Hand me that post rock????

When I used to do radio shows I was always excited to see what was new, after all there was stuff I never heard of. Top it all off there where a lot of bands I never heard of. One of these bands was Sigur Ros.

I was in college ready to do a show when a friend and fellow DJ handed me their album. I read the notes on it and was told that you might want to start with track two. Agaetis Byrjun was the title of the album and it was the spring of 2001. The show I was doing was a rock show with out having the classic rock feel, but a show that would take an hour devoted to new rock ie: Built To Spill, Tortoise, Flaming Lips, Pavement and Sonic Youth and others and blend in the old stuff, without having to do with the classic rock feel. The second hour would be devoted to playing songs like Seagull by Bad Company or Are You Ready by Grand Funk, or Epitaph King Crimson or Lazy by Deep Purple. The show was on the air for the whole semester.

I was handed this CD on hopes that the new rock had some punch to compete against the classic rock people always knew about. Well one listen to track two on this Sigur Ros album proved to me that it could also knock the classic rock camp with one right hook and send it down for a quiet 10 count. I opened up the first hour of the show with this track two (Svefn-g-Engler) and just cranked up the studio speakers. The hustle and bustle of outside the studio, mostly good music people and people who enjoyed what I liked and, what I liked that they played quickly turned to silence. Like the previous fall getting in the first Radiohead to follow up the amazing and ear turning OK Computer with Kid A. That day the silence was silence like a holy cow what was that. This silence was like the musical gods just told all of us at the same time to just shut up and listen. The Sigur Ros album was a silence like, I think Radiohead has just met their match or it was their gods saying shut up too.



This song did not drag for it's ten minute length like some songs, it made me feel like it should have been longer. It had a feel like I was above this planet with angels. These angels were sending me somewhere and the journey was this song. After the first hour of the show and much running around the studio I had to find something that would have matched whits against this Sigur Ros. I tried everything that I remember from great classic rock and came up with nothing. The song I played had such an effect on me that i was dumbfounded. I don't remember what songs I played during the classic rock set, but I do remember I could not get out of the daze what Sigur Ros did.

Over the summer we got word that Sigur Ros was coming to Boston and that we had to go. I was at a great Radiohead show seeing the end of our innocence wind down in a great two hour show. September 11th happen and kind of tilted my view of music and life, but Sigur Ros saved my life. The eventful day of the 11th made me scared, nervous and most of all fearful of my future on this planet. I had two friends who were in Philadelphia and I was scared for them, younger then I was they had a lot more of the world in front of them. I was hoping I would see them again.

We got word that the date of the show was September 21st was the date in Boston. Still fearing if we were get out of September alive and me celebrating my 28th birthday the day before the Sigur Ros show I had to reflect on this world.

Sigur Ros got me past a difficult time. I am not going to tell you they changed my view of the world, because they did not. But somehow at the show about two and half hours of Sigur Ros calmed me and got me to see what our world was all about. The awakening was that 9/11 and the new music I just heard distracted me enough to move on. I am sure it could have been anybody or any artist, but music is a funny thing. Good music helps you through the good and the bad and sometimes the most difficult.

Sigur Ros is an amazing band. I have seen them four times and I think that they are one of the greatest newest bands out there. This album is one of the coolest things out there by them. Just listen and soak it all in.