The one song that means everything to me
I first heard the pink dots on local college radio in Palm Bay, Florida. A DJ who called himself “Egon” would play a different pink dots song every show he did. The first one I remember distinctly was “Pennies for Heaven”. It was after midnight and I was staying up reading Terry Pratchett or William S Burroughs.
For some reason I didn’t at that time buy any of their albums.
I next encountered them a few years later in Orlando. It was my first year of college and I had discovered BBS’s. It was 1993. At a late night meetup of BBS freaks I met a gothic vampire who called herself Bela. We became fast friends and one night laying on her bed I noticed she has a pink dots album. “I love them. I saw them on acid. I saw the pink dots on pink dots” she said.
I still didn’t buy any of their albums. A few more years go by and I meet a guy who becomes my best friend for the next 15 years. He has a lot of pink dots tapes in his car. They become our theme music to nights of beer, weed, bands, camping trips.
It’s 1998 and he calls me up. I had just got home from being up and drunk all night and hadn’t slept yet. “The pink dots are playing in Asheville tonight” he says. Immediately get in my car and make the drive back to town to meet him.
Show was incredible. At the climax of the show we hear a song we’d never heard before. Ed is just ranting. The music is swirling. We look at each other giddy. Something is clearly happening. It feels like the saucers are coming, or rapture.
We hear Ed say “WE’RE GOING AWAY NOW”
We laugh. Incredible. Of course we are.
“You don’t have to come with us. You can stay here, with all the SHIT”
Oh fuck. It really is happening. The end.
“It’s a long way… to andromeda…”
For years after, my friend and I referred to our nights of drunken conversation as “the andromeda show”
He died back in 2011. In his last few years he had changed to a completely different person, right wing and bitter. It didn’t make any sense.
But one line of that song still gets me.
“There’s no need to bring me flowers - I have gardens.”
So much meaning in such a simple line
Cheers everyone