NO BONUS II/VI

By JAKOB SNOREWELL

I

Here I gotta make a parenthesis in this story to state I was born in the early seventies, and by 1986, aside of classical composers (what my mom had brought to my plate, quite systematically since I was a toddler) and The Beatles (which was what my younger aunties had in store for me, all the original vinyl’s –including the forbidden meat-and-doll-parts cover of a rarities collection named "Yesterday And Today", which, when e-bay got invented I saw priced in many many many moneys but by then may the devil know where my evil aunties or the record were– and which my dad had the patience to record on tape for me), and as actually most all the eighties pop-music from the radio ran like water off a duck's back from my brain because I was, back then, seemingly immune to the embrace of muzak, I had listen to no pop until an Argentinean guy in who's restaurant I ended up working (I was 14, the restaurant opened in the corner of my house, and I was a nosey teenager, specially around an Argentinean parrillada, so I ended up being some sort of joke-spewing mascot and catching pieces of beef as reward) had been introduced to British pop music by a friend he had made, of all places, fighting the Falklands War against England in the Patagonia, took me to his home and showed me The Cure's Pornography, The Smiths first album, Depeche Mode's Speak & Spell and U2's The Unforgettable Fire (then he also taped them for me, although not as professionally as my dad had taped The Beatles) and from that first batch of pop music I ever heard, the only item I didn't immediately engage with –not at all– was U2.