Ciao!

Life's too good

05.01.2003

I'm making slow progress ripping my music to Kaneda. I've gotten through the B's (yes, I keep my CDs in alphabetical order) and I've already used up 2.47 gigabytes. Yikes.

Björk was in the B's. It reminded me of the first album I ever bought. The Sugarcubes, Life's Too Good. When I think of Björk, I hear a Viking voice in "Coldsweat" or "Hit" or "Regina."

I was thirteen. I listened to the radio. But. This was the mid 80s in a dying industrial town. A boring morass of music. So I never really took much interest. Still, I read the Rolling Stone issues that survived in my middle school library. I liked the idea that music was somehow more than just what I heard on WIOG. I surfed the music world through back issues of Rolling Stone — my family didn't have cable, I had no "hip" older siblings or cousins, Saginaw had no music "scene" (it produced Meatloaf, for chrissake).

One day I found myself at Camelot Music in the mall, scanning a rack of cassettes. Boring. Boring. Boring. Suddenly, a green cover sleeve broke the black & white monotony. Artwork unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Smartly designed, instantly inviting.

I remembered reading an article (only two or three paragraphs, really) about them. They were from Iceland. They were unique and provocative. In their band picture, they were dressed all in white, smart haircuts and very "outerspace." This was not 80s corporate rock. This was something Different.

I bought it.

I got home, opened the cassette case, slid the tape into my boom box. Nothing. I turned the volume up. Nothing. I turned it up some more. I heard the faint sound of a harmonica solo. A bum tape? I turned the volume up a bit more, 'til the melody was discernible. And then. It happened.

I almost blew out my eardrums as the first verse of "Traitor" exploded through the speakers. Holy shit! It was loud. It rocked. It rocked so effing hard.

Posted by Miguel at 04:11 AM

Comments

Posted by: vanessa at May 5, 2003 12:18 PM