Trailer Park (Bonus Track Version) [Remastered] by Beth Orton

Saturday, August 17, 2024

Trailer Park (Bonus Track Version) [Remastered]

Beth Orton

I used to call the music on this album “acoustic electronica” back when we called electronica “electronica” and Madonna told us all to call her “Veronica Electronica” (or at least told Kurt Loder to call her that) and we all kinda laughed until we heard Ray of Light in its entire magnificence and gagged over how absolutely amazing that album was and how her voice had never sounded like that before and how she was finally being authentic, probably, and that whole Evita mess was finally behind us and lo! We returned to calling her whatever she told us to call her because she fucking earned that respect with Ray of Light and that’s all I’ll say about that.

I visited London, England when I was a freshman in college at 18. I did a decent job in high school and had some good standardized test scores which got me into the honors program in college. At one point I withdrew my college application and wasn’t going to go at all, but that’s a much longer story for another day with another therapist.

At the college orientation program held during the summer break before school was to start back up, I learned about a short study abroad opportunity. They were taking a two week ish trip across the pond and I drooled at the very thought of going with them. I started physically fidgeting faster when they talked about it. I really wanted to go on this trip.

There was to be a selection process to choose participants from the honors program to go. We were to write an essay and submit it with an application, and probably a processing fee of some kind because colleges have perfected the art of nickel and dime-ing their students to death with application fees and lab fees and processing fees and breathing the same air fees on top of other fees. I think the fee for the trip was $1,000 which today would be way more than that. But it was a significant sum back then.

I don’t remember the application, to be honest. But I do recall that the first line in my essay was, “I remember the roses.” (I went on to write about how I’d been able to visit Germany, Austria, and Switzerland with my high school choir, and how I how much aching wanderlust I had to venture out of the country once more.) I later learned mine was the first essay and application to be received, and that I was immediately selected.

The school year started. I was going to a university two hours away from my parents so the entire year was basically my own little Rumspringa. I’d had a rough time growing up gay in their household. By “rough” I mean horrific with suicidal thoughts and self mutilation and untreated depression and anxiety, and all much more traumatic and stressful than I ever realized at the time. I wanted to run away. Every night I wanted to run away. But I stayed because I couldn’t bear the thought of the sorrow it would inflict on my baby brother. So I snuck out some nights and did things that would make your toes curl, but I always snuck back in before dawn. But, again, another story another therapist.

Being away from my parents for an entire year was a sweet taste of freedom, and I drank every drop I could. I mean I drank. Like, literally. Lots of alcohol. Drank and drank and drank. And I danced at the disco bars (which nobody called disco bars except me). I fell madly and magically in love with my first real boyfriend with whom I still speak today and who remains an influence particularly when it comes to music. I had indiscriminate sex with strangers. I tried drugs. I stayed up all night at the coffeehouse smoking clove cigarettes with the poetry writers and the girls who fell all over them. I made friends. I tried more drugs. I got my ears pierced in my dorm room with an ice cube and a sewing needle and a girl named Sharon Kim who made me laugh a lot. I played pinball. I rode a bike. I listened to The Pixies for the first time. I ate 3:00 am white pizzas with bacon and tomatoes that were diced not sliced (always at the request of the afore mentioned boyfriend). I hung Tori Amos posters on every square inch of my dorm room walls and then basically deserted it and the ROTC roommate I’d been assigned to live with. I got an A in one class: Slavic 130: A Comparison Study of the Vampire Figure in Eastern and Western Culture. I got an F in everything else. By the end of the year my GPA was the lowest it could possibly be. And when my parents found out, and when they learned I had a boyfriend, that was the end of the college experience for me.

The trip to London remains a very special experience and memory for me. One very special reason is that I got to see Beth Orton live at Shepherd’s Bush. I bought tickets from a scalper who totally scammed me because the venue still had tickets available for sale at the door for half the cost of what the scalper charged me. But I didn’t care. I got dressed up in goth black lipstick and a skirt and boots and black t-shirt with a chain wrapped around my finger and wrist with my hair highlighted and I got on public transport and I went to that concert and I loved it. It was her birthday so the crowd sang Happy Birthday to her. I don’t remember what songs she played, even though I was writing down the set list as she performed. I don’t remember seeing anyone else dressed like me. I don’t remember thinking that mattered at all.

But I do remember calling this album “acoustic electronica”. I remember listening to it in high school, and at college, and in London. And, all these years later, listening to it again.