Eight years ago, on Friday the 13th, I stumbled upon Seether.
Let me explain. No 7-UP CD, no Seether for me, no website. So let me put things into perspective how it all happened.
When I was in sixth grade, I started listening to the local rock station, 93X. My parents thought I did it to piss them off. Really, all I wanted to do was go to the dance with this one girl. I assumed she liked rock music, and I figured it would make me look more badass. She was the kind of girl who looked innocent enough, and yet if you looked at her wrong, she’d send one of your testicles into orbit. Painful. Long story short, I didn’t get the girl, but I got the music. And luckily, I didn’t lose my balls to a steel-toe boot.
And so, somewhere in the vast abyss of 2002 and 2003, I heard “Fine Again” on the radio. Once. That’s all I ever recalled hearing it. It got stuck in my head. It must have been right around the time my English teacher started showing Linkin Park and Evanescence music videos in class, because I ended up jumbling the lyrics with “In The End.” Sitting in the school psycho’s basement months later, I heard “In The End” and was disappointed when I discovered that it was the wrong song. (And may I add, my sixth grade English teacher did more for me to understand music and the lyrical content than anyone else ever will. Possibly even Shaun Morgan’s own interpretation of his lyrics and the countless interviews I’ve listened to over the years.)
So… being the little weirdo I was, I thought that I had come up with the few lyrics I remembered by myself. I might still have the words written down somewhere in an old notebook.
Fast forward to the day before Valentine’s in seventh grade. That’s 2004 for you math geniuses. Someone had stolen the candy I had bought for a girl. I left school empty-handed and sad. I don’t recall quite why I decided to take a walk, but I did. And there, in a snowbank, was a CD player. My bright light amidst darkness.
Once I had gotten home, I threw the CD into my computer and went for a glass of water. Upon coming back, I clicked on track 5 and fast-forwarded it, wondering to myself if the mystery song would be on there. And it was.
To this day, I still believe I’m one of a very few people to have listened to that song thousands of times on repeat. And I mean thousands. But aside from “Fine Again” keeping me going that year, the 7-UP CD managed to point me in the right direction for a number of bands. So go check out the full CD download @ http://www.seether-online.com/7UP. It helped me through a pretty bad patch in my life, maybe it can help somebody else.
