Sunday, March 27, 2005

Bedhead - The Rest of the Day/I'm Not Here 7"


When I got this record in the Spring or Summer of 1994 I was staying with a friend in Dallas... I was 16 or so. At home in Fort Worth I had been listening to the local college station and reading zines because I had just discovered both. I got a guitar because that seemed like the thing to do. I'd had it for about a year but I hadn't really bothered to learn how to play yet. When my friend went off to work and I was alone during the day I would ride the bus downtown to go to the record stores. I didn't have a lot of city bus experience. Every one of my record hunting trips ended with me getting lost. I would get there alright... it was getting back that was the problem. The bus system mystified me. I would usually make it back to the house long after dark... exhausted... and run to listen what I had just bought.

Most of the record stores I went to seemed way to cool for me. Walking inside felt like sneaking into a porno shop... like any moment I was going to be singled out and asked to leave. It never happened of course, everyone was always nice. I was a just self-concious teenager. I never felt that way when I went to the Direct Hit Records storefront, though. I'd walk inside and instead of dyed and pierced trendy people everywhere, there behind the counter would just be the owner, Sean, tending to his baby. The entire store smelled of his cologne and to this day I can't smell Polo without flashing back. Polo makes me think of vinyl. It was a tiny shop but every time I went I'd spend hours going through every single bin just to make sure I hadn't missed anything. To be honest it probably took a couple of visits to the actually buy this record. I kept passing it up. I had read nothing but glowing praise of Bedhead in local zines and newspapers. I hadn't heard the first single a year earlier and the descriptions of the band that getting kept getting tossed around ("a deafening whisper", "like classical music played on guitars")sounded a little too different to my noise obsessed ears. Finally one day I picked it up and asked Sean about it. I knew it was put out by his label and I was standing in his store so the last thing I would get from him would be an unbiased opinion... but it didn't matter. I knew I was going to buy it, I just wanted a little push.

My first thought when I played it was something like "wow, I thought it would be low-key... but I didn't think it would be this low-key.". Then I realized I had the turntable on the wrong speed. After I fixed it and played it again I could just sit there. It was so beautiful... intimate. I had never heard anything like it before. I played that record so much I was afraid I was going to wear it out so I taped it and played the tape endlessly. As I got each of their albums, they would stay in my cd player for weeks at a time. There was a line in a review I read about one their albums that said something about how the moment you hear Bedhead your standards are raised just a little. Yeah. They were then and still are probably my favorite band ever.

I love their album Beheaded but I usually skip through the re-recording of "The Rest of the Day". It's just too clean, too tight. I'll always prefer the original 4-track recording on the single. "I'm Not Here" and the WhatFunLifeWas track "To The Ground" are the only two Bedhead songs that really sound like the Velvet Underground to me so I never really agreed with the constant comparisons.

My turntable has been out of commission for a bit so I didn't rips these files. I got them off Soulseek so the sound is a little iffy in spots.

A. The Rest of the Day [MP3, 4.9MB, 128kbps]

B. I'm Not Here [MP3, 2.7MB, 128kbps]

-Bedhead-

-Direct Hit Records-

-Touch & Go Records-



Bedhead - The Rest of the Day/I'm Not Here 7"

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