Waking Life

I usually wake up about fifteen minutes after I fall asleep. It has been this way for a few years now. Even if I am really tired and immediately conk out, I can look at the clock when I wake up and approximately fifteen minutes will have passed. Last night was an exception. My eyes peeled back after maybe an hour of sleep and a song was in my head. It had been the soundtrack to a dream. It was surely one that I had not heard in years and I can think of no recent incident or memory that might have triggered it. Even stranger was that I had no trouble thinking of the title and band: “Sandpit,” by Curve. The lyrics begin, “All these savages, born without rules…” and then, “I swallowed my pride/ gutted me from the inside/It left me in this pool of doubt/ now I don’t think I can get out.” Curve was an overlooked, shoegazey band that appeared on the scene around the same time as the other atmospheric bands with monosyllabic names like Ride, and Lush. Now, it’s not lost on me that it is kind of ironically cheesy (or would that be coincidentally cheesy?) to talk about a so-called dreampop band that popped right into my dream. Nevertheless, I couldn’t sleep and thought it would be fun to see if I could track the song via Kazaa. Sure enough, there were a few Sandpits out there, but none would successfully download. A bit nostalgic, I searched for some other forgotten faves. Here’s what I downloaded: “Not Too Soon” (Throwing Muses), “Red House” (Shudder to Think — a guy I worked with in college radio called them “Shudder to Stink”), “Superblast” (Lush), some Slint songs, “Where is My Mind” (Pixies), “Swallow” (My Bloody Valentine), “Drown” (Smashing Pumpkins), and “Crazy Town” (Velocity Girl).

January 23rd, 2003