A couple of days go on the Pit, there was a thread about a kid who died by imitating an anime called “Naruto” and burying his head in the sand. In that thread, someone posted a link to a YouTube video that showed the anime character in question in action. I checked it out just because I wasn’t at all familiar with Naruto and wanted to see what kind of character could drive someone to do this–but it wasn’t the video that stuck in my mind. It was the song it was set to. It was called “Breaking the Habit,” and I loved it. I googled it, figuring that such a common phrase would come up with about a million useless matches, but no–the very first one was a YouTube vid for “Breaking the Habit” by Linkin Park. I listened, determined that it was the same song, and immediately downloaded it from iTunes. It’s now in heavy rotation on my playlist.
Now, this is a song I never would have discovered if it hadn’t been for the chance happening of opening the thread and choosing to watch the video.
I’ve had this happen before: I discovered that I actually like some of Eminem’s stuff (and I’m, to put it politely, not a rap fan) when I found one of his CDs in a parking lot. I found an industrial version of the BeeGees’ “Tragedy” (yeah, I know, I thought so too, but it works!) because I forgot my iPod at work one day and went cruising for internet radio stations. I discovered “Mad World” (the Gary Jules version) after hearing a snippet of it while getting my hair cut. It seems to happen to me a lot.
What about you? Have you ever discovered a song (or a book, movie, or TV show) purely by accident and then ended up liking it a lot? I don’t mean that you heard it on your usual radio station or on American Idol or something, but rather that you happened across it in a completely unexpected way. Tell us about it!
One of my favorite songs ever, “Sunshower” by Dr. Buzzard’s Original “Savannah” Band, was playing ever so lightly in the background of an inocuous scene in Boyz N the Hood- without seeing that movie I wouldn’t have discovered one my all time favorite albums.
I was on the dole in Cardiff during the Thatcher years, when the excellent Chapter Arts Centre began showing films for 50p for the unemployed. Tuesday afternoons. Because of the price alone I went to see a film that Chapter described as ‘the best first film since Citizen Kane’. I wouldn’t have gone at full price.
Blood Simple. Became something of a fan.
Wee Bairn - I love that album! Cherchez la Femme being my favourite. (You know August Darnell went on to become Kid Creole?)
MiM
I found a dog-eared copy of Dean Koontz’s Watchers in a doctor’s office. It was missing the front cover and all the front pages up to the dedication page. I found the idea of a “mystery book” (not really mysterious; I knew the author and title from the spine) far more intriguing than the ancient copies of Highlights and Redbook, so I picked it up and dug in. Within three or four pages, I was riveted (Koontz is very good at that). The wait ended up being a long one, and I made it about 75 pages into the book before I was called back to the exam room. I made sure to snatch the book up on my way out, finished it that afternoon, and it sparked off a months-long Koontz kick during which I read probably fifteen of his books. None was quite as satisfying as Watchers, but all were entertaining reads. And while I had a vague idea of who Koontz was before that day, I doubt I would have ever gone out of my way to read him if not for the chance meeting with a forgotten paperback in a doctor’s office.
A friend and I were just coming up with random phrases in MSN chat, and I plugged on into google, just to have it come back with a link to the homesite of the Bambi Molesters. Not a favorite band now, to be true, but that’s about as randomly picking up a band as you can get.
My Tivo caught a couple of episodes of Teen Titans which I watched because I was bored. Cute show, but the theme song was unbelievably cute and catchy. “It would be cool”, thought I “if a real band were writing tight infectious pop songs like this I would totally buy their stuff.”
I looked on Wikipedia…Puffy Ami Yumi apparantly really is a “real band” who wrote the theme song with the same enthusiasm and energy they put into all of their music. Deep music scavenger hunting ensued…
I became an instant fan 
While channel-hopping one evening some years back I came across the closing scene in the movie Fearless. I had never heard of the movie and wasn’t particularly interested in it, but the music playing on the soundtrack was one of the most stunning orchestral pieces I’d ever heard. I sat through the credits and noted that the score had been written by Maurice Jarre. This being the days before Napster, i-Tunes, et al, I made a mental note to look for the soundtrack CD next time I was out shopping.
About two weeks later, I was driving to an evening class and switched the radio on to find Performance Today already in progress. The host was interviewing (through a translator) a Polish composer whose name I didn’t recognize. They were discussing a symphony he had written back in 1976 that had, at the time, attracted very little notice. With the release of a new recording in 1992, however, the piece had become an overnight sensation, a fact that left the composer (who came off as an extremely gentle and modest soul) bewildered. He recounted a letter he’d received from a teenage girl who had been horribly injured and whose entire family had been wiped out in a house fire. She was writing to thank the composer for the beautiful piece he had written – the only thing, she said, that made her life worth living. As I listened to the interview, I could literally hear the composer weeping as the translator retold the story. When they finally played a selection from the piece, I was stunned. It was exactly the same piece of music that I’d heard two weeks before. As luck would have it, I was only a few blocks away from a CD store that featured a good classical selection.
I may not have made it to my class that evening, but I came away with a CD of Górecki’s hauntingly beautiful Symphony No 3, which I consider to be the greatest composition of the 20th century.