Picture this: a tossed cigarette on the ground, smoldering, that betrays the lips that it used to hang on and the secret whispers uttered from said lips while the dart emanates its smoke from red flesh. Lost to time. A crumpled piece of paper, wet and tattered, with directions on it to a place only a mystery to all passersby save one – the one it was meant for. An abandoned, rusted out car on cinderblocks on the side of the road hiding secrets of sneaking out while the parents are asleep, mixtape nostalgia and sloppy make out sessions…now just ephemeral ideas swirling elsewhere outside of the fake leather and plastic dashboard.
You see where I am going here, I hope…
Things reserved for your eyes and ears only, and yet enduringly meaningful for that tiny corner of the world for whom it was intended. Breaks the already broken heart. That's what you get for reaching out and trying to touch heaven – discounted fireworks explode, and a finger goes missing. Hopefully not the middle, will probably need that later.
But I suppose this is a music website (in theory) and a barely breathing record label, so let's get centered – like a slab of vinyl who finds its hole in the middle.
A lifetime ago my friends and I found such a figurative discarded cig and dirty faux leather teenage dreams in the form of Arms and Legs – the moniker used by our friend Scott Daly. Without belaboring things – Scott used to frequent the record store we used to work (loose term for what it was) at. It came out our attention he was known to set up with an acoustic guitar and sing. Add him to the pile of wannabes was probably our first inclination. After all, we tried that trick ourselves to negative acclaim. Everyone we knew back then was always on the cusp of a newfound nothingness, so why would he be any different? We were wrong, and then some.
Somehow, someway the songs came to us. Like a bolt of lightning, erratic and beautiful. We knew the world needed to hear his voice and those songs. Tiny, sad beautiful waves lapping up on the shores of late teens depression.
"Let's both forget about, the people we care about…"
We scrimped and saved and figured out how to press records and design covers and hand stamp labels and yell at the world that they needed to hear and fall head over heels for our friend and his guitar.
"I was just driving around at night…"
We put out more records, he played CMJ and SXSW, got signed to bigger labels, played overseas. Meanwhile I was in my room letting him serenade me to sleep. Me, alone in my private storm trying to weather anything at all. He had crossed over from a friend with talent to an artist I could and cannot live without. We waited for the shout of applause from the world. The world's reply: there will be quiet.
He touched the lives of the small number that heard him. Some still care, most don't. But we still wave the flag wondering how the beauty on tape didn't reach more willing ears.
"…shortly I will lose you, blue-eyed Alice…"
This story has been told countless times before. If anything, it makes my heart ache for the countless other guys/gals with a guitar I have never heard in unnumerable towns all over the world. Where another set of friends put out another friend's record hoping for the world to listen…but the world won't listen. And yet. What if it somehow did find its way to my ears and changed me irreparably? I want (need) more of that, now more than ever. I hope one day I go walking and on the ground I find a used, fuming cig, next to cast-off directions underneath a dilapidated auto and in that car's stereo is someone else's Arms and Legs. And I turn it on. And I fall in love all over again. Until then. Old habits die hard.
"We're in love and now I know it's true. It's the strangest feeling that I've ever felt with you…"
…comebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomeback...