25 years too late, i want to thank all of you UK music pirates who left open their napster and limewire clients on 33.6k/56k dialup connections for hours at a time in the middle of the night in 2000.
when i was a teenager in the late 90s and early 2000s, canada was still recovering from a decade of hopeless grunge, there weren't many options for learning about new music aside from the radio. 99% of it was dead pop and rock. but a local university radio station (CJSR) exclusively played all kinds of music you couldn't find anywhere else.
one night, at 2am, a CJSR deejay queued up a track by a band called Lemon Jelly. after decades of despondent punk/rock/grunge, it was the most refreshing and uplifting thing i had ever heard. the kind of music that was just glad if you smiled a bit.
except, i couldn't find it anywhere. the big local shops like HMV didn't import LJ's label, and i couldn't afford to import it myself from a UK music store.
that week, i spent dozens of hours digging through every limewire/napster share i could find. and finally, i found it: someone in the UK had dumped the entire CD to 128kbit mp3s, as well as recordings from BBC 1's The Breezeblock.
a year later, i was finally able to buy their CD in-store, along with the incredible Illustrator vector artwork by lemon jelly themselves. i not only became a fan of LJ, but became strongly influenced by their low-poly vector illustration style in my own design work.
so: a belated thank you UK napsterites for sharing your music overseas 🙏
