By Jer: Grand Reunion with an Analog Friend

Growing up in a small town in the years just before the whole Internet thing happened, new music was a special treat. It required a personal connection to someone in a bigger town with a better source of music than MTV, and if you grew up in Boron, you basically didn't have one. Because...who moved away? Much less to somewhere cool.

In 1992, my friend Dan Benedict went off to college. After several months, he generously sent me a tape (yes, children, a tape) of awesome music. I don't think I ever told him how awesome it was. I had some tapes, but this one dominated.

Dan wrote an album cover with band names and song titles. Sadly, the paper album cover disappeared way before the tape. Some of the bands had a distinctive sound, like Ministry and Jane's Addiction. I bought some albums the tape sampled, they were great.

But there was one song from that album I loved and had no idea where to get it. The lyrics, as best I recalled when like this:

You make yourself so beautiful
You make yourself so so beautiful
And I feel, feel I'm gonna
Set my self on FIRE

As a teenage boy, I felt the song perfectly stated how it felt to be with a girl you liked. Yeah, I never actually doused myself in gasoline, yet the sentiment was so accurate. I loved it. I loved the bass introduction, I loved the raw vocals, I loved energy and the yelling.

After I lost the tape, I still wanted to hear the song. It was one of those songs that you think of when your mind is empty, even for years and years. On my mission. Riding my bike. Driving to California. Trying to sleep. It was just kind of always there, as part of the background noise in my head.

So Saturday night I was cleaning the bathroom with headphones, when I suddenly realized that I HAD to hear the song; it was quite intolerable in this day and age that I didnt' have a copy. I went to Google and entered all the lyrics I could think of. I had done that several years ago and come up with squat.

Then, result number 12. I had it.

The album: "13 Songs" by Fugazi. Total mind blower. Even though I love Minor Threat, and I recently discovered Ian MacKaye's more recent post-post-punk effort, The Evens, I'd never really tried Fugazi.

Funniest part is, I had already put "13 Songs" on my player, as homework for myself to expand my knowledge of the post-punk classics. I had had this song in my pocket for months.

The song, which I was sure would be called "I'm gonna set myself on fire" is actually called "Margin Walker", yet another reason I hadn't found it previously. I found it on my player, and cranked it up.

It dominated the earth. I remembered the lyrics instantly, and loved them. I played it three times in a row. I felt like that guy in the eBay commercial who is reunited with his old toy boat.

I was so happy, I woke up Cyndie to tell her the great news. She tolerated my enthusiasm for a successful internet search like the genuine pioneer stock that she is.

This is it. To most of you, it will be a screamy, sophmoric irritation. Others of you will bore me with reasons other Fugazi songs are better or whatever. Yeah, it's not MacKaye singing, I know.

Few of you will enjoy it, but I think it is brilliant.

Margin Walker