girlsdontcry's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feelings on buying Portishead's \"Dummy\". After years of going in to record shops and picking it up and balking at the �16 price tag, I'm finally the owner of Portishead's "Dummy". In 1995 I worked in a bookshop on Oxford Street in London. Well, I worked there from May 1995 to June 1996. And we could play whatever music we wanted. There was an odd choice of CDs. Carolyn used to torture me with Gene Pitney and Doris Day -- although I liked it when she played Marilyn Monroe (she was a lesbian, I always wondered if that was a lesbian thing). Nick played some Penguin Cafe Orchestra shit I never really liked. Jonathan the student brought in this awful Beatles joke band called, I think, The Ruckles, but that was only on for about ten minutes. We had Nina Simone; the Byrds (I love that "Eight Miles High" song); everyone would complain they would get suicidal if Joni Mitchell's "Blue" was left on for too long. I loved Neil Young's "Harvest Moon", except for the song about his goddamn dog. At Christmas, it was Phil Spector's Christmas. And somehow, Portishead's "Dummy" was in among those CDs. It would stay on for the whole day sometimes, and I loved it so much. Ever since then, if I ever hear anything from it, it takes me right back. Maybe I've just painted those days up in my mind in a beautiful rose hue, with touches of gold, but I think of it as the best year of my life. Why? I think it was just FUN. Maybe because in a way it was my first real year as an adult -- even though I was 22. Well, I have this weird thing though about not wanting to "own" a song sometimes if I really love it. Because when you don't own a song that you love and then you hear it, it's like the gods have smiled upon you for a minute. But now I own "Dummy". And now I'm finding out the names of songs I've loved for seven years. Like "Sour Times" and "Numb" and "Glory Box". I still know a lot of those people. And bookshop people are neat people. My kind of people. They're smart and funny and they read. But on the whole they're all a bit useless. They're always going to write that novel or finish that screenplay, or get a job in publishing. And some of us did. But mostly, they're just really ... well human. 9:03 p.m. - 2002-10-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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