May 10, 2015

Magic Man

Do you ever think of a person and suddenly they text or call you?

Or have a movie on your mind when you are flipping through the channels only to find that it just started on some cable station?

Stuff like this happens to me all the time. Not exactly those things, but stuff like them. In fact, I only have one specific "ability" when it comes to predicting silly, meaningless shit. Songs on the radio. I'll often be thinking of a song when all of a sudden it appears out of nowhere on whatever Sirius XM Radio station that I'm listening to at that moment. That happens to me all the time. ALL. THE. TIME.

But something happened the other day that truly freaked me out. I was thinking of a Sonic Youth song from their 1988 album Daydream Nation. The song, Teenage Riot, was the first single and probably the biggest hit for them off of that album. That's not saying much. I probably had never heard the song on the radio at any time, even in the early 90's when Sonic Youth was a bit of an "it" band. And if you are a fan of the band, you would definitely know it as a big moment in their career.

I became a fan of Sonic Youth a year or so later when their album Goo came out, and I immediately went and picked up the earlier albums. That's when I first heard Teenage Riot and I fell in love with it. I was a fan of the band and that scene prior to hearing that song, but I became obsessed shortly thereafter. It shaped my musical taste for the better part of a decade. Hugely important song in my life.

Yet, I had never heard it on the radio. Not even once. Until Friday.

I was thinking about how much the station Lithium on Sirius/XM Radio both rules and sucks at the same time. It rules because they play all that music that I was obsessed with during that decade. It sucks because they only play the mega-hits. If they play Nirvana, it's Heart-Shaped Box when it could be Love Buzz. If they play The Pixies, it's Here Comes Your Man when it could be Cactus. And when they really dig deep and play Sonic Youth, it's always Kool Thing. Always. And that's a great fucking song, but it's literally the only Sonic Youth they ever play.

I was thinking how great it would be if they would play a song like Teenage Riot for once. Just once. And I was thinking about how much I love that song and what it meant to me over the years. I sat there listening to the radio, just getting pissed about all of that.

So I turned the station to Pearl Jam Radio...and Teen Age Riot had just started.

SEE?


How the fuck does something like that happen at that exact moment?