A song is a key for locked memory boxes. A song can transport you back through time, giving you a chance to relive moments and ideas that occurred back when you first heard that song. A song is not just a song; it is also a story.
Local Rabbits – “The Lights Turn On”
In 2001, I returned from my high school grad trip to Cuba with a wardrobe that consisted of Parasuco jeans, a sequined bra top and long, blonde micro-braids. I still looked like an R&B singer, but I didn’t want to be one anymore.
So I went away to university in Ottawa. During my first semester I stumbled upon the campus radio station and ended up spending all my free time there. At home, I didn’t have a phone or a computer, so I’d print out all my essays in the office. One day, a song came on the air that made me stop what I was doing and run to ask the station manager, “What is this?”
I’d never heard anyone sing this way before. It wasn’t great singing in an Aretha Franklin or Monica kind of way. It was great singing in a Lou Reed or Neil Young kind of way. The instrumentation was so rhythmic and dirty that it had my attention before the first vocal even came in. The delivery was full of bravado, but the lyrics were just the opposite. The song was about people who buy into the status of the ‘elite’ club life. But when the lights turn on, it’s all over.
The bridge sums it up perfectly: “the ghosts of after party past reveal themselves to you/ on scattered sheets of guest lists in this nightclub storage room / you rummage with a tremor for a name that you remember/ but the music stops, the bouncers move like cops and now the lights turn on…”
I remember being bewildered and amazed by it. I’d never heard of a thing called ‘indie-rock’ before. When I tried to fill in one of my high school friends on this exciting new music, she thought it was rock from India.
As fate would have it, they played a show in Ottawa later that week. What I saw was as evangelical as any preacher I’d watched growing up in the Pentecostal church.
It was intense. I was enthralled. Lead singers Peter Elkas and Ben Gunning sang nose-to-nose, sweating profusely, guitars almost touching. I didn’t know if they were going to bite each other’s heads off or kiss. Jason Tustin flailed and banged the drums so hard that his eyes rolled back into his head. Ryan Myshrall played bass with determined concentration, his lips always slightly open.
When people say, “That song changed my life,” they usually mean, “I love that song.” But for me, “The Lights Turn On” by Local Rabbits changed the music I performed from that day forward.
No more Parasucos after that.
- Alanna Stuart of Bonjay
Photos 3 & 4 by CBC Radio 3
