Rockapaella | Rockawritings | Share With You the Moments of Me

SHARE WITH YOU THE MOMENTS OF ME:

I don't deny the fact that I'm a bandwagon jumper. I discover everything ten minutes too late. Too late for kitchy obscure coolness. Too early for trendiness.

Laura in the Middle: The Story of My Dorky Life.

When do I stumble (Actually, it's more re-stumble, but I'm getting ahead of myself.) across Rockapella? When they release 25 oh-so-hip and retardedly expensive Japanese import albums? When they play Salem freaking High School in Salem freaking New Hampshire for like three bucks a ticket? When they're experimenting and finding their musical legs? When they're young and quirky and hungry and irreverent and have funny hair? No sir, says I.

I find them when they're teetering on the brink of mega-success. Post-Christmas album. Pre-Billboard-smash live album. Bottom line: My timing sucks. But at least I made it in time for desert, even if I can't lay claim to one of those "I loved them even before they went Adult Contemporary..." stories.

Guess how I found them? No really. Guess. How about I tell you? One word. Napster. Go ahead. Yell. Scream. I'll wait until you're done. Tell me that I'm stealing the bus fare out of Scott Leonard's pocket. (Now that, my friends, would be a challenge, not to mention a fun way to spend an afternoon.) Tell me that I'm robbing hard working musicians of their hard-earned royalties. Tell me that I'm amoral and that I'm earning my bootlegging illegal self six (more) years in Purgatory for my sins. But guess what? The cursed program earned Rockapella at least one new fan. One who ran out to an actual music store and bought the actual CDs about 12 seconds after she hit "download." So yeah. I'm going to hell. And the road leading there is paved with shiny new copies of Don't Tell Me You Do.

It was a random pang of nostalgia. Because after all, where does one get an actual copy of the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? theme song after all these years? Darned if I know. So I turned to Lucifer and Napster and found it, quick like a bunny.

Me: Instantly 11 years old again. Instantly remembering what a seriously quirked-out, well-conceived show that was. Instantly remembering how cool and liberated and brunette, and frankly, kind of a feminist Carmen Sandiego was in those days and how badly I wanted to be her. (Heck. I still want to be her.) Instantly remembering how I became the youngest person ever in my school to win the geography bee that year. Instantly remembering Sean and his bizzaro dreadlocks and how weird it was that they let them sing the lyric, "I don't give a damn 'cause I'm stone dead already" on PBS. At 4:00 in the afternoon no less. Scott the Dying Informant. Barry dressed as a woman. The loot! The alley. The vests. By God, it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen on television. Period. If it were on today, I'd watch it. I'd tape it. I'd rewind the Scott parts and play them over and over and over.

But the music. Ah, the music. I didn't know what a capella was. I just knew that it was fun. Jump-around-and-be-a-hyper-eleven-year-old fun. As assuredly as an entire bottle of Mountain Dew would have done back then, it sent me bouncing off the walls. I didn't care why. All I knew was that Rockapella was the best and that Gaborone was the capital of Botswana.

Fast forward a few years. Home on Thanksgiving break. The Folgers Commercial. I had a minor fit. Really. The only one I really recognized was Barry. I'm thinking, "That sort of remotely resembles the Artists Formerly Known as Rockapella, but where is Braid Boy? And if Braid Boy left, why are there still too many of them?" I swear, mathematically challenged person that I am, I just kept counting them, thinking that I was counting someone twice. Or maybe that Sean had radical cosmetic surgery or something.

Five. Five. OK. So there's five of them now. Go figure. Commercial ends. Laura moves on. Gorges herself on Thanksgiving dinner. Forgets about Rockapella.

But it's the nostalgia that got me after all these years. One download, when something's good, inevitably leads to two, leads to six, leads to Newbury Comics, leads to me getting absolutely drag-me-out-of-bed-in-the-morning and lay-me-down-at-night obsessed with a little album called 2 and all of the dreamy, unquestionably grown up love songs contained therein. Love songs. Love songs. Love songs that aren't written by Max Martin or Diane Warren. Love songs that make love sound kind of appealing, and freakishly enough, kind of real. Love songs that float float float out of the speakers. And after a year of Britneys and Boys who presume to sing but can't, it was nice to hear Men who actually can.

Then, a week later, comes foray #2 up Newbury St. at strange hours of the night for Don't Tell Me You Do and that's it. Game over. Hooked. Addicted. Tie me off Elliot, and put it in my veins. I need it to live. Check me into The Betty and call it a night. I love Rockapella.

So now I'm all conflicted again. I'm a virgin. Never seen a concert. Too much of a pathetic, floundering, unenlightened newbie to be a diehard and too savvy to be one of the Completely and Utterly Ignorant. But these are the exciting days of the relationship when everything's new and you look upon the world with new eyes or something. Right? Right! I'm optimistic about my Rockapella fandom. And time heals all. Even memories of one crazy fan running at the bandwagon full speed and aggressively hurtling herself onto the back of it.
--Laura, 03.02.01

Rockapaella | Rockawritings | Share With You the Moments of Me