If this were an Apples to Apples Card, this is this description:
If you know what this is about, congradulations, because I'm not sure
It was February, and my days were warm with George Michael's synthy voice and the psychedelic undertones of Das Racist. I know George Michael and Das Racist are largely regarded as lame commodities, and I know I've told this story many a time; but I haven't told the essence of it. It came as a legend, I'm not sure how I got to it. I remember the first time I saw them, on my Gramma's television. February that year was very polar, and very unsure, and very important to my life. I remember lying on my grandmother's bed for days straight as its unsure and unforgiving behavior kept me locked inside due to random snow storms. Those days, I would watch MTV Hits because it made me feel cool. I only cared about pop music and Das Racist (and George Michael) really, but I knew MTV was too uncool to play George Michael, and I knew it was too unhip to play my beloveds. So I watched music videos all day to uncover the treasures of new pop artists.
I had a list of three songs I had to listen to, like a fix, they were addicting; given my extreme low intelligence with computers and cellular phones, not to mention the copious benefits of iPods, I waited each day until these songs would present themselves. This meant I often spent three hours in anticipation for these songs, and then another three hours for the next, and maybe three and a half hours for the one after. That's a whole nine hours worth of senseless waiting, nine hours out of a twenty four hour day. And let's talk the time I sleep (on a day where I'm locked in the house, I'll sleep maybe twelve). So that's nine hours out of a twelve hour day! The worst was when I would grow bored with the cool of MTV Hits, and readily change to another channel, consequently missing my lovely songs.
I should mention these songs. The songs I have to mention are, "Stare into the Sun," by Graffiti6, "Lolita" by lovely Mexican pop artist Belinda, and "Dignity" by New Politics. The last song I didn't actually like that much, but hey, when engulfed in a sea of MTV approved pop music, it was refreshing. I am most thankful to "Lolita," as it sparked my obsession with the Spanish language, and for the following years until I reached the crisis inducing class that is that of Sra. Cuadrado, I studied the language diligently on my own time. To be honest that was really Juanes's credit, but let's say Belinda ignited my passion, and Juanes put a little gasoline in the fire to set it ablaze. Anyway, I was most in love with Stare into the Sun. It's a lovely tune that alludes to old standards on record players from the sixties, it's lead, Jamie, is also quite hot. I loved that video so much, I became a hooligan when I filmed it illegally for safe keeping on my cellular phone. Mostly I loved the colors and Jamie. But I also loved the song.
That was a joke because mostly I loved the song. Anyway, this was part of a segment on MTV Hits (the music video channel, might I mention) called "Hits." What followed I thought I'd like a lot, because I thought that would be the one on which MTV would feature the video for Rainbow in the Dark or Ek Shaneesh. It was a playlist called "Indie music." Actually, the first video was of this 70's VHS footage with this guy with lovely eyes, and unwashed hair that kind of sprouted from his head like little dead cell beansprouts. He had this gaze to one part of the camera like his voice, unsettling, unnerving, but a lock. I hated his music. I thought I'd heard it before, with my friend who really liked Rock music. I hated Rock music, it reminded me of cool people. That was weird because I was watching MTV Hits to feel cool. In any case, I checked the name in the lower right corner, "Last Nite. The Strokes" it read. They seemed too familiar, I searched my memories to find a connection. It was kind of creepy, futuristic. This was when I would loose faith in MTV Hits and change the channel until the hour of "Indie Music" passed.
And that's when it began. The legend, really, begins with Take it or Leave it. That song reminds me of yellow slides and Wheaton Regional Park. It reminds me of feeling cool and walking down the street kicking cans, and then feeling bad about the environment and throwing them in the nearest recycling bin. Of course then I'd say "But cool people care about the environment." And walk away kicking stones. I think it reminds me of all that because it reminds me of my rock friend.
I'm not sure how I ever heard that song, it must've been a faraway link, one from "Don't Shoot Me Santa" by the Killers, or maybe "Rooftop" by Das Racist. Maybe even, "Everything She Wants" by George Michael. Or "Marco Polo" by Bow Wow featuring Souja Boy (you see, when I was just getting into music, I had a very eclectic taste. I still do. It's kind of unhelpful though, because I can't tell the difference between bad and good music. Did you know Jamiroquai is cheesy? I think he's lovely.) Anyway, it made me feel closer to her, and it also made me feel closer to myself.
I'm going to be real. What music is, is friendship. Just the way you might say, "Oh, I really like this friend. I thought I couldn't relate to anyone. This is the person out of these seven billion people I was meant to meet all along," really good music, your first obsession is, "Oh, I really like this song. I can't believe I finally found this, and it's been here all along. Wow, I feel so refreshed. For all these years, I've waited and I finally found it." I was thirteen, and I had found The Strokes.
After Take It or Leave It, I found Someday. I didn't find the video, but I remember how nostalgic it sounded, like I'd heard it before. It sounded like relaxing. Before all this, in the seventh and sixth grades, down to fourth and fifth, I was really into depressing music. I had this whole mentality (whenever I think of it, it makes my mind feel like a grid, like locks and cables pressing in ignorance), that there was my perfect music. I found some of it in The Fray, when I was eight, and obsessed with Cable Car. That's kind of a funny story, because my aunt's boyfriend just happened to have the CD "The Fray" and I listened to it on my CD player every night when I lay in bed; however, I did not fully understand the concept of an album.
For example, an album is listening, it does not include music videos, and that kind of breaks an eight year old of the New Age's heart because that means you have to shut up and listen. Also, albums are not composed of only singles. I knew this, but I was precocious and about that song and I did not think very well, I guess. I knew that because my mother had a tape with only one song on it; it said it was the soundtrack for Space Jam, and all it had was Kissed by a Rose by Seal on it. Kissed by a Rose by Seal. Even when I was four, when I first saw that, I shook my head and said to myself what a waste of money. So, you see I knew this, but the thing was, which leads us into our third point: Albums do not only have singles, but the songs on the album aren't all like the singles. The Fray is weird. Their lyrics made no sense. Their tunes would fade off. They would sound like death a lot. I would spend nights with a flashlight and the book underneath my covers, trying to decipher the philosophy I knew as an eight year old, and apply them to make sense with their lyrics. Anyway, once I understood The Fray (it took four years) I knew something was missing.
Obviously, what was missing was Coldplay, because if you want to listen to deep music that's extremely depressing and still be cool, that's the music for you. Or me. We're talking about me.
In the seventh grade, just around my birthday, Coldplay came out with their album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. It was a wonderful album, and I hated it the first time I listened to it because I ignored the laws afore mentioned. All of the songs were weird and too deep, they had weird titles like "42" and "Yes." They were about death. They sounded nothing like the greatest song in the world, "Viva la Vida." After a while, I took out my trusty CD player, and my iPod Nano, because by this time technology was popular, and listened to that album about forty times. I disected the lyrics, the songs, I sang them in the shower. I declared Coldplay knew the pain of my middle school existence. Even so, I knew that they were kind of lame. A real rock group with deep depressing feelings wouldn't be winning Grammy's and sing about the stupid things like color yellow. Come on, yellow is like the happiest color out there. My music was somewhere out there, too. I knew.
So there I was, a year later, on my computer listening to "Someday." "Someday" is a memory of itself. It doesn't remind you of "good old days" it reminds you of itself, it makes you bang your head against a wall because you think you've heard it before. And that's a wonderful feeling. The next song I listened to was Hard to Explain. "That was a lovely song," I said as I forgot it once I clicked from its window. I'd like to take this time to talk about Julian Casablancas's voice. Julian Casablancas has a wonderful, magical voice, like trees that never stop growing in a forest of bear transforming sprites. It's gruff and sweet, and he can sing in two octaves at the same time. It's layered with that coat you hear on old records playing back. But the strangest, and best part is, it sounds exactly the same live. It's one of those voices critics deem "powerful." It's very. It's very hard to explain. Do you get it? Because there's the Strokes song I wrote about quite briefly called "Hard to Explain."
I should stop telling jokes.
I'm not very good at doing that.
And I left it like that until it was April and also Spring Break. I don't know what sparked all this, but it began a little before, when my ears were blessed with "My music" with a little ditty called "This Life." Essentially, what "This Life" is is The Strokes's poke at a little of Sting and Santana music, which reminds me a lot of my childhood, and cool nights luminated with flourescent red lights, like abandonned bars on Streets named things like "S." S for Strokes, or Sting, or Santana. "This Life" features two rainbow guitars, racing through the mind like a gypsy guitar player strumming between two very old walls in Paris, or the genius of Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi. This was my music because it was angst and guitars, and the ruff forest sprite quality of Julian Casablancas's voice. And that's all I needed. The solo, might I add, sounds like a crying 40 year old man. But an attractive forty year old man, like George Clooney (when he was 40, like in O Brother Where Art Thou). And crying in a good way, for example if the forty year old man just won five hundred dollars in a church lottery, or if he had a baby.
The next thing I listened to was Between Love and Hate. Extensively, this was the first ever time I saw Julian Casablancas in action without throwing up. If you recall, the last time I listened to Julian Casablancas whilst also watching his face was with "Last Nite" in February, when he made me want to throw up. This time, he looked a lot different. Archives from my Gmail account have me telling my best friend Naomi, "the lead singer is strangely hot." This time, Julian had that same Bean sprout hair, except it was dyed black, and he had these stupid white shoes. He also had this Ghost Busters wife beater. I didn't care about the rest. Don't you know, the lead singer is always the most important person of a band.
I was joking. I was also in love with the creepy looking kid who looked like he got terrorized a lot in high school. He reminded me of my crush. I don't want to get into eighth grade crushes, I mean, talk about uncomfortable! My crush was really attractive though, and really nice. Just, they had the same essence I guess, he and the creepy kid. I would later learn this creepy kid was Sex God Nick Valensi, who's not a Sex God to me, but hey, he seems like a nice guy. Anyway, The Strokes proved to be an aesthetically attractive band, and Between Love and Hate wasn't that bad of a song too. It had these kind of octave lyrics, like double Julian. The best thing about Julian performing was that he'd always make these kind of nonsensical movements and bend his body over and squint his eyes. This was something I later learned as "being drunk." At the time, I thought he was just being cool. Now, since I know being drunk is wrong, I also know being drunk is not cool. Unless you're Julian Casablancas.
So what followed was my Spring Break's worth of falling in love with The Strokes. The first day I listened to their entire discography and hated it with all my heart and soul, if I had one. I'm just kidding. I have a soul.
I'm done making jokes, this isn't working out.
Part 2 in my "The Strokes" adventure coming soon. Read later to figure out the interesting things in my life that happened next.
I wrote this entire thing in the voice of Nathan Fielder of the acclaimed show, Nathan For You. I pick up on voices easily, and therefore just as easily get into talking like people. Call it a gift, to me it's annoying because it makes me feel crazy. But this was fun. Cool. Cool cool cool.
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