Yesterday was a complete washout. It started with waking up with a neck ache, which is always a promising sign that the day is about to become a meaningful character-building exercise. To make matters worse, there was no coffee because I had an early doctor’s appointment. Nothing says "ready to face the world" quite like dragging yourself out the door uncaffeinated.
By the time the appointment wrapped up, complete with a flu shot and blood work, my head was pounding and I felt like I had been volunteered as a human science experiment. Whatever energy I started the morning with had been extracted and carefully stored in a vial somewhere.
So I waved the white flag, took the rest of the day off, and fully committed myself to the noble art of wallowing in misery. Sometimes the universe hands you a productive day. Other times it hands you a sore neck, no coffee, a needle in each arm, and an invitation to spend the afternoon starring in your own low-budget medical drama. Yesterday was definitely the latter. So I need to start today off the right way with coffee and XTC.
XTC was one of those bands I completely fell for while attending Colorado State University. I still remember hitting a yard sale one Saturday morning and finding a guy unloading his punk 45s and albums for prices that now seem like ancient folklore. The problem was that I was a poor college student operating under the radical notion that eating food and paying rent were somehow important. Faced with such unreasonable financial responsibilities, I had to be selective. Present-day me would have swept the entire collection into my arms like a crazed record-hoarding fiend I am and worried about the consequences later.
Even with my limited budget, I managed to snag some of my first XTC singles and albums that day, which turned out to be a pretty good investment in my future musical obsession. XTC always had a knack for writing ridiculously catchy songs, and "Ten Feet Tall" is no exception. I've owned both the stock and promo copies for years, but that strange sleeve is a much more recent addition. I picked it up with a promo copy at the Colorado Springs record show back in March.
To this day, I have absolutely no idea what it is. It doesn't appear to be homemade, it doesn't match anything I've ever seen before, and my attempts at detective work have produced more questions than answers. Naturally, that made it completely irresistible. The geeky record collector portion of my brain took one look and declared, "I don't know what this is, but it's coming home with me." Sometimes the mystery is half the fun. Sometimes it's the entire reason the thing ends up in the collection.
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