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First time i read about them, it was in a magazine, a french magazine. I didn't really pay attention, but noticed the journalist said they were playing their guitars in a non conventionnal way, no specifics, just that. As i was starting to play guitar back then, i thought "hey why not ?", so i started to use and have fun with everything that was lying around me, including some screwdrivers... but other than that, i didn't actually heard any of their song, just read about them.
Later, it was in 98 or 99, i had this friend, a very close one, very special.... we would see each other on week-ends because we were too busy on week-days. So week-ends were for us. Especially sundays... Sunday was our day. And that's when i saw that weird video on MTV, it was late at night, in a show about indie rock. There was Macaulay Culkin in it, along with that strange guy who looked like an old science teacher i had 5 years earlier. She was a woman by the way, weird. I was completely blown away by that music, that video, and that fucking guitar riff at the begining ! That was almost exactly the same first riff i came up with on my first guitar in 1993... and then i heard (and saw) the title : Sunday. That was it. I had to buy that song, that album.
I listened to A Thousand Leaves and by the end of Heather, Angel, i was hooked on it. But it stayed there. I wasn't curious enough and didn't bought anything else from them.
Several years later, in 2002 iirc, a collegue at work saw the CDs i was listening to in my car, and the pink ATL one. "Hey, i saw them twice, they are huge", he said. He then told me a couple songs he said i should check, and i did. Downloaded them at work, listened to the first one he mentioned, Becuz, and was totally blown away again by T's guitar solo in the middle ! I swear my hair must have been straight on top of my head, i was like against the wall, i couldn't move, it felt like a mystic experience or something...
I bought NYCG&F, then all of the others in a month or two.
That's how i felt in love with their music. Very progressively, but it changed me.
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