For the past two days, I’ve had The Roches’ Pretty and High in my head. By this morning, it had developed into an nonstop concert of songs from their first album.
This album… where do I even start with it? Aimee Lebec, I guess. When I was a freshman in college, I hung out with a girl named Aimee Lebec. She was from New York. She was Jewish and French Canadian. She was lost and a really big mess. Anyway, she introduced us (me, Mark Edmonds, etc.) to this record by The Roches. She was on her second copy, as she’d worn down the grooves on her first. I bought a cassette tape, which wore down as well, and later a used copy of the record for my very own. It still plays. Aimee left CMU after freshman year… maybe even after first semester, I can’t remember for sure. In any case, she was lost to us. I try to look her up on the internet from time to time, but I’ve never come up with anything.
My most intense memories of this album, however, come from sophomore year, sitting in Mark Edmonds and Dave Rager’s apartment in the chair I claimed I’d be buried in, Shawn O’Donnell at my feet. The emotional impact of that time is so strong for me. I was ecstatic and wretched all at once, in that way that I think only exists at nineteen or twenty. Are there ever friends like that again? And I don’t necessarily mean those are the best friends (though, considering how much affection I still have for those people, I think that isn’t far off), but there’s something so intense about that whole time that is never quite repeated. There aren’t many people who know me as well as those people do, even after all these years.
Isn’t music an amazing thing? What it can bring back to you, clearer than the present?
For those of you who use iTunes, I’ve noticed that you can pick up this album, here. God, I love the internet.
This entry has been brought to you by Warner Brothers, Robert Fripp, Andrew Carnegie and the City of Pittsburgh.
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