Turn on the Bright Lights

Listening to Interpol for the first time; or 2003 was a year:

I was living with Jessica, in Pomona, in the apartment with the short shaggy brown carpet. My room was upstairs, with windows that faced the 10, and at night the headlights would track onto the part of my wall just below the ceiling. My bed was a mattress on the floor with a fitted sheet and a comforter and my stereo was on the floor against the wall. It played tapes, cds, and I think it had a record player on top, but the record player might have come later. This might have been the stereo I bought myself in high school, with the twin tape decks for making mix tapes. 

I don’t remember how I first heard Interpol, but I think it was on a CD I got for free in a copy of NME magazine. I used to go to Tower Records and read the music magazines inside the store, so I wouldn’t have to buy them, and I probably stole the cd compilation that came tucked inside. There is a 50/50 chance I bought the magazine for the CD, but I was someone who was followed inside that record store because they knew I stole magazines and cd comps. I once went on a few dates with a guy who worked there and he told me they had me on camera, so I stopped going there out of sheer embarrassment. His name was Jon and his coworker was in love with him and hated me, and once we all went to a show together and she was so mean to me that I snuck into a bathroom and called my best friend crying because I didn’t know what to do. Jessica told me she'd punch that girl in the face for me.

Hearing Interpol was months after that, when I had moved to Pomona from Anaheim to get an apartment with Jessica near her campus, the end of summer before her junior year. It would have been my junior year too except I had dropped out of college after december of sophomore year, and moved to Orange County to be with my friends from high school, who all stayed in Southern CA. By the time jessica and I lived together, I was infatuated in love with a boy who would stop talking to me and ghost me right after my 21st birthday, near the end of September, but this must have been August or early September because we were still talking. He lived an hour and a half away, but if I called he would answer. He thought Interpol was a poor man’s version of Joy Division, and said the lead singer was obsessed with Ian Curtis and trying to be him. I agreed with him, at the time, and I listened to a lot of Joy Division, like we all did. This was 2003, when everyone was wearing black t shirts that were either Led Zeppelin t shirts or Unknown Pleasures t shirts. I listened to Interpol in my room–I think most likely Obstacle 1 or PDA or NYC, and I put the song on a tape. I don’t remember who for, but I remember liking the song, even though I thought I knew better than to like them. I wanted to be like the people whose opinion I valued. 

I saw them, a few weeks later, play the Glass House on their first North American national tour. They were already big in Europe, and had a lot of press attention by the time they toured the US. I think they had a major label. Anyway, I liked Interpol and I didn’t tell people that I did, but I did. I remember later, years later, when the boy who I was in love with was talking to me again, he told me he liked Interpol, and it made me wonder if I had made up his calling the singer a poser. 

Music was what I talked about to people, and what I listened to people talk about. It was what I paid attention to, and if someone referenced a band I had never heard of, I found out about them. The internet in 2003 wasn’t what it is now. It wasn’t the go to for music research, although it was a place you could go to to try to find mp3’s and uncorrupted music files to download and burn to a cd. Back then the internet was all message boards and fan pages and lists, like the site called scenepoints.com that was just a list of all the punk and indie shows in LA that day. Every day someone updated the list and none of what was listed was a link. You had to do the work yourself.

I read everything I could get my hands on–the music magazines, of course, but I would read cd booklets cover to cover, especially the thank yous, where the band would thank other bands, and I would try to find ways to listen to those bands, or buy their cd, or send away in the mail to the record label for a sampler or comp. I would trade mixtapes with people, or burn people cds and get one in return, and if I bought a 7 inch I would listen to the B side as much as the A side. I fell in love with Gang of Four, and read books that in book stores about the 70’s British music scene and discovered Wire, and The Slits, and Television, and the Bush Tetras. I went to so many shows–it didn’t matter if my friends would go, I would go alone. I went to clubs where they spun new wave and no wave and electroclash, and those I went to with friends. We would dress up in thrifted heels and tight bootcut jeans and little boy blazers and chunky jewelry and I would try and straighten every last wave out of my hair and put on shimmery brown or gold eyeshadow and we would meet in parking lots and pregame a drink in someone’s car before going in.

Sometimes we would hang out outside the whole time, if we couldn’t pay the cover, because back then people went in and out and smoked cigarettes and we could just stand around and talk until 2 am. There were specific nights we would always go to, like Tuesday nights at Cinespace, when Steve Aioki (who was not known outside of Dim Mak records yet) would dj and play the Rapture and the Deceptacon remix I loved to dance to. He was great–he knew all of us by sight, and we always said hi, and he always played our requests. 

When we went out to bars, after I turned 21, I would buy drinks with other peoples money or my debit card, and I never knew how to tip, and I’m not sure that anyone told me until much later. It didn’t seem like it mattered–so many people were buying so many drinks, cash was all over the place. I worked two waitressing jobs when I lived with Jessica, and she was jealous because she thought I always had money, but easy come easy go–I spent it on gas, on driving to LA, my half of rent, on music, on shows, on thrift store sweaters, on drinks and all night diners and cereal and soymilk. I don’t remember cooking, or what I ever ate at my apartment, but I know I was never hungry, until after midnight at Cantor’s Deli in Hollywood with a bunch of drunk friends. I had a 200 page CD booklet in my car. I had a flip cell phone I didn’t pay my own bill for that ran out of data/text messages every month, so I could read incoming but couldn’t send any out until the next period started. I don’t think texts were as common in 2003, because it took so long to write them before T9 texting, so everyone called everyone and one of my friends had a pager so we would beep her and she would call from a home phone or a friends phone. We had land lines in our apartment, I think, and we didn’t have internet at home but would go to campus computer labs. I was given a small digital camera for my 21st birthday, but I never thought to take it to shows, and just used it for myspace. I used film cameras when we partied, and I'm glad, because the digital camera and any memory card is long gone, unsaved to the computer I didn't have, but the film remains.