I'm In Love With That Song: "I Turn My Camera On" - Spoon
Every now and again, a song evokes such a powerful emotional response that the notes themselves feel like buckshot, rather than just the usual tympanic tickle. You're not sure what and you're not sure why, but something gets triggered and you're left grinning, weeping or yanking off your headphones and blurting, "Holy fuck!"
Spoon's "I Turn My Camera On" (the groove-a-licious tune featured in a recent Jaguar commercial) hit me like that. I began overdosing on it the second it finished downloading, repeatedly dousing my brain in breathy male whispering and memory. Memory, specifically, of junior high dances. They made me deeply miserable at the time, a pudgy walking embodiment of The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" (I went and I stood on my own, and I left on my own, and I cried and I wanted to die). However, even then (but especially now), I reveled in the flood of fresh, giddy carnality which can only be produced by several hundred tightly-packed pre-teens, a bad DJ and entirely too many Twizzlers.
Without further ago, here's why I'm In Love With "I Turn My Camera On":
Thump, thump, thump.
Heartbeat. Bass. Sex.
A falsetto. A tease. A moan.
A New Jersey firehall, early 1990s, a swarm of junior high kids.
Potential.
Drop ceilings and flocked walls, everything the color of autumn on four packs a day: muddy yellows, oranges and browns. There was a wood-paneled bar with Hawaiian Punch on tap, a table stacked with paper-wrapped, rapidly-limpening tacos. A set of open double-doors did little to alleviate the waves of pre-adolescent heat sloshing across the linoleum; walking past them, though, was like plunging into a freshly-filled swimming pool: giddily, almost unbearably delicious.
The room was lit up with bare incandescents and yearning (more or less the same thing), fragranced by dry leaves, freshly-laundered Levis and overly-generous quantities of Designer Imposters cologne. And the taste? Cackled curses, chilly red sugar, but more than anything, the flavor which would linger so strongly on our collective palate for the next decade or more... dirty-sweet. That's GROSS, dude... and damn, I want it.
We'd filched illicit fingerfuls through the years... running along the train tracks, rifling through an older brother's under-bed magazine stash, any and everything ever sternly contradicted in a for-your-safety filmstrip. But this, THIS... glittery flurries of Wet 'n Wild eyeshadow, red-stained smiles, the warmth (of a windowless room), the pressure (of everything), the great ass-raps of the '90s... "all I wanna do is zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom and a boom-boom, just shake ya rump" *, indeed. Twizzlers and potential. It was an all-you-can-stuff buffet of New & Better, Next Big Thing, Will He Like My Mango Lipgloss? Potential. Huge and fantastic. When scrawling it in Sharpie on a beige metal bathroom stall, you absolutely do love him 4-EV-R, in a way inexpressible later in life with white dresses and mutual solemn promises. Some approached it head-on, swaying on sticky vinyl, a hand slid inside the HyperColor shirt, someone special (4-EV-R), their clumsy endearments and taco breath. Others (yours truly) watched from the sidelines, ever-hesitant to plunge in, looking sidelong and fearful at swimming lessons, sharks and Snoop Dogg.
"I like the way you do your hair, UH!
I like the styles that you wear, UH!
It's just the little things you do, UH!
That make me wanna get with you..." *
Will someone want to get with me (UH!)? Can a spell be written in Sharpie? Can I set down my paper cup, unstick my Keds from the floor and MOVE?
There's always potential.
* "Rumpshaker" - Wreckx-n-Effect. You're welcome / I'm sorry. Either-or.
Spoon's "I Turn My Camera On" (the groove-a-licious tune featured in a recent Jaguar commercial) hit me like that. I began overdosing on it the second it finished downloading, repeatedly dousing my brain in breathy male whispering and memory. Memory, specifically, of junior high dances. They made me deeply miserable at the time, a pudgy walking embodiment of The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" (I went and I stood on my own, and I left on my own, and I cried and I wanted to die). However, even then (but especially now), I reveled in the flood of fresh, giddy carnality which can only be produced by several hundred tightly-packed pre-teens, a bad DJ and entirely too many Twizzlers.
Without further ago, here's why I'm In Love With "I Turn My Camera On":
Thump, thump, thump.
Heartbeat. Bass. Sex.
A falsetto. A tease. A moan.
A New Jersey firehall, early 1990s, a swarm of junior high kids.
Potential.
Drop ceilings and flocked walls, everything the color of autumn on four packs a day: muddy yellows, oranges and browns. There was a wood-paneled bar with Hawaiian Punch on tap, a table stacked with paper-wrapped, rapidly-limpening tacos. A set of open double-doors did little to alleviate the waves of pre-adolescent heat sloshing across the linoleum; walking past them, though, was like plunging into a freshly-filled swimming pool: giddily, almost unbearably delicious.
The room was lit up with bare incandescents and yearning (more or less the same thing), fragranced by dry leaves, freshly-laundered Levis and overly-generous quantities of Designer Imposters cologne. And the taste? Cackled curses, chilly red sugar, but more than anything, the flavor which would linger so strongly on our collective palate for the next decade or more... dirty-sweet. That's GROSS, dude... and damn, I want it.
We'd filched illicit fingerfuls through the years... running along the train tracks, rifling through an older brother's under-bed magazine stash, any and everything ever sternly contradicted in a for-your-safety filmstrip. But this, THIS... glittery flurries of Wet 'n Wild eyeshadow, red-stained smiles, the warmth (of a windowless room), the pressure (of everything), the great ass-raps of the '90s... "all I wanna do is zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom and a boom-boom, just shake ya rump" *, indeed. Twizzlers and potential. It was an all-you-can-stuff buffet of New & Better, Next Big Thing, Will He Like My Mango Lipgloss? Potential. Huge and fantastic. When scrawling it in Sharpie on a beige metal bathroom stall, you absolutely do love him 4-EV-R, in a way inexpressible later in life with white dresses and mutual solemn promises. Some approached it head-on, swaying on sticky vinyl, a hand slid inside the HyperColor shirt, someone special (4-EV-R), their clumsy endearments and taco breath. Others (yours truly) watched from the sidelines, ever-hesitant to plunge in, looking sidelong and fearful at swimming lessons, sharks and Snoop Dogg.
"I like the way you do your hair, UH!
I like the styles that you wear, UH!
It's just the little things you do, UH!
That make me wanna get with you..." *
Will someone want to get with me (UH!)? Can a spell be written in Sharpie? Can I set down my paper cup, unstick my Keds from the floor and MOVE?
There's always potential.
* "Rumpshaker" - Wreckx-n-Effect. You're welcome / I'm sorry. Either-or.
Labels: La Musica, The Compleat Thumbscrew
posted by thumbscre.ws at
4/17/2006
7 Comments:
Fucking brilliant.
Yep. Exactly... except I recall someone bringing in sugar cubes. No, not acid-dunked sugar cubes, just sugar cubes. Because lots of sugar is "cool" and it makes you "hyper." Oh, and those excruciatingly awkward tasks set for best friends: "Go ask him if he likes me!" He never does. Hide in the most shadowy corner for the rest of the dance, where you can't wait until the damn thing ends... oh, and bringing in "Nevermind" so the DJ can play "Territorial Pissings," like he promised. And you wait the whole dance, but he only plays it AFTER the lights go on and everyone is leaving. God damn, Jul, way to bring back a sugar-encrusted, hormone-drenched dumptruck bed full of memories!
I have to say thank you for saving me from making myself (more) crazy. That song was enough to make me proclaim to my husband just a few nights ago, that perhaps Jaguar wasn't totally lost to the Fords forever.
Now I'll be thinking about this song and humming along while it plays on infinite loop (until I can't stand it any more) instead of branding all Jaguars as ugly and Taurus-like. (Well done advertising community.)
I haven't heard anything that I've been so completely taken with from the first beats since Butterfly by Crazy Town (familiar to most from the opening scene in Something's Gotta Give in 2003 or so).
THANK you.
Ahhh... Spoon. How I love thee.
In fact, it was the Spoon show last June, at 37 weeks, that encouraged my babe to make an early debut. Clearly, the womb was just too restrictive. Baby heard Spoon and had to get up and dance. Not even the unborn can resist.
I would just like to thank you for your junior high dance description, which I read last night, and which was so damned perfect I have had Bel Biv Devoe--nothing says 7th grade dance like Bel Biv Devoe, unfortunately--in my head ever since.
"That girl is POISOOOON!"
That is exactly the junior high dance, right down to a room of thirteen year olds shaking their groove thing (such as it were) to Rumpshaker. Usually right around the time the DJ would put on "Should I stay or should I go" or "Lady in Red."
I'm downloading that song now.
I checked out the link and I like it too.... but isn't it a ripoff of "Emotional Rescue" by the Stones? (bass line, falsetto, etc.) Not to rain on your parade or anything :-)
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