Liner Notes- 16. June. 2022

Modest Mouse, mail, and Mirage

Photo: Getty/Shaiith

“Music is life itself.”

~Louis Armstrong

It seems weird to say, but I was first hired by the airline I work for to sort U.S. mail. Passenger carriers moved away from it for quite a while (some are back), but for many years, it was normal for passenger flights to have 1000s of pounds of US mail on board.

“Throwing” mail was easy enough; we set up baggage carts for each flight, and sorted bin after bin of it accordingly.

The dreaded BMC. IYKYK.

We always set the carts the same way so we could literally do the work in our sleep (which may or may not have happened).

The hours were brutal—not quite graveyard, not quite day shift—but it was out of the public eye, so uniform rules were largely ignored; a bonus when you’re in your early 20s and still not quite okay with the idea of assimilation.

One morning, my coworker showed up in a T-shirt with a bison on it. When I asked him about it, he said it was for his favorite band and:

Modest Mouse are the best band you’ve never heard of.