What was YOUR life like at the time you Discovered Damien's music?

[cille]

Tonight I suddenly remembered the time when I discovered Damien and the band - and eventually joined this here circus.

It was the fall of 2003. I hadn't felt that happy and sizzling before, not that I can remember anyway. For a long time I had been really down, due to my mother's death, had recently come out of a dramatic love story, and some personal things I'd been working out and resolved as much as they could be. Such a crazy, tumultuos time. Not because a lot of things happened on the outside, but on the inside I was moving faster and further than I had in a long time. Was studying, but not really studying. Had got my very first (56 kb/s) internet connection that nearly ruined me economically, and all the greatness of all the great music in the world washed over me, and overwhelmed me. It was magic. I started drinking coffee - lattes and espressos. I cut my hair short, wore it spikey.
I had online flirts - there was the Swedish guy who cried over Elliott Smith's death (I heard about Elliott about 2 weeks before he died) and asked me what I was wearing and I was wearing a short black dress and what was he wearing.. There was the Italian guy who lived in Cork and always had his heart broken by Irish girls. And there was the married Italian guy living in Switzerland - we were going to meet, we said, but we didn't (probably his conscience took over, thank heavens). He sent me mix-cd's via mail and lo-fi (56 kbps connection remember?) music files online. He introduced me to music I ought to have known, but didn't. Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Frank Zappa, Eels, QOTSA, Kings of Leon, Rufus Wainwright - the day he told me about Rufus I rushed to the record store and bought "Poses"; this was when my feeling of being sweetly intoxicated by music began, I still remember how the September sun felt on my skin that day. He was supposed to go to a gig in Copenhagen as an excuse to visit *mehe* so I started checking out concert schedules and started goingto gigs. How could I not have known amazing a gig can be? I opened up completely to the beauty and passion that life can offer to a degree I hadn't dared before (or since).
When i think back on that time it was like being in a haze of.. what was that really? It felt like a personal awakening, nurtured by a re-found passion for music, and possibly also by coffee (let's not underestimate the effect of chemicals on the brain..). I had sleepless nights cause my body felt like a buzz of inspiration and.. was it hormones, caffeine, happiness, freedom, love? I started writing songs, or snippets of songs. I sang along with my new found favourite songs for hours, all alone in my room, but it didn't feel lonely at all. For once I felt purpose. Freedom. I developed theories of free love and sex (which, alas, I never really got to practice), I guess you could say I embraced my libido or something. I felt that there was a chance that I could actually become me, and it could be pretty great and nothing to be ashamed of. I found I didn't necessarily have to change - didn't have to be more clever or prettier or academically successful - for me to appreciate me, I could just sing and dance and be. I found new friends, the world around me seemed wide open and shining and beautiful, even though it was autumn and getting darker and colder day by day, which usually depresses me.

The Italian/Swiss guy also introduced me to Turin Brakes (which was funny, cause his family was from Turin (Torino)), and RealPlayer (which I was stupid enough to use at the time) mistaked Turin Brakes with Gemma Hayes, so i discovered Gemma Hayes. I googled for Gemma Hayes to learn more, and found this comparison between Gemma and Damien's debut albums, and so i discovered Damien. I missed Damien's first danish gig by 2 week, but there you go.
Everything felt so important and necessary that autumn. I had to, you know, cease the day, before it was too late. I sometimes miss that state of mind now, even though it was also kind of mad and manic.

So this was my story, not so much of how I discovered Damien, but more of my life was at the time. What's yours?

[Ranting Thespian]

I turned on the radio, and heard Cannonball. Gabby Parsons (the DJ) said it was from Damien Rice's O album.

The only difference from then to now is that I was working at a grocery store then, and I am not anymore. Hmmm, not very interesting. You should have probably skipped my post .

[verenita]

well, i told this before, but i like to tell you again...
i discovered damien on dawson´s creek episode (i think it was october, 2003). i heard the blower´s daughter at end of episode when joey goes to see eddie, and i fell in love with this song inmediatly... so i visited his website and learned a bit more about damien.

of course, i´ve never seen him live, but i had the chance to get "o" from this friend of mine, and get so many live versions... and a few months ago, i discovered this forum, wich is so great and let me "feel" a little bit closer to damien´s things...

verenita

[carvinC980t_kid]

it was 2003 and it was at night i was hanging out with this senior and i was a freshmen. we were all hanging outside of a local concert that was killer lame and we met up with this other kid who she was friends with and i was too. well, we were just chillin outside smokin and we got in her car to go somewhere and she put him in. i reconogized one of the songs from something i DL'd and she told me who it was... and i bout it!!! best thing i've ever bought besides my guitars! yeah, great story eh? oh yeah, the girl was super hot and wanted to have sex with me and i pussied out... i'm an idiot i guess!?!?!? but yeah, fell in love with damien that night!

[cneill]

Bless you Cecilie. You're so candid. Bless you

[cille]

^what, because of my duck f*cker confession?

Guys, thanks for your stories, but in this thread I'm not so much interested in hearing about how you discovered Damien, as we've had a gazillion threads like that before; I'm more interested to hear little descriptions of what your situation was at the time - maybe just about your mood at the time, important things that happened or didn't happen.

Cause I'm curious you know You don't have to write much, maybe just a couple of words or three that describes it for you.

[maccas81]

i was at a low point in my life when i heard damien rice - it was quite a while after he had brought the album out - i had heard of him but never listened to the record. i had just left dublin - broke - after finishing my MA and having had a great year there, and I came back home to Donegal, October 2003. My grandfather had just got the cancer that would eventually take his life, and required full-time care. it was a tough time for all of us, but we came through it after a long time, its difficult to describe the toll something like that takes on you, and the low that you feel, even though you're not actually the one with the disease, which is obviously much worse for them. Music helped me through the hard times, as well as god friends, and all the small things, as Blink 182 would say. Volcano camer to be my favourite song in this period,as did the snarling, rage filled second section of I remember...Difficult music for difficult times....Not that it was all gloom, I had some great fun with my friends and indeed the Eskimo crew all though then. Thankfully, this year, I feel more like Cille describes when she first heard Damien, and its a very exhilirating feeling when you learn to just accept yourself for who you are and not care what anyone else thinks....
Long live Music, and long live you all!

[Ranting Thespian]

Originally Posted by Ranting Thespian

. . . The only difference from then to now is that I was working at a grocery store then, and I am not anymore. Hmmm, not very interesting. You should have probably skipped my post .

Nothing more to say. Well, pleanty more to say, I can say gobbled up stuff like, "chicken on my thigh makes me ride!", but I don't think I will, or that it's appropriate here. Um, ignore this post again.

[simog]

I can't remember the exact time and place I first heard him, but I remember listening to the album for the first time in the car, driving my dad into London.

It was at a fairly dark period in my life - I'd split up with my girlfriend of 9 years. So when I heard the album it was like finding God.

"Cold, cold water surrounds me" rung so true.

I went to see Damien at Shepherd Bush Empire in Oct (i think) 2003 - I was standing right at the front and was absolutely blow away. If finding Damien was like finding God, I was now in heaven.

In short, O got me through a darkness.

"I look to my eskimo friends when I'm down"

S
-----
btw - briliant topic and thanks for starting it of so well

[PenguinBoy]

i was depressed and got dumped arround the time when i started listening to the most damien rice. such is life. bluuuuuuuuuuuh

[StatQuo]

I actually only heard from damien with the title song of the movie 'closer', my girlfriend at the time was in love with his music. Not much later she said she had fallen in love with another, it took about a year before we finally broke up. She left off with this other guy, i was left with damien rice. he's now my god!

[scarlet_panto]

When I think back, I wonder what might have happened if I had found out a bit sooner about Damien.
But then again I let that chance slip.
I remember reading his name in a kind of survey someone I didn't really know did. The question was that usual "what music do you listen to?". I read that name but probably felt too burnt out to go and search for it, because that's what I was like at this time. I couldn't really be bothered to connect with my surroundings and tried to built walls around me with the things I liked and had so far discovered.
One of these "things" was Tori Amos. So I went out to buy "The Beekeeper".
And under the title of song 3, there was this tiny, italic note that said "with Damien Rice". And it rang me a bell. I listened to it and when I heard his background vocals I felt something inside me that slowly dug itself out of piles of books and CD's and started to move again.

For a few days, it was enough for me to listen to that song and that voice I hadn't known so far. But then I decided to give it a go and search for that someone the voice and the name "Damien Rice" belonged to.
So I discovered Damien. For a long time, I wouldn't even know what he looked like. Only listen to his songs.
I think the first one I got to hear was either Prague or Older Chests. Htey both really got me down, but then again it was good. really good. I loved them, as I loved any other song that I stumbled over on my discovery journey. I remember crying in the tram on my way home while listening to Older Chests.

During that time last year, there were a couple of things going on and wrong about me which made me feel like I was stuck on a floe that was melting. My father had just started drinking again (he never wanted us to discover but I found empty bottles, so I did anyway), my mother wouldn't really do anything that seemed useful to me.
I was afraid of how my two smaller sisters would take that in. In that time, I think I hated someone for the first time in my life. I hated my life as well. I hated school, I hated faces that I felt were staring at me. My parents eventually split up, we moved, my father moved but in a different direction. Damien stayed.
Some lines in Then Go and Older Chests were giving me an even harder time. "And if there's some place else that you would rather be", "and papa went to other lands" and "just pass me by, I'll be fine, just give me time" are among the hardest lines that I couldn't let stop hitting me.

Winter came and I fell in love with Cold water. I went through this carousel-sort-of-moods but I could always listen to his songs because they look different to me when I feel differently.
Damien brought me to step into the corner where that guitar stood. The guitar that belonged to my sister but I adopted it because she would never play it. And so my keyboard got a companion.

And I found the urge to write again. To song-write and not only angrily smashing pages with my pen to fill them with words that I wanted to get out of my head. I could co-ordinate them again.
I don't hate my father anymore, it's changed ("papa went...to find someone who understands" I did, finally). But there are still times when I can't come to term with my life. And whenever that's approaching or I am angry with anything but also when I feel particularly happy and free I stop and listen to these songs. It doesn't matter when or where or why, I just do and it makes me feel at home.
It's different now, because I do know what Damien looks like, I know about Lisa and Vyv, Tomo, Shane. I've heard him talk, I've seen live recordings although I still couldn't get hold of a concert to go to.
I know those songs by heart but still they are special.

I guess that was a bit of a mixture of how I discovered Damien, what my life was like back then, how it developed (well, somehow), what his music makes me feel like and anything else you might detect in there.
I'm sorry I guess I'm in a strange mood right now

[Windgirl]

Sometimes I feel like everyone expects me to be perky and happy all the time. SOmetimes I expect myself to be perky and happy all the time, like it's my job. My grandma was really sick, and my mom and I were at the hospital a lot. There was a lot going on. I would bring my tap shoes and tap in the halls and do renditions of chicago and any broadway musical that would come to my head. While I love that type of music. It got the point where I just felt numb. One night when I just needed to get away from everything my friend invited me over for the night. In the morning she put on O, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. It let me feel sad and happy at the same time. It was expressive and wonderful.

[MacrossGirl]

I was watching the movie "Closer", and crying as that movie mirrored my life at the time. And I heard Blowers Daughter and just froze. I went directly to the end of the movie to see who sang it. I went from there, to the internet to look him up. His songs, they just were what I needed to hear. It was like he understood my broken heart, inside and out. And wrote about it. Lovely.. now I cant live without him.

[carvinC980t_kid]

ok, i guess i f*cked up and i said how i discovered him. i'll try and give you more detail about my life at the time.

i was going through a tuff time. i wasn't really accepted by any crowd at school. my bestfriends whom i loved SO much, they were both girls and we were all bestfriends and hung out 24/7, decided one day i wasn't good enough for them anymore. they were drinking alot when they weren't with me and i was completely against drinking and smoking and that ****. well, i felt horrible about myself. i met a kid who was new to our school and we became bestfriends freshmen year. well, he had a ****ty home life. not really really bad, but it wasn't a good influence. his parents were split up, his mom moved to california, his dad and him moved to indiana from michigan, his dad was an alcoholic and got cancer and he smoked pot, his dads girlfriend was living with them, and it was just a mess with the cancer thing. it just led to more and more drinking. i watched the man drink a 24case of beer and not get drunk... i'm not kidding at all. he was a big tuff guy too and he just sat there and couldn't get drunk on beer anymore hardly.

well, things like that kept going on. i was left alone by the best friends i had had before and then i met and even cooler/better friend. his dad wnet out of town almost ever weekend and his dads gf would go with him, so we always had the house to ourselves. we started throwing "parties" where we just had a bounch of people come over and my friend and i would rock out and every one would just listen to us and have a blast. he was really good at bass!! well, we both were really depressed and he smoked and i didn't. he knew i was against it, so it was something we never talked about ever. then one day, i was so depressed and i was just sick of being alive. i had a broken foot and spent my time in a cast from september till january of my freshmen year. no one wanted to be my friend besides that kid and another kid who we hung out with sometimes. otherwise the kids at the parties weren't really friends.. just people we knew. well, i was just sick of life and i didn't want to live it anymore until a girl i knew introuduced me to damien rice.

when she introuduced me to damien rice i felt so connected to his music. it was so depressing to listen to, but yet SO comforting. to be honest, there were a few times where i'd lay awake at night so depressed because everyone hated me for being different, because i had long hair, so i was automatically a pot head and all that crap, which i was completely against at the time, that i'd end up laying awake at night and his music would bring me to tears. i was inlove with the album "O" i couldn't get enough of it. well, as time went on all the depression started to win in this battle i was fighting with it and it took me over.

i started drinking. never got drunk though, just a bit tipsy.. i hated drinking, but then one night a kid i knew who was really cool came over to my friends house along with another kid who has been my best guy friend for over 3 years now and they introduced me to weed. i never wanted to smoke untill then. i watched my friend smoke and then he offered it to me and i said no, but then as my other friends decided they would smoke.. i thought it'd try it. i tried it and it became a horrible habit since. well, i started becmoing a weekend pot smoker and life was just pure sh*t. nothing good was happening. that summer i met a girl who f*cked me over, which just made my self esteem even lower. so i started smoking more. then at the beggining of sophomore year my friends dad told him they'd be moving in 2 months, because his job wanted to give him a management position in tennesse for a branch they were opening and it was hella good pay, so they moved after only living here for about a year. this just made me ever MORE depressed.

then i started smoking with one of the guys who introduced me to weed. i showed him damien rice. he too fell in love with him. we became smokers who'd smoke an 8th or a quarter of weed in one sitting of a friday night. i was doing horrible. i really should have seeked help for my depression.

well, eventually i pulled out of it, i got my license, i started smoking 24/7, tried other drugs, kept making friends and losing them even quicker, and depression set in again. this time it made me an angry person. well, i still loved damien, because i felt like he was the only "friend" i had who i knew would never leave me or tell me to cut my air or hate me for quiting soccer and sh*t like that. then junior year i met a girl who i care about so much, who has broken my heart since and has done it everday for the past two months.. even today she did it.

i quit smoking for her. i quit everything. i didn't need drugs anymore. she made me happy and i made her happy. i showed her damien rice and she fell in love with him too! i took her to see damien this past summer! it was amazing! she melts everytime i play or sing one of his songs! well, since i got dumped by her i've been super depressed and once again... damien is still by my side and going stronger then ever before!!!!! well, when she broke up with me the first time, yes i got dumped twice, i started smoking again and doing other stuff, then i quit again when we got back together, but i did smoke a few times, which i felt REALLY bad for.

ps. summer before my junior year i went to germany and lived there for a few weeks and went to poland for a few days and paris and at this time i was really depressed also, but then i was very angry with life too... well, i took damien rice with me, the postal service, and a coldplay cd. damien was listened to about 90% of the time. i walked around with headphones on most of the time and in paris i spent about 4 hours with "i remember" set on repeat. it was amazing! that trip i completely feel in love with lisa's voice!!!!!!

yep, my life story. sorry if you wasted part of your life reading that.

[sphiff]

I was watching 'Dear Frankie' (and trying hard not to start crying) when they played 'delicate' during one of the most moving scenes and so I went looking for the song, and stumbled upon others too in the process...and got really hooked. But I guess like most people the reason I could relate so well to his music at that time was because I was going through a rough time in life, when I felt isolated from everyone around... so listening to his songs made me feel alot better (in the way it feels good to have someone sit with you while you cry kind of thing...)

[samuelle]

i first heard of damien rice late in 2003. i was on my way out of my undergrad degree and into the "real world" and stressed about what to do with the rest of my life. i was going to school full time and working 30 hours a week. i had grad school applications, job applications, wedding plans, etc. just overtaking my life. it always struck me as terribly unfair that school applications were due so early. flower orders, too.

anyway, the most notable thing about that time in my life is that in order to help combat stress i started listening to more singer/songwriter music than the louder, more raucous stuff i had been listening to. finding O was extremely fortuituous.

[corkboyinexile]

I first heard him through a friend who I went to college with(he thought me how to play guitar too). I was feeling pretty good because I had just moved from Ireland to study in Manchester and everthing was new and different.

I loved him from the start, but it was a few weeks later when I really got him if ya know what I mean.
We were just chilling out in the kitchen having a few drinks when I got a call from my girlfriend of seven years. She was my teen love and I was then 22.
She told me she didn't "this" anymore that we had become different people.
I now know this to be true, but at the time the words cut through me like knives.

I was gutted. Absolutely. I couldn't tell what emotions were running through my head, there was hurt, sadness, but most of all anger.
Why could she do this?
Why?

That was when I told my buddy and he dissapeared for a few minutes, then came back into the kitchen with his stereo, plugged it in, and then played me Cheers Darlin'.
That was me. He spoke of the frustration and anger. And it was me.
I started a three day binge on the cheapest dirtiest whiskies I could get my hand on and I must have had that album on repeat throughout.

Thats why everytime I hear any of his songs each one strikes a different emotion within me for every thought and feeling that ran through my head during those days and weeks that followed, now years.