Let’s discuss any and all music here. Got a new artist who’s rocking your boat that you want to talk about? Post a video! Found out about that unearthed Coltrane album that has the jazz freak in you losing your mind? Lay it out for us! Have a theory about what your favorite band might do for their next album? Let’s hear it! Anything and everything music-related goes here.
This week’s discussion prompt comes courtesy of The Avocado’s very own Glyph:
What songs do you wish you could hear again for the first time?
There are all sorts of mind-blowing musical moments involving individual songs that I’d love to experience again and I may post about a few down below, but because I’d like to preserve it for posterity (and also because I’m lazy) here’s the story of the first time I ever heard “M1A1” by Gorillaz. I’ve posted this anecdote in the comments before, but as my great grandfather used to say whenever one of his sons pointed out that he was about to launch into a story he’d already told before: “Well, I’m telling it again!”
The year was 2001. After a week of camping around the Izu islands south of Tokyo, a night on a beach in Chiba where our tent nearly got washed away, and a day bouncing around out in the sun at Summer Sonic Music Festival, I was sunburned and completely exhausted. But we missed our train so we decided to stay at the all-night concert and rave featuring Gorillaz, who at that point I had heard of but still hadn’t actually heard.
All I wanted to do was sleep, but then I lucked into some magic mushrooms (which were still legal in Japan at that point) and took a gram about half an hour before the show was supposed to start. Gorillaz were supposed to go on at midnight, though it was almost 12:30 before they finally opened the doors to the venue. We went into a huge, dark concrete room and stood around for what seemed like forever until finally a blue screen lit up. Standing around, looking at a blue screen, waiting for the shrooms to kick in when suddenly I heard someone screaming faintly: “Hello! Is there anybody there?” over and over again. The voice kept getting louder; I was getting very uncomfortable and wondering what the hell was going on – then the music started, the visuals went up on the screen and I realized the shrooms had already kicked in.
After the concert (which was incredible, though it’s hard to be objective since I was high as balls) I curled up and fell asleep on the concrete floor (presumably with loud, fast electronic music playing) and woke up along with a bunch of other people a few hours later after the party was over.1
The footage below is mostly what we didn’t see, since the band were performing behind a screen the entire time:
As always, any and all music-related topics are welcome. Have fun, and rock out with yr guac out!