“Disappointed” (Ivy): Should you insist on simmering for the first three months of the year in an ugly mood, at least set it to a catchy tune.
How I Heard It: 2000
“Charm Attack” (Leona Naess): In March 2000, I did Alternative Spring Break in Concord, California. We shared sleeping space on the floor of a storefront church off Todos Santos Plaza with a group from North Dakota State, who drove non-stop from Fargo to Concord and truly were some of the nicest people I’d ever met. We worked, however, with a group of from Verde Valley School, who seemed to all be rather uninterested, wealthy teenagers from Orange County, which was amusing. I remember having a conversation with one girl who helped me screed the concrete for a driveway that went something like this:
Girl: I wish I knew sign language better, though.
Me: Oh, yeah? That’s nice.
Girl: Yeah, I have a friend back home who’s deaf. But she’s a tweaker, and she moves her hands really fast, so I can never really tell what she’s saying.
Anyway, the kid who drove our van insisted on listening to Akinyele on a loop, which was hilarious at first. But that inevitably grew old, so I eventually started listening to the radio on my headphones, and some San Francisco station had “Charm Attack” in rotation.
Filed under music
