"VW" bug

Everyone gets earworms -- you hear a snippet of song wafting out of somebody's passing car, or at a party, or occasionally during a TV spot -- and just like that, you're downloading and repeating it ad nauseum until your roommate screams "Enough already!" and starts punishing you by blaring the Pussycat Dolls.

But if you're like me, every now and then a song or a sound strikes you during a definitive moment in your life, and it resonates with you ... has the power to perhaps even change you ... oh balls, does that sound really, really terrible. Let me try to explain why I'm now (belatedly) obsessed with Vampire Weekend.

So I can remember the first time I really *heard* Nirvana's "Nevermind." My parents had actually owned the album for years, but as a preteen and then later an adolescent, I was on automatic autopilot to ignore any recommendations that they gave me, whether it was music, or reading Dosteovsky, or wearing brighter colors (to this day, I still stick to a bruised palette of gray, black and blue.) So while I definitely heard "Lithium" and "On a Plain" in the back of my subconscious, I largely ignored them -- until one day, when I was about to settle down and do my bio homework during my sophomore year of high school, I picked up a "Nevermind" cassette tape (yep!) that had been lying around in the living room, and I went up to my bedroom, popped that baby in, and sprawled on my stomach to start learning the sexual organs of flowers ...

... and was completely lost. From the opening riff of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" straight through to the moody hums of "Something in the Way," I was transported. I was an angry, insecure teenager (like everyone else) who was dealing with starting my fourth (FOURTH!) new high school -- this is just in 10th grade, mind you -- and feeling like the loneliest of losers ... and here was this brooding sound, these incoherent mumbled lyrics that echoed the emotions that I was feeling, but could also hardly articulate or fully understand within myself ... and I just lay there, slack-jawed, and listened to the tape all the way through, again and again.

I had a similar experience when I found Weezer. Yeah, go ahead and roll your eyes. I know it's nothing as quote-unquote profound as Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, but I've never pretended to be that pretentious, or even that hip.

"The Sweater Song" -- I was in college, hanging out in Sal's room in the Dowling dorms (what we dubbed "The Blair Witch Projects" because it was a lone, granite building with a mini airport parked in the middle of the woods in bumblefuck Shirley, L.I.) and listening to Rivers' nonsensical "I'm me/Me be/Goddamn/I am" summed up how we defined ourselves in our band t-shirts drinking Bud Lights that we'd smuggled in past the security guard downstairs instead of studying for our psych exams.

The Dismemberment Plan's "The City" -- I was riding in Jeff Tobias' car, and it was one of those boring, Long Island summer nights where a group of us drove to Jones Beach and parked and stared at the water before going to the Empress Diner and sipping coffee and eating cheese fries (extra crispy, please) and then watching a crappy horror movie in his parents' basement.

"Rock Star" by Hole -- My mom and I would wait til the men were out of the house before blasting this and releasing our respective pent-up frustrations by screaming the numerous "Fuck Yous!" along with Courtney Love.

"El Scorcho" -- The night Ron and I *really* became friends was when we sat in my dorm at Stony Brook and listened to "Pinkerton" all the way through. He later got me an autographed copy of the CD for Christmas, and has since introduced me to my boyfriend, Justin.

Justin, in turn, introduced me to The Randy Bandits, and that group gleefully banging out "Sexual Postman" in a cramped, sweaty little joint in East Village remains one of my favorite, definitive dates with The Boy to this day, while "Give It Up" is so vividly my head resting against his shoulder while he traces "I <3 You" down my back with his finger.

Anyone else have these moments where by virtue of memory, music becomes magic? Ladies and gents, tunes have been the real time machine all along.

So on Friday night I hit happy hour(s) with a group of new and old friends on the UES, and after dollar drafts and eclectic conversations ranging from anthropology to dead walruses, the group inevitably began to fracture into smaller factions that wandered into various other bars. So I stepped out with rugby-pal Ginessa and her roommate, Anna, and we began walking south in search of a quieter bar with an open kitchen at 1 a.m. And it had been pouring all day but finally stopped, and there was a slight chill in the air, but it being September, we were prepped with sweaters, and so as we sloshed through puddles Gin said, "Pesch, you've gotta listen to this song" and popped her iPod buds into my ears.

And so I heard "M79" by Vampire Weekend, a band I'd been meaning to check out for a couple of months now, but got swept up with the humdrum hopes and hassles of everyday life.

So as we're walking cheerfully along, the opening harpsichord notes of this song tickle my ears, and I'm completely swept away. It's dark, but everything is slick and shiny from the rain, and the streetlights and subway beacons each have a soft corona glimmering around them, and I'm bouncing past other revelers and feeling a bit buzzed, and it just fits. It's just the right song at just the right moment ... and overlong story short, I have been listening to Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut album all weekend, and have even picked up a pair of tix to their show in Hell's Kitchen on the day before my birthday. (In my defense, I had to pick them up with the quickness because their first show already sold out.)

And I'm giddy with excitement -- it's so much fun! -- like embarking on a new relationship when you can't get enough of each other. I'm listening to the album on repeat, and reading VW's past interviews and skimming their website, talking to my friends about them, belting "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" while washing the dishes and completely immersing myself in my new musical crush.

So cheesy. So sad. But this song ("M79" posted below) and this album are just so fresh. It's like being 16 and lying on my back with my headphones on after plastering a dozen posters of the flavor-of-the-month to my bedroom wall.

Except this is one of those flavors that I'll be able to savor years from now and relive with precious, painful detail -- bobbing and weaving down a damp city street while the air changes from swelter to sweater, and my life changes from late 20s to early 30s, with harpsichords and violins singing bittersweetly in my ears.