Listening to Zero 7

SubZero, as the Bear calls them, ridiculing them for the joy of the sound of the words (but also the amusing visual of the deep freeze in the trendy, expensive, brushed-steel refrigerator for the music which he perceives as bland) are one of my personal favorite bands. I was introduced to them by our friend Tina, a music listener extraordinaire, who tossed off a few tracks one night at her place with the remark, “I know La Calavera will like this” – and she was so right. Jazzy, poppy, electronic, human, sometimes poems of rare insight: just a joy to listen to. Let the record show, I got on the web and bought five albums unheard the day after I heard them for the first time.

The Bear’s son was around the summer I first heard Zero 7. James and I had finally made up after the inevitable period of rejection that occurs in divorces (getting old is totally unacceptable except with regard to the lens it provides on what really happens in life), and we were sitting around in the living room listening to one of the albums (Simple Things). I’m not quite sure how he caught me doing it, but I kept listening over and over to an single track (“Destiny”) and finally he asked me the most direct question of our lives together at that point: “What is it about this that you like so much?”

I had to think about this, and I am sure my answer didn’t help him much. I said, “It’s like a day at the beach.”

The beach. I’m no beach-goer by nature, but I grew up in Los Angeles where the beach is the Place (not to be confused with pLace, which will be discussed some other time by La Calavera). I have the most happy memories of beach days, with transistor radios (yes, it was a while ago, but we had music out there in the wilds near the waves), with sun, and warmth, and friends hanging around and no place to go, only sandcastles to build. We were there with open hearts and minds, enjoying the ocean and sky and wondering at all of the splendid realities of that amazing place (and time). It’s so hard to explain all that to someone who has not lived it – and even more difficult to explain why this music so profoundly epitomizes it and underlines it as an experience for me. James just shook his head and laughed softly at me.

Perhaps related: that same summer, the son of one of our neighbors got married(1) and had an engagement party at the apartment a few months before the wedding. As we are on the second floor with a balcony right over party spot, they asked us to provide music. We were very happy to help, and dutifully wound out the fifty feet of speaker wire for each of the huge speakers that we have. We asked over and over what kind of playlist they would like, but there was no information provided.

So I put on my Zero 7 albums. The wonderful beach music wafted over the party, and over the adjacent pool area, where people were entranced. After I went downstairs, all the people at the pool over 40 came up and said, “What is that gorgeous sound?”

But not the groom . . . after about an hour, he got hold of James and went upstairs to have his way with it. I knew there was a problem when I heard first a Celine Dionne tune, and then a beer commercial. The Millennials had put on a radio station!!! Unbelievable. We have nearly a thousand CDs to pick from, and they elected a commercial radio station.

I’m so old.

(1) In a joyous and astonishingly generous wedding ceremony that we were delighted to have been invited to attend.