Listening Too Long To One Song: Cardinal, well, everything really

Very, very few things surprise me anymore. The fact that every band that you know and like, that shouldn't necessarily exist within the world of Myspace will likely have a Myspace profile either run by the band themselves or, more often than not, run by a fan. For example. So I don't know why it surprised me just a little when I stumbled across the Myspace page for the band Cardinal.

It's not as if it's any more unusual for Cardinal to have a Myspace page dedicated to them than say Bubblegum Splash. However, I've never owned any recordings from Bubblegum Splash, and I learned of their existence through the internet. So Myspace has really been my only outlet for discovering that particular band's music. Cardinal on the other hand were recommended to me by a real live person who is much more knowledgeable than I am, and whose taste in music I regard more highly than well, anybody really. Thanks to the most convenient location of this conversation (the KCRW music library) we were able to listen to the record right then and there. I was struck then by how specifically place and time it felt. Though it was released in 1994, it didn't feel like a record that was released in 1994, and the clever 60s pop style that it encompasses is probably one of the last things that would spring to your mind when you think of music and 1994. However, I feel that if I had been in college that year, and had discovered that record I probably would have listened to it, and nothing else until I wore out at least two copies (more likely three) blasting it day in and day out on my walkman. In fact when I listen to it now on my ipod, I still feel as though those sounds are emerging from a portable cassette player, and not a computer.

But we live in a time now when everything is on a computer. As much as I was struck by the sheer beauty and complexity of the record, (those harmonies, those lyrics, those guitars, those trumpets, those... harmonies...) at the exact same time I had frighteningly easy access to at least 12 new (to me) records that I was falling in love with almost as much as that one. Even as I knew that had I discovered Cardinal in another time period I would have listened to that record and nothing else, I also knew that because of the time that I did discover it in the phase of listening to that record day in and day out wouldn't last nearly as long as it should have.

There is also the fact that I have not yet found the time to really get into any projects (Richard Davies, and Eric Matthew's solo work most glaringly) that preceded or followed Cardinal that allows that band to be even more specific to me. One band who made one perfect record, who basically only existed within the span of one year. Therefore though their Myspace page doesn't really surprise me in the long run, for that first moment it did. Even though somewhat ironically, it was the discovery of that Myspace page that led to the record accompanying every walk that I took during that week. Like it was 1994, and it was the only record I cared to know about, and it would never leave my walkman, ever.