ittookseconds:

Three minutes and thirty-one seconds: “At Home He’s A Tourist” had a massive effect on me when I first heard it, buying the History Of The 20th Century Gang Of Four compilation on a second-hand tape. I think it was the first song I fell in love with for its guitars.

I loved a lot of guitar music, of course, but mostly bands like The Smiths where it was the lyrics and attitudes that attracted me. I didn’t really care about the sounds guitars made. At school people into guitar music tended to be into classic rock, or metal, and in both cases the solos were kept separate from the rest of the track, and the lead guitar worked broadly in service to the song. I’d heard plenty of then-modern indie where the guitar worked as a kind of colour field of texture but I’d not dug into post-punk and so I wasn’t prepared for how the guitars on “Tourist” splintered, fought with the vocalist, broke out of their confines, stabbed and tore at the groove. I thought, I still think, it’s an incredibly exciting record.

What would your 3’31” track be?

 This was the first Gang Of Four song I ever heard, on a college radio show broadcast at 2 in the afternoon on some day when I was home from school (pretty sure it was spring break). A few months later, while visiting my grandfather four states away from my home, I found a copy of the very same cassette compilation, A Brief History Of The 20th Century, that Tom mentions above for sale in a mall record store. I only had $4 and some change on me, but it was in the cutout bin and priced at $3.95. I bought it and spent the rest of the afternoon reading Greil Marcus’s liner notes while my parents walked from store to boring store. I’m thinking all of that happened in 1990? I still have that tape today, and in fact, it was playing constantly in my car for the last half of November. A few of the songs towards the end, that were recorded after Allen and Burnham had left the band, don’t really do it for me, but for the most part it’s a fucking awesome comp. And this song is one of the best songs on it.

1. andrewtsks reblogged this from ittookseconds and added:

   song I ever heard,...college radio show broadcast at 2 in the afternoon on some day...

2. andrewtsks liked this
3. ley-lines liked this
4. koganbot reblogged this from ittookseconds and added:

   is Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time.”

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6. ittookseconds posted this