In the spring of 1986, 4 months after its release, I picked up Cocteau Twins’ Echoes In a Shallow Bay EP at a shop in Jacksonville, FL. Shortly thereafter, in a desperate bid to understand what Liz Fraser might be singing, I forced a friend’s Mexican houseguest (a foreign-exchange student) to listen to “Melonella” and tell me if any of the words were possibly Spanish. Only today have I learned that the lyrics are, in fact, a listing of the scientific names of British moths and butterflies. Thanks, Internet.

Raul, wherever you are, I’m sorry. I should probably also go ahead and apologize in the same breath to a different friend’s British houseguests whom I subjected over dinner in the mid-’90s to a Blur-fueled interrogation about quangos. Shamefully, I have been (and perhaps continue to be) guilty of showing more interest in learning about music than in learning about people.

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Fun With Music