Ejects my cassette (not a euphemism) and puts it into the boom box. She reaches into my jacket and takes my Walkman out. A semi-majorative whoop of approval goes off. “Who wants some music?” Corn-rows calls out to the packed train. One of her friends has been rummaging in a hold all and pulls out a tape deck with speakers and a handle (more commonly known as a boom box). Then the girl takes off the headphones. “That is dope, I can see why it got you smiling.” ‘It’s all about the Beastie Boys for me this weekend’ A laundry list of bands goes off round the carriage like Chinese firecrackers. Followed by a “Yeah Baby!” from the other end. ‘Deftones!’ goes up like a firework in the distance. If it hadn’t been obvious before now, 75% of this train carriage were en route to the same gig. “Monster Magnet, Rocket From The Crypt and Deftones in the same day? Tomorrow is gonna be insane!” proffered a guy stood between me and 3ft. ‘Kyuss rock!” comes from further down the carriage. While she was listening the 3 ft Kid and I discussed the album. I offered her my headphones so she could hear the song that had made me smile. ‘Monster Magnet? Yeah they’re brilliant.’ A kid 3 feet away had though and he pipped in. I told her it was Monster Magnet and she said she’d never heard them. You’re smiling so much to whatever that is. What music can make someone that happy?” I was sure she was going to tell me music was bleeding out from my headphones and irritating the others in the carriage, but no. Low and slinky it must have taken my mug up a notch with it, as I was tapped on the shoulder by a girl with corn-rows and a back pack on. Then that heavy metal hipsway groove truly kicked the doors in and the Monster showed the Space Lord it’s Magnet for the first time. So the absurd but serious delivery of the song title had me unconsciously break out in a big ole smirk. It was a long hot glorious three months full of gigs and travel and friends scattered all over Europe. Powertrip was one of my albums of the summer that year. Dopes to Infinity and Superjudge had raised a smile and the odd glass for me and my bartender friends before Powertrip had pushed them to the center stage. Their comic book B-Movie aesthetic and dead pan delivery won me over instantly. “I’ve been stuffed in your pocket for the last hundred days, when I don’t get my bath I take it out on the slaves, so grease up your baby for a ball on the hill, polish those rockets now and swallow those pills” The slow boogie of Space Lord’s intro creeps into the orange foam of the headphones. I’m stood there with my Walkman in my pocket and a rucksack on my back in a packed train heading off to meet my friends. The happiness it brought me struck up a conversation with a bunch of fellow festival goers. I remember listening to a cassette of Powertrip on the train to the Reading Festival in the late nineties with a big daft grin on my face.
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