today : put your hands together one time

It's odd how cultural consumption occurs. I have an aversion to hype and advertising and so tend to avoid the stuff that's now, as it is pretty much all slathered with hype. I also have the basic knowledge that a DVD or CD that is 15quid today will be 3 quid in nine months. There are certain cultural sources - magazines, reviewers and the like - that I pretty much trust, but often I'll just wander down a route of reading, watching or listening due to some bizarre serendipitous event. An example is that I discovered one of my most favourite tunes when searching for a news radio station whilst driving through New York State in 1991. The RDS alighted on a jazz station just as it started to play a song that caught my ear. I was heading along an overpass through the centre of somewhere like Vestal, with the city lights splayed out below my eye-line. The temperature was high enough that I had the window open and a cool night breeze was wafting into the cabin of the car. I was speeding along on cruise control. The groove of this tune matched the mood perfectly and I listened, hypnoitised until it spliced into the next tune, which was some badger-strangling monstrosity in 6/17 time, featuring much atonal noodling. I never got to hear the tune again, or find out what it was until a long time later. I was at a friend's house. This friend has a rather annoying habit of keeping the TV on loudly whilst I am visiting. The TV dominates the room and everyone sits and watches it rather than conversing, which sometimes makes me question why I even visit. On the TV was a film, reaching its conclusion. It was the rather soppy John Cusack/Kate Beckinsale romcom Serendipity. Two guys were on a plane and for about 20 seconds the scene was soundtracked by my New York State tune. I later used the IMDB to track down the soundtrack and then Kazaa to download the individual tunes (this was quite difficult because the film features quite a few instrumentals due to the character of Kate Beckinsale's fiance being a pretentious musician). Eventually I found it, my personal holy grail. It was Rose Rouge by St Germain.