Box cars are pulling out of town

Posted By KJ / 24th August 2010

28(!) years ago I was in a record store in Nacogdoches, Tx pretending to be attending Stephen F. Austin State Univeristy.  Mostly I was just theredrinking beer, hanging out at the fraternity house, going on drunken road trips to Dallas and Houston and just generally being a layabout.  But I was having fun.

Being the totally cool guy that I was, I hung about in the record store alot.  Whilst browsing around in this record store, I heard something that probably wasn’t as joyful as say, a farting god, but it was pretty close.  I stopped what I was doing, flipping through the albums trying to look cool and trying not to see who was looking at me the totally cool guy, and listened.  I coolly sauntered up to the counter and said something like, “Hey man, that’s a righteous tune playing on the system.  I dig it, who is it man?” (I was DOWN with it, you know?)

I’m sure the clerk, who was obviously much, much cooler than I, sneered at me and maybe even spit before telling me that it was R.E.M.  Pronouned as one word not the letters.  ”Yeah man it’s totally rim.  Yeah, we’ve been listening to them for ever here.” “Yeah man, that’s like really cool you know.  So yeah, where’s the album.  I totally don’t have this one”

I bought Chronic Town.

My life took a hard left turn then, musically. And kind of generally.

At the time, I was just your average suburban teenage kid.  Black Sabbath, Rush, Yes.  The usual suspects.  Nothing different because, hey that would be you know, different.

Chronic Town is still one of my favorite albums of all time.  It was new, it was different, it spoke to me.  Depending on the amount of beer and illegal substances it spoke differently sometimes.  But it spoke.   I listened.  You can too.  Here’s  a few videos of songs from the album.  Now you can be cool like me without having to hang around the record store and look silly.  I’ve taken care of that for you and looked silly enough for both of us.