I went to college in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and had a fabulous experience. One of the unexpected benefits of that town was a thriving music scene, both in the live venues and in a few local media entities. The college radio station KVSC played so much great indie music that I've barely heard anywhere else since. And on cable TV was this strange channel called the Burly Bear Network, where I first encountered music videos from indie groups that were consumable exactly zero other places, as the internet was still essentially inept at hosting much video content.

So now's about as good a time as any to talk about the worst case of influenza I ever came down with in my life.

It was my first year living completely on my own, in an efficiency apartment a few miles from campus. I was truly alone that year, as the majority of my college friends were studying abroad.

Perfect time to be nearly catatonic with illness. I actually woke up already peak sick and called my mom back home and just moaned to her. She said I should go to the hospital. I simply could not drive a car. It was all my energy to flip on my television. So that's where the next three or so days dissolved into a blur of fever and pain.

For a lot of the time, that Burly Bear Network was on, playing day and night as I faded in and out of consciousness in my invisible little room.

At some point, I found my face actually curling into the resemblance of a smile, reacting to the appearance of this wild music video shot apparently with a home video camera, of some guys in a forest, for a song that was a novel pleasure of noise and melody.

It was "Summer Here Kids" by Grandaddy. I love this song, the spastic chorus singing, the churning beat, the lo-fi guitar gain, the chord progressions, the lovely ending.

The entire album, Under the Western Freeway, proved to be just as inspired and disheveled, and though Grandaddy never quite reached a similar peak of creative vindication afterward, I will never forget their name nor stop thanking them for producing such a garbled puzzle of radiance. I suppose I could claim that "Summer Here Kids" cured me. It did make the dismal time very productive.