wednesdays were often the most productive day of the week. This was supposedly determined through examining the quality of cars built on each day of the week — cars built on Wednesday usually had the least defects. It makes sense — at the beginning of the week, you’re still coming down off the weekend, and towards the end of the week, you’re getting excited about the weekend and making plans. So, perhaps there’s no Wednesday in the song because people aren’t complaining about Wednesdays, they’re actually working on Wednesdays. Just a thought. Anyone else got a theory?

This song makes me really want to listen to more DJ Shadow, but I’m also kind of afraid to do so, because I have this feeling that I won’t like anything else of his as much as I like this. But if you’ve got suggestions for songs/albums of his I should look into, please do share.