Love and Rockets are available on iTunes.

by Walter Price

Back in 1989, you were on a journey into full-frontal independence. And your music soundtracked all the oddly poignant changes in your life. Your cassette/CD collection was full of Camper Van Beethoven, The Cure, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pixies, and probably The Cult. That is who you were. But there was a song, from a band formed out of the hallowed ashes of legendary Gothers, Bauhaus. The song was “So Alive” and the band was Love and Rockets.

Yeah, you, your friends and I thought the song was an ode to blissful narcotics usage. But we were wrong and we can not be blamed. With lyrics like, “My head is full of magic, baby, And I can’t share this with you, The feel I’m on a cross again, lately, But there’s nothing to do with you”, it seemed evident.

The band’s guitarist Daniel Ash at some point cleared things up telling Xsnoise. “I’d gone to a party on Saturday night, and I was married at the time, and I saw this woman over the other side of the room, and I was completely transfixed which is very odd because I was freshly married, It was very weird, but I was completely infatuated by her and so much so that I couldn’t go near her to even speak to her, it was just this overwhelming thing. I can’t explain it to this day. That’s why the first line is, ‘I don’t know what color your eyes are.’ Because I didn’t get that close, I just saw this person in the distance.”

Awe, it’s a song about infatuation. Makes sense now after all these years and we’ve all been there  But regardless of how any one of us has interpreted this classic New Wave gem, it is an everlasting nod to our glory days. I’ve done a bit of digging around the all-consuming YouTube and have unearthed three intriguing covers of “So Alive” that will make your day.

LOVE AND ROCKETS

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Better Than Ezra

The Plastic FanTastics

Black Light Burns

SO ALIVE

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