Stereolab - Margerine Eclipse
No, it hadn’t been switched with one of my aunt’s new-age relaxation tapes. No mistake had been made; this was Stereolab.
An ominous feeling hit my gut as I saw the album title. “That’s not how you spell margarine” I thought. Super. I gave a sigh as I opened the puce-colored case and put the disc into my CD player. “I hope I don’t get hate mail for this one too” I think as I press play.
The sound filled my room; it was the noise of a synthetically-mastered drug binge. I sat in shock for a few seconds before the impact set in, then pulled open the CD player. No, it hadn’t been switched with one of my aunt’s new-age relaxation tapes. No mistake had been made; this was Stereolab.
I looked over the case as I casually listened to the first song. A bizarre combination of puce, dirt brown, and traffic-cone orange, it looked as if Van Gogh had lost his lunch on paper. As I turned my attention back to the music, I realized how incredibly hard it was to do so. I couldn’t concentrate on it; my eyes lost focus and I fell into a stupor. It took me a minute to realize that the song had changed. “That can’t be right,” I thought, “this is the same song.” I skipped ahead- the same song. Again and again, same song, same song, same song. Twelve songs, exactly the same.
Where do you go when the world has handed you a pile of shit and the man in charge of brilliant ideas is out of town? To the people! Headphones and my copy ofMargerine Eclipse in tote, I hopped into the station wagon and made my way to Pizza Hut. An hour and a half later, my inventory now included three large, meaty pizzas, and, complaining under my breath about pathetically slow “fast food” service, I floored it to the mall.
Ah, the mall; where the public convenes - every one from overweight middle-agers to vapid preteens to high college students. I set up on a bench outside of the record store and carefully scribbled across one pizza box top “Listen to some music and get some FREE PIZZA!” And I waited, like a shark baiter who’s just poured blood into the water. They could just smell the mega-processed super-saturated goodness. Americans are so easy to manipulate.
The first person to stop was one of the mall’s many blue-haired power-walkers. She gave me a grandmotherly smile and adjusted her horned rimmed glasses as I turned the music loose on her. For a minute I thought she may have been having a stroke, and then she took off the headphones and handed them to me with a tolerant look of confusion.
“What is it, dear?”
“They’re a European pop group,” I reply, “Mostly computer synthesized…”
“Oh,” an interruption, “And how many strings does that have?”
I made a few notes on my clipboard. So much for that generation.
As she power-walked away with a fresh slice of sauce, cheese, and a part of at least six different animals, I was approached by a couple my own age. It was the guy who took the headphones and fit them carefully around liberty spikes and chains connecting piercings. His girl just stared at me through her cat-slit contacts, looking as though she wanted to drink my blood. I rubbed my neck and turned to watch the man’s response. His expression never changed, he simply passed the headphones over to the countess. They shared a look, then each spat at my feet in turn, muttering something that sounded disturbingly like a Celtic curse in my direction. Uh-oh.
I breathed a sigh of relief as young man came out of Abercrombie & Fitch and crossed over to me. By now I was steadily losing pizza, and hope. He made pleasant small talk and took his turn with the headphones.
“Huh” he said shortly. “Are they, erm … are they speaking English?
“Well,” I replied, “No, this song’s in French. Try this.” I skipped ahead to one of the English songs.
His expression became even more pained.
“I don’t get it.”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t understand them.”
“Oh. Does it matter? They’re speaking the international language of music.”
He shoved the headphones at me.
“I only speak American.”
Well, there you go. Though he, apparently, could bridge the language gap long enough to speak fast food. By now, my pizza was getting cold, the crowd was thinning, and I was getting desperate for something I could use. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.
“Pizza?” a little voice said, and I opened my eyes to see a little boy holding the hand of a man that appeared to just have spent a week lost in the desert. “What the hell,” I thought, and I let the kid listen.
“It sounds like an elevator” the kid said, as his little head swung back and forth with the rhythm of the song. I suddenly became more alert. “Hey… it does. That’s exactly how it should be described,” I thought to myself. He handed the headphones back to me, now covered with something sticky from his dirty little hands.
“Let’s go, Daddy,” he said “I don’t like robots. They make bad music.”
I think I need to give little Billy my job.
(Elektra Records)