Underworld - Dark and Long (Dark Train Mix) - a quickie

I have never heard this song where i didn't think about this scene in Trainspotting and how freakishly hot Ewan McGregor was in this movie.... FREAKISHLY. It was a role that sparked my mild obsession with soccer hooligans with shaved heads.

oh my!

David Bowie - Sound and Vision

I used to babysit a little girl named Michaela. Every Wednesday for a year and half, before I went away to college, Her dad would pick me up and drive me over where I would hang out with the 7 year old for about 30 minutes until she went to bed (which would take hours to finally happen sometimes) and then I would be left all alone in a house with no junk food or cable TV.

The dad was a dentist, the mom a nutritionist and every Wednesday they went to a couple’s counseling/prayer meeting at their catholic church and then would go out on a date. (They were really cute and very good to me.) But their house was boring as hell. This was pre-internet and they had practically no movies. They had a complete works of William Shakespeare and a miniature record collection of about 25 vinyls. I slowly made my way through each album, copying (onto cassette) each album I felt worthy. The only two I really remember were Lou Reed’s Transformer and King Crimson’s Islands.

After I had made my way through the record collection, after a couple weeks I eventually discovered that I could pick up NCSU’s college radio station, WKNC 88.1 from their stereo. This was around 1993, when their signal didn’t reach much further than the beltline, and I ironically only lived about 1/8^th of a mile from the family, but the signal didn’t reach my house at all.

I started recording hours of just random songs… songs by bands that I, as a 15 year old, had only just recently discovered… the sugarcubes, siouxsie, moz… after an hour or two of then, “current” songs, suddenly this one song comes on. I thought it was catchy and cute. I taped it. I was that kid in school who always had headphones on (not much has changed in that respect,) and I listened to the tape with this song on it constantly. But me, being brilliant and forward thinking, decided not to record the bit where they were talking, so I had no idea what the song actually was. I knew, by way of my childhood obsession with the movie Labyrinth, that the singer was David Bowie. I knew he said the world “blue” over and over.

I played the song for friends who I knew had even the smallest inkling of musical aptitude and no one had a clue. Flash forward a few years, tapes become obsolete. This song still followed me. I always kept an ear out. I never heard it again except for on that one tape. (Damn you, Google, for not existing 10 years ago!) I got so excited once, I found a Bowie cd with the song “blue jean” on it, I bought it. It was not the song. It was not a good song, in general. It was not a good album. I was bitter for a while, at that point.

For whatever reason, one day rob and I were at a borders way up in north Raleigh, and he buys Low. At this point, I am around 21 or 22 years old, and had given up on the song. We had recently watched The Man Who Fell to Earth, and he said it was music that was either in the film or meant to be in it. He bought it and put it in, in the car. 4^th song in, and I’ll be damned… there it was. I was so shocked; I think I had to pull off the road.

Since its discovery, I have heard this song no less than 4,877,992 times. It never seems to get old and every time I hear it, I am 14 on Michaela’s parents’ floor, making mix tapes.