It's Tuesday morning, 7:00am. I have to be on campus even earlier than usual, so I'm headed out to my car and it's barely warm enough so that I don't see my breath, and I'm angry, because I wish it was.
Something catches my eye, sitting in the middle of my driveway.
It's a cheap cassette tape, unlabeled, the kind you'd get three of at the dollar store.
I throw much junk in the car, grab the tape, and put it in the deck as I head screaming down Northfield Lane.
It takes about two seconds for me to recognize what it is.
It's a tape I haven't seen in at least ten years. It didn't fall out of my car, because I lost track of this tape long before I even bought this car six years ago. I don't know where it came from, or how I got it back.
Here it is, in handy flash-player format.
That would be the earliest-known original recording of yours truly. Actually, it's myself, Sicky (now married), Progman (now married), and Barry (now married) in my parents' basement, sometime in fall 1995 or spring 1996. I'm playing the beatbox, I think, and singing. Sicky is playing guitar, though you can only hear him at the beginning and end. I'm not sure what Progman and Barry are doing, but I definitely remember them being there.
That song, the "Ich bin also blau Polka," was written that afternoon. I wanted to see if I could write a polka in 12-bar blues. It's also the only song I know to have actually been on the radio... once... on the Napoleon Sunday afternoon polka show. It might have only made it halfway through before the deejay (also known as my mom) yanked it.
The first verse really is the German version of the English second verse, just badly translated and worse-ly pronounced. I still, internally, refer to my car keys as "meine autotasten."
Anyway, it's a bit of a miracle, because I haven't the slightest idea where this tape came from, and I think it's hilarious, especially my line after the song's over. There's other stuff on the tape I'll record when I have time; a B-side metal version of the same song, and a duet of Stealers Wheel's "Stuck In The Middle With You" by Sicky and I -- and neither of us know the words. Very strange. Very old.
Very old.
