Epic song - "Babylon" by David Gray

March 21, 2000. Auburn, Alabama. I was hanging with my buddy Scott, aka "Pelican". We had hit happy hour and were back at his apartment getting our second wind and getting ready to go out again (these were my wild college days after all). We were waiting on some of his friends to finish getting ready and he was flipping through the channels on his tv. He had stopped briefly on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, who had just introduced a musical guest I had never heard of. I only heard a few strums of the opening guitar riff, when the channel was changed. I quickly shouted to flip back so I could listen to the rest of the song. Amazing! I thankfully remembered to commit the artist's name, David Gray, to memory. I couldn't stop talking about the song, and finally Pelican says to me "You're buying this album tomorrow, aren't you?"

Yup.


The song was called Babylon. The album, "White Ladder", was track for track lyrically and musically brilliant. After looking up David Gray on the internet, I was shocked to discover that this was his fourth album.

How come I had never heard of this incredible talent before? The radio was playing nothing but vacuous boy band fluff when it could have been playing this?

This was a watershed event in my love affair with music...an epiphany. It not only got me excited about music again, but it started me on a quest to dig deep to find these ignored artists.