DJ PressPlay

Soundtrack to my life;
A piece of me, of you, there.
Play it one more time

What is it about certain traumatizing events that cause us to break all the rules? For example, I have a strong personal belief about not repeating songs. You know how tween girls love to do with their Backstreet Boys (or whatever they listen to). This principle was developed during my year at boarding school when I had an actual ROOMmate. As in we co-habitated a 9 x 9 cell (aka dorm), with bunkbeds and everything. The horror. Being an only child thrown into that situation was not cool; the mere concept of sharing anything, let alone a bedroom, was completely foreign to me. So please understand that I had some feeling of animosity towards Abi from the very beginning. The relationship may have been salvageable, if it hadn't been for one irrefutable fact: she was a Song-Repeater. She loved to play songs, or more accurately ONE song, over and over until it was the only thing I could hear in my head. A lobotomy could not remove this thing. The song that year, and I will never forget it as long as I live, was Murder She Wrote by Chaka Demus and Pliers (I had to look that up and frankly its hilarious). If you're not familiar with this particular piece of musical diarrhea, count your blessings. You're missing out on such inspired lyrics as:

Now dis one dedicated to the girls
Dem wid di angel face and the devil heart
Yuh no say Ragamuffin Chaka Demus an youth called Pliers
Come to deal with your case
Step up my youth - Hear dis!

Multiply that my 100 decibels and 2 million hours and you might begin to comprehend the slightest measure of my pain. Oh, and then there's the unforgettable chorus:

Murder she wrote (fi real fi real)
Murder she wrote
Murder she wrote
Murder she wrote

Dat is 100% fi real. I could not be makin dat up, mon.

Needless to say, my personal values lie strictly against song repetition. It's juvenile, it's annoying, it's insulting. However, now is a time of rule-breaking and I have found myself listening to the same 10 Dashboard songs for two weeks strait, probably ruining any future enjoyment of the album in the process. My life is being played out in 40 minute segments. And I'm not talking about idle background music. Un-uh. This is loud, passionate, sing-along, full-tilt consumption of the music. I'm thinking about the 1200 steps I'll need to kick this addiction.

That was until today, when salvation arrived. A concerned friend (no doubt worried about my mental stability since my vocabulary was reduced to only Dashboard lyrics) actually mailed me a new CD! Aside from the excitement of getting an actual present in the actual mail (you can touch it!), the CD is perfect. City and Colour (3 cheers for proper Canadians spelling) is suitably raw and haunting, and will accompany me in my endeavors indefinitely.

As long as I keep breaking the rules...