Sometimes you should just take risks. My Complete Idiot's Guide to Ash went online today and it serves as a reminder to the risk I took getting into the band in the first place.
Back in '96, while on a family vacation in London, we visited the Tower Records in Picadilly Square. I picked out a CD I wanted to get (Metallica's Load came out that day) and my father found a few Ted Heath CDs that were unavailable in the US. Tallying up the cost, my father told me to pick out another CD for import tax reasons. Apparently if you spent a certain amount you wouldn't have to pay extra taxes on them. Well, right after he told me this, there was a large display for Ash's 1977 in front of me.
Even to this day, 1977's cover is arresting. A camouflaged-colored, mirror image of a knocked-over trashcan makes an impression. Maybe it was the green (my favorite color) that caught my eye. I had heard of Ash only a few days before. 1977 had just come out and the band was doing a lot of television appearances that week. I saw a picture of them in a TV program schedule and was curious. They were a three-piece rock band and that's all I knew. Combined with the fact that all of the copies in the store contained two hidden bonus tracks, I wanted to get this. This was long before you could get any MP3 on the Internet, so this seemed valuable to me. When I got back to our flat, I was blown away by the record.
Sitting in a hallway listening to my Discman, I enjoyed Load, but was really taken with 1977. Starting off with the sound of a TIE fighter flying by was nice. All of the twelve songs were great. They were poppy, punky and well-done. I was now an Ash fan.
The years passed and I kept track of the band. I've picked up every new record whenever it has become attainable. Realizing the band would be perfect for one of Jeff's guides, I wanted to share. But I have to remind myself of how a small little risk paid off big time. This encourages me to take more risks.
Back in '96, while on a family vacation in London, we visited the Tower Records in Picadilly Square. I picked out a CD I wanted to get (Metallica's Load came out that day) and my father found a few Ted Heath CDs that were unavailable in the US. Tallying up the cost, my father told me to pick out another CD for import tax reasons. Apparently if you spent a certain amount you wouldn't have to pay extra taxes on them. Well, right after he told me this, there was a large display for Ash's 1977 in front of me.
Even to this day, 1977's cover is arresting. A camouflaged-colored, mirror image of a knocked-over trashcan makes an impression. Maybe it was the green (my favorite color) that caught my eye. I had heard of Ash only a few days before. 1977 had just come out and the band was doing a lot of television appearances that week. I saw a picture of them in a TV program schedule and was curious. They were a three-piece rock band and that's all I knew. Combined with the fact that all of the copies in the store contained two hidden bonus tracks, I wanted to get this. This was long before you could get any MP3 on the Internet, so this seemed valuable to me. When I got back to our flat, I was blown away by the record.
Sitting in a hallway listening to my Discman, I enjoyed Load, but was really taken with 1977. Starting off with the sound of a TIE fighter flying by was nice. All of the twelve songs were great. They were poppy, punky and well-done. I was now an Ash fan.
The years passed and I kept track of the band. I've picked up every new record whenever it has become attainable. Realizing the band would be perfect for one of Jeff's guides, I wanted to share. But I have to remind myself of how a small little risk paid off big time. This encourages me to take more risks.
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