| It all began with "Rick James." In the early summer of 1999, when I was calling myself an aspiring screenwriter, I heard the song "Rick James" on the radio. I found myself drawn to it, because the lyrics in the chorus ("dont be fooled/don't be flattered/it's not like you ever mattered") seemed to fit the theme of a character-based drama I was writing at the time. Unfortunately, the song was followed by a commercial, so the radio disc jockey didn't have a chance to tell me who was singing the song. Later that week, my mom randomly asked me if I had heard that song on the radio about Rick James being a super-freak. I answered her with an enthusiastic "yes!" and proceeded to ask her if she heard the name of the artist who performed it. Thankfully she did! She remembered the name Jude because of her favorite Beatles song. After hearing the song a couple more times on the radio (thank you Star 98.7 in Los Angeles!) I decided that I needed to buy this Jude's CD! I found myself in Circuit City one day and decided to look up Jude's CD. At the time, I found two disks: No One Is Really Beautiful and 430 N. Harper Ave. I perused the tracklisting of both CD's looking for the song "Rick James." While doing so, two thoughts crossed my mind. The first one was that this Jude guy seemed to have a lot of songs titled after people's names ("Rick James," "Cammie," "George," Charlie Says" and "Brad And Suzy"). My second thought was the surprise of finding some songs on both disks ("You Mama You," "George," and "Out Of LA"). After checking my wallet and finding that I only had enough to buy one CD, I decided on No One Is Really Beautiful because it contained the song I was looking for. The price tag read $11.99, but when I went to the cash register, they rang it up on sale as $8.99. I was ecsatic! Upon getting home, I put the CD into my player and listened to No One Is Really Beautiful in it's entirety for the first time. I was captivated. Never before had the first listen to a CD draw me in to every single song on it. In that first hour and a half of listening to Jude, I knew I had stumbled onto something very special. As a result of this, I did something I had never done before. I filled out the little survey postcard from the label that came inside the CD. I rated my favorite three songs on the CD as 1."Rick James," 2. "Battered Broken" and 3. "Brad And Suzy." NOIRB became a constant in my CD player. I couldn't get enough of it. And one song in particular seemed to stand out above the rest: "I Know." This song seemed hauntingly familiar to me for some reason. I asked my mom if she had heard it before, and she answered "no." I checked the CD booklet to see if perhaps it was a cover song...but discovered that Jude had written it. Still, I had the strange feeling that I had heard the song before. While perusing the CD booklet, I came across the website address for his official site. I decided to log on. After surfing the site a bit, I decided to sign up not only for his update e-mail list, but also his fan discussion e-mail list. I was warned that this might result in mass e-mails per day, but I didn't care. I wanted to find other people who shared a passion for Jude's music! Almost immediately, I found myself enthralled by the e-mails of such Jude fan-fixtures like Ginger and Adelle and Jerry Ann and Cathy. After a few hesitant e-mails of my own, I soon found myself welcomed with open arms into the Jude fan online community. One of the first topics I posed to the e-mail list was about "I Know." I asked if anyone might know where I would have heard the song before. I was answered almost immediately with the City Of Angels Soundtrack. Then of course it clicked with me! I dug out my COA CD, and saw that "I Know" was track nine (coincedently the same number it was on NOIRB). I had bought the CD for the song "Uninvited" by Alanis Morissette, and had only rarely listened to any of the other songs on the soundtrack. I felt like a fool, because my passion for Alanis had prevented me from becoming a Jude fan much earlier! But then, within a month, something would happen that would permanently tie me in as a Jude fan forever! To Be Continued... |
| Harper Ave rychard's rants, raves + reviews |