Alternate Title: "How I Went on an Epic Quest and Became the Best Sister Ever."
Let me set the scene for you, friends. I'm rushing to get ready to go meet my mom and brother for dinner (over at the Highland Grill, home of Sunday's to-die-for brunch), when all of a sudden my phone starts blowing up with texts and calls from my sister Emily in Cincinnati. She's texting me small novels, but I'm in a hurry to get out the door, so I toss my phone in my purse and hit the parking ramp, thinking I'll call her from the car.
Upon calling her, she begged me, at top volume and speed, to head to The Electric Fetus, to find her some album that I OMG HAD TO GO GET HER IMMEDIATELY. Not totally grasping the urgency of the situation, I demurred for a bit, then called my mom and Jonathan and told them I'd be late to dinner before setting off on my maiden voyage to The Fetus.
This is a big deal, campers. The Fetus is a Minneapolis institution, known for being one of the major obscure music destinations in the Midwest. I was completely overwhelmed when I walked in...it was a patchouli-scented, vinyl-crammed, hipster wet dream of a record store, and I was not ready for that. Let alone for the quest I was about to embark on...
See, Emily, my sister, who I adore, has always been the "cool" sister. She's into up-and-coming music like few other people I know. One of her major obsessions is Lord Huron, an indie artist I've heard of in passing and listened to once or twice (I think Kaitlin is also a fan...). For his new album, "Strange Trails," he organized a scavenger hunt! Each of the 14 tracks on the album was turned into a one of a kind 7-inch vinyl (also, as I learned, referred to as a '45') and distributed to a record store around the country. To find these stores, dedicated Huron fans had to do the following:
1. Shazam the music video for "Fool For Love," Lord Huron's newest single.
2. Follow the Shazam to the mystery map of the singles' location.
3. Go find the single! The Fetus was lucky enough to receive a copy of "The Yawning Grave," which my ever-so-hip sis wanted me to go locate.
So I strolled into the Fetus, in my cable knit sweater and ballet flats, totally not prepared. I asked casually where I could get my hands on "the Lord Huron Strange Trails Scavenger Hunt." Which I read, verbatim, off my phone because that's how clueless I was. The gentleman behind the counter gave me a look of complete incredulity and hilarity and, I like to think, a little pity, and goes, "Well, we hid it in here! So you have to find it!" I looked around in absolute dismay. You guys, the Electric Fetus is HUGE. And I was already late for dinner. So I called my sister and bitched and moaned for a few minutes about the Herculean task she had just set me to...and then started flipping through the records.
I flipped through two entire rows of records, friends. I went one by one, artist by artist, hunting for anything that looked out of the ordinary. I didn't even know what the album cover looked like! I didn't know the method to the Fetus album-hider's madness: would he use a play on words? Should I be looking for Lord Huron hidden with Prince, an iconic Minnesota guy? Should I look for "graves," or "yawning?" Perhaps references to the other Great Lakes? (Are there bands named after the other Great Lakes?) After a row of stressing out and, not gonna lie, panic-sweating, I called my mom and Jonathan to come meet me for reinforcement. And right after that, my iPhone died.
By the time they showed up, Jonathan had a little more information courtesy of our beloved sister. KEY information, like the album cover design and the fact that a 45 is not the same thing as a record. SO the past 45 minutes I spent looking through records...wasn't spent looking through the 45's. I had a tiny internal freakout, dashed over with them in tow, and started thumbing through the 45's. Literally only 30 seconds in, my charmed-life brother goes, "Oh! I found it!" And that, my friends, is when I realized that life is not fair. Because look where the album was oh-so-cleverly hidden:
That's right. Alphabetically. Had I known where to look, and what to look for, we could have avoided this entire saga in the first place.
But aren't you kind of glad I went through it? Because just think of it...now I not only know what a 45 is, but I basically have a fast track to be Lord Huron's best friend when I tell him of the 45 minutes of agony and confusion I survived in his name. Slash, now I'm listening to him on Spotify and am 100% a fan.
So we did our thing, and took our pictures, and hash tagged them on Instagram accordingly, and called Em, who promptly had a coronary with excitement. And that, my friends, is how I officially became the Best Sister Ever.
Also...not going to lie...it was kind of satisfying to go back and Shazam the song myself and go to the map, and see this:
Yeah, that's right. We discovered that, all right.