Placebo - The Bitter End

Placebo is one of those bands that took me a good, long while to get into. I first got to know the name sometime around '97, when I met my friend Hugo. At the time, I wasn't overly interested in things that fell outside my usual sonic stomping grounds, as it were, and whatever someone would try to get me into, I just couldn't even spare a listen or two to judge its merits. This is mostly true, for every now and again I could - and would be surprised - but that's something I'll go into more detail one of these days.
But some people leave seeds in you, and that's what Hugo did back then. It wouldn't be until 2003, though, that I'd take to Placebo.

Take a walk with me now, and it's '97. I'm twenty years old, two years into the most lasting relationship I ever had, and - just as I am now - completey lost. I'd gotten out of the Air Force a year prior, and this would be the beginning of my string of dead-end jobs. I was on the dole, and as it was running out, I figured I should get a job. I don't remember how anymore, but I ended working at what was then the biggest shopping center in the whole of Europe, and for the next seven months or so, I was to work in its huge hypermarket, restocking milks and eggs and yoghurts and such like products.
It was a dreary job, and I couldn't wait for my contract to end so I could move on to whatever was to come next. But I did need the money, so I stuck at it.
One of the things that I recall was that so many people worked there right at the beginning. Some 1500 people had jobs there at the time. So obviously, I didn't get to know very many people; other than those of my team and a few others who started working when I did, very few I actually got to know.

At the time, I was very into collecting comic books - it was my hobby for the longest time, and it wouldn't be surprising to catch me reading some comics in my free time, of maybe the latest issue of Wizard Magazine, or the new Previews catalogue. And that's how me and Hugo started talking, over our mutual love for comics. Do you know how sometimes, just sometimes, you meet someone and you just know that you're destined to be friends? That's what it felt like. Like in some way we'd always be connected somehow.
And shortly after we'd met - we'd actually started working on the exact same day - I did something I don't very often do, which is getting someone a birthday present. I got Hugo a nice copy of Peter Kuper's 'Give it up', in which he adapted a few Kafka stories, and that started the ball rolling.
It's been 23 years since then, and I've been honored to be his friend since; Life took us in different paths, but whether it be Madrid, London, Lisbon, Warsaw, Lausanne or Nyon we've always managed to be together, and from the very depths of my heart, he's one of a handful of people that I just can't imagine my life without.
His kindness, generosity, intelligence, depth of heart and mind are an inspiration to me.
You bless me with your friendship.

So, seeds. Even then they were being sown, though what fruit they'd bear would be years in the making.
It is now 2003, and I'm on my second year at FNAC, doing what I loved the most at the time - working with records. Out of the many things that the aughties brought me in terms of new music, 2003 would bring with it an undying love and appreciation for Placebo.
And it was hardly something I could escape from, really - we had the album on heavy rotation in the store, it was one the best sellers at the time. The clip to 'The Bitter End' was just so inescapable, that I found myself thinking 'OK, I'll bite' and I got the album.
And all at once I became infatuated with the record, and shortly thereafter with the band.
'Sleeping with ghosts' is one of those records that from beginning to end grabs you and won't let go. Everything gels so perfectly there, everything touched me so - I go no further than 'Centrefolds' and 'Protect me from what I want' as absolute victories - that I still feel the same giddy feeling I did in those early listens.