
Monday, October 2nd, 2000
I borrow my dad’s Toyota Camry and drive downtown. Parking sucks on Seymour St. - it always does around there. I’m 17 years old and unsophisticated in regards to parallel parking. I am excited. Fucking Radiohead. My idols have a new album out today.
I enter the legendary A&B Sound. I dream of one day working there.

The release day display is well established near the front of the store because Radiohead’s previous album, OK Computer, had mopped the floor with all living music critics three years prior. It’s barely hyperbole to suggest that OK Computer is, at this time, my best friend.
I am at the apex of two fundamental (and complementary) features of teenagerdom:
I am discovering culture that speaks to me. I am learning that there is a world beyond my perspective and I am overwhelmed with an openness to new things
I have few obligations to the world and plenty of free time to just listen to music and reflect upon it
I take a compact disc of Kid A from a stack, briefly look it over front and back, and then move as quickly toward the cashier as can still be considered cool. I ensure within our short interaction that they understand just how cool I am, and that Radiohead is the greatest band on Earth (and that even in 2025, they still will be).
I return to the aforementioned Camry. I turn on the car and let the small slit above the console clock ingest the CD - ZZZZzzzzzzzt. I pull the booklet from the plastic casing and flip through the lyrics as music fills the car. The volume is loud.
“What the hell is this?”
I honestly cannot make heads or tails of what I’m hearing. I’ve never heard sounds like this. I don’t drive, at first - I just sit.
Once home, I listen again. And again. I feel like there’s something I’m missing. As much as I’d love to understand this music right away, to claim as such would be dishonest. There are probably people out there who know what this is. Cool people.
I remember being on a bus trip to Naramata years earlier. I’m seated next to Kenneth, who has just immigrated months earlier from India. Outside, there is snow coating the mountain pass. Kenneth’s nose is glued to the window pane. He’s never seen snow before. He’s witnessing a new reality where people think in a language he’s just starting to comprehend.
Of course, Kid A grows on me. I start to hear form within the chaos. I begin to anticipate the sonic shifts, rather than feel jarred by them. The ingenuity, the courage, the spectacle of it. It no longer sounds like new Radiohead - it is just… proper Radiohead. The album is panned at first by most critics, and then later touted as one of the best and most influential albums ever made.
In retrospect, most hard-fought truths appear obvious.
There was a time women couldn’t vote. Slavery was legal. We tend to accept the reality we are given as the reality. Perhaps there’s a reality where we put school teachers on the covers of magazines.
Twenty-five years from now, in 2025, I’ll be writing this missive in a café in Toronto. I’ll be reflecting upon what a release day means for an album. I’ll consider memorable release days from my past. I’ll feel nostalgic about moments in my life when specific albums plastered the walls of my mind. I’ll take a photo of myself using an app called Photo Booth, on a computer small enough to place within my backpack.

I will have waxed endlessly in recent months about how the experience of making an album called Natural Light has shifted my understanding of creativity, of friendship, and of life. I will probably be annoying about it. But I will also be elated that, at 42, I can still surprise myself, and that life is still just as full of bewilderment as it always has been. I will appreciate that even in the streaming era, an album can still coherently consolidate years of emotions into an articulable piece of fruition.
Most of all, I will be utterly grateful for how fortunate I will feel to be alive, to be loved, and to have creativity in my life.
Sounds like a reality I can get behind.
x
Dan
I once had exactly the same experience after buying a CD. It was Bowies first album. That folky one before Space Oddity. I put it in to my car. And I was shocked how the production felt newer than anything that could be possible in the 60’s. There were sounds that took what felt like MINUTES to comprehend. My brain could not process what I was hearing. It turned out the cd was a misprint. The jewel case and cd label said Bowie. But the actual 1s and 0s playing through my car speakers was… Bon Jovi…
It took me YEARS to buy and listen to that actual Bowie album. I’ll never get rid of the misprinted CD and I’ll always have the memories of that special and weird experience.
Beautifully penned Dan. You even made me all nostalgic for A&B sound. You're right, parking was horrible down there. We used to drive by slowly, my wife would jump out with the CD wish list and I'd circle the block until she came out with the prize. Thank you for Natural light. It's been on repeat all morning. It's hooks in all my emotions. Yes lyrics can be colour and window dressing but you've shown us once again how they can truly embrace a persons soul, provided they have one. ;)