Watch this

In Atlanta last weekend, in Little Five Points for lack of any other direction, in a record store tired out from a long day and on the tail end of a hangover, I heard some amazing music. It might be called "experimental", but not euphemistically. It was edgy but catchy, gritty but beautiful. I love it when this happens, standing in a record store, getting struck immediately by a strange new sound. So I went to the counter to ask (because I learned my lesson when I was in high school, in a record store getting blown away by the in-store play, and too timid to ask what it was), and was surprised to find out that it was the best of The Beta Band, a band I had never thought much of before. I didn't buy the CD then in that store, but I did buy it this afternoon.

I didn't make the connection until chatting with a friend this afternoon. "Watch this," he typed. "I'll sell three copies of this." Then, "ha ha". And I got the reference: he was quoting the movie version of High Fidelity, quoting a scene that I hated, a completely unnecessary scene that was isolated from the plot where Rob (John Cusack) puts in a CD by the Beta Band, says the quote that was repeated today and then sells three copies. Not only did I not hear anything special in the song, but I thought that the scene was ridiculous, as in all my years of record store clerkdom, I had only ONCE sold more than a single copy of an album at one time because of playing something in the store, and that was the freaking Mermaids soundtrack, not an avant-pop band.

I became the real-life person that had seemed so unrealistic in fiction. And what's even funnier is that I was turned on in a record store not just by the same band, but by the same song. Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes, it's unexpectedly exactly the same.

But as with so many of my mistakes, I'm enjoying the fruits of it.