Welcome to the newest regular feature here at True Genius Requires Insanity, the “Crate Dig.” As you may already be aware, we strongly feel as though it’s time to advocate a “back to basics” movement in music. We feel that instead of everyone being an innovator, that some of us need to be preserving the importance of original source material. To that end, the “Crate Dig” will feature members of the TGRIOnline.com staff, the “Hustlers of Culture,” digging through their mental crates to remember the songs that made them appreciate music. There will be some amazing, and yes, embarrassing choices here, but always the key impact is to remember when music was not something to be over studied, remixed, downloaded, forgotten and torn asunder. We’re remembering when music was simply a song you liked, and really couldn’t tell you more than a sentence or two why. Sit back, reminisce, and enjoy the building blocks of music appreciation.
Song: Simon and Garfunkel – “Cecilia”
Year released: 1970
Year “discovered” by me: 1995
Reason discovered: Girls.
Can’t tell a lie. I became obsessive about music around 1995. I always loved music, but I didn’t really get OCD about things until I was at this party at my friend Julie’s house, and unbeknown to me, Julie wasn’t really into me, but her friend Sandra was.
At 17, I was nuts about this girl named Julie. I played It’s Academic in high school (quiz bowl/Jeopardy for teens), and her school and mine were friendly rivals at tournaments our schools would attend. She was tall, blonde, had deep blue eyes, and was really attractive. Like in the “there’s no way in hell she should have been talking to me” sort of way. And yet, she openly talked to me. Freely. At will. About anything and everything. Me, being both a hopeless romantic and a fool, I was done for. Head over heels in love. Or so I thought. Julie was crazy for this guy named Glenn who went to her school who was in a band, played soccer, and was a slacker with long, mussed dirty blond hair. I was getting aced by Eddie Vedder, and had NO idea.
So, Julie had a party at her house one Saturday night. Invited me, just one week after she accepted my invite to be my junior prom date. So, I grabbed my best Polo button down, my flyest pair of Perry Ellis jeans, my suede bucks and doused myself in Safari cologne, and was off to Julie’s house. It started off so great. I was there, and was mingling, but none of the girls in the room seemed to want to talk to me (which given that I later found that the entire party was so that Julie wouldn’t feel so guilty about what’s about to happen in this story makes ALL the sense in the world now). Except Julie, who chatted my ear off, and was dancing with me, to yep, “Cecilia,” when everything suddenly changed.
At roughly the same moment, Julie’s now BOYFRIEND Glenn came downstairs after taking a shower, and through the door walked Julie’s friend Sandra. Upon Glenn walking in, Julie threw her arms around him, and came over to me and introduced this asshole as “Glenn….my boyfriend…but don’t worry, we’re still totally going to prom!” Dumbfounded, the lyrics to this wonderfully bouncy tune I’d never heard until that night, “Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart, your’re shaking my confidence daily” had an entirely different meaning. Upon noting that I looked like someone had killed my dog like Old Yeller, she then introduced me to Sandra (who had literally just walked in), who was a shorter Jamaican girl with these gigantic eyes and wonderful smile, and as Paul Simon sang “Jubilation, she loves me again, I fall on the floor and I’m laughing,” all was suddenly better in my universe as Julie had literally broken my heart and healed it in about one minute and 30 seconds.
Epilogue: I went to the prom with Julie, while dating Sandra, a relationship that happened literally three weeks after our first meeting. A month after that meeting, I engaged in some rather X rated behavior in Sandra’s backseat and was promptly caught by her mother, causing Sandra to be sent to Jamaica for two months in an attempt to cool off our relationship. Within one week of Sandra leaving, I met a girl named Chrisalyn, and we had a fling while Sandra was gone. Once Sandra returned, things were back to normal and Chrisalyn was forgotten.
“Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart, your’re shaking my confidence daily”
“Jubilation, she loves me again, I fall on the floor and I’m laughing,”
Sometimes, if even by accident, you feel like a song is literally written just for you.
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, ladies and gentlemen. Maestros of song and maestros of the fickle nature of the teenage heart.
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