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The Least Brilliant Idea I’ve Ever Had
Or “How our subconscious can play the worst tricks on us when it wants to.”
In the late eighties, I took a trip to Europe that lasted forty days. At the time, I was a keyboardist in a band in my high school, so all I thought about was music. Because of this, I spent almost half the money I took — which literally forced me to starve — on CDs, some silver discs’ technology that had just been released and that now collect dust in music history museums.
Upon arriving in Brazil, I became the main attraction of the school. It was common for us to record cassette tapes with song selections — the primitive version of today’s playlists — for friends who didn’t have records or CDs that we had and I… Well… I had LOTS of CDs that no one had:
I just bought everything I saw, and it was from a band I liked, without even listening. I bought it, and that’s it. I have SEVENTEEN versions of the song “Round and Round” by New Order to give you an idea. SEVENTEEN.
So my friends at school lined up for me to record tapes for them. And I had barely heard the CDs I bought; I don’t think I’ve listened to them all to this day. So I started putting out new CDs to play one after the other, looking for the best songs to record my friends’ tapes.
