Ever wonder if it’s forever, the moment passes,
but I feel you now, all the way down…
Biffy Clyro “All the Way Down”
We seemed to always be the first ones to rescue each album from the stores. And I say rescue, because none of the shop assistants working at those record stores, no matter how much they loved music, could ever get to treat those little square boxes with the same special care we did.
In fact, we were probably never the first ones. The kind of album that we were looking for, from American or English indie bands, did only reach the shopping center of our village weeks after its original publication abroad.
It was then that the Barcelona of the late nineties became our little paradise on earth, a paradise with its epicenter in Carrer Tallers, the endless source of the one and only thing that mattered to us in life: music. Stores like Revolver, Discos Castellò or Arise, kept those little gems that we wanted so badly.
The ritual after the release of an album was always the same, but each of the instances became a unique moment, almost as unique as each album. I remember the excitement around the opening of the plastic wrap, inhaling the smell of the paper booklet for the first time, reading the poetry in the lyrics without having heard a song yet. But the real magical moment came with the first listening of the albums opening theme.
“It’s My Job to Keep Punk Rock Elite” of ‘So Long and Thanks for All the Shoes’ by NOFX, “Feticeira” from White Pony Deftones, “Panic”, the ‘Launched’ Beatsteaks, “Glitter and trauma “, from Biffy Clyro’s album of the same name… the list is endless.
We had a different way of understanding music. We stared at each other without saying a thing – but telling each other everything – while the first notes came out of the huge black speakers in those years. We felt superior to the rest of the world for finding concealed nuances in each song, unveiling clever hidden tricks in the magic of each rhythm, in the mastery of every unexpected change in the tone, in those choruses full of poetry that made our souls explode.
Perhaps someday the time will come when we will realise that we were never that special, that despite what we had always thought, we were no more than simple organisms that are deconstructed with the proper arrangement of notes…
So fragile …
Our soul boiling with every chord, our mind in full swing while deciphering the impossible lyrics of every song.
Those long afternoons lying in bed, the music pounding our eardrums at an insane volume.
And our eyes, lost in a kind of unbelievable trance. Those contained screams camouflaged behind each instrument.
The black rubber flooring of the stage, the yellow light in the tubes. Feeling that the chill that once ran through your skin is still there, endless.
Perhaps someday the time will come when we will realise that we were never that special…
Perhaps…