I was distraught, not for the two contraband nudie magazines I'd persuaded a seventh former to purchase on my behalf, but for the loss of my CD wallet, which contained all of the 25 CDs I had painstakingly assembled during my lifetime.
As it turned out, having my bag stolen was one of the best things that could have happened to me from a musical perspective. B
y this stage of my life my aural tastes had evolved from the faux-punk-pop sensibilities that characterised my pre-adolescent years, and once insurance for my loss had been duly approved, I found myself excitedly scouring the aisles at the Tuam St branch of Real Groovy with a $600 voucher in hand.
I still remember a lot of the albums I bought with that voucher. London Calling by the Clash, on my Aunty Jodi's recommendation.
The Rolling Stones' Forty Licks was in there, as was the Beatles' White Album. Mama Donovan insisted I buy her Fat Freddy's Drop's Based on a True Story, which was probably justified considering she paid the excess.
The album that I remember best was bought on a whim: The Best of Blur, by ... er ...Blur. I bought it on the strength of a song called Song 2 - known in various circles as ''The Woo-hoo Song'' - with which I had developed something of an infatuation.
At first, listening to Blur's Best of collection was disappointing, because I expected an entire album of songs like Song 2. Instead I was presented with a collection of meticulously composed, musically complex, stylistically diverse pieces of music that my uncultured musical brain had trouble appreciating.
Over time, however, my perseverance with Blur began to pay off. I learned more about music, about how songs work, about how Western pop music works, about keys and cadences and choruses and four-chord formulas, and I began to appreciate how different Blur's music was compared to everything else around me.
I began to love the unexpected dissonance of Coffee & TV, the gentle and unorthodox melody and experimental key changes of For Tomorrow, the velvety groove of the bassline in Girls and Boys. I began to understand the music that Blur made, because it was the kind of music I would want to make. I fell in love. Head over heels.
After dominating the British musical scene along with Oasis in the early to mid-'90s, Blur had gone on indefinite hiatus in 2001, five years before I discovered them.
This was one of the more devastating realities of my adolescent life - the fact that I would never see my favourite band of all time perform live - but I consoled myself by painstakingly collecting every piece of recorded music Blur had ever produced.
Illegal bootlegs, bizarre Swedish remix tribute albums, I had them all. I drowned myself in Blur to escape the fact that I would never see them live.
One day in 2009, Blur announced they would be reuniting for a series of one-off concerts at Hyde Park, and I promised myself there and then that if it were ever practicable - even if it were mildly impracticable - I would do whatever was necessary to see Blur live.
I set myself a budget of $1000: if Blur were performing somewhere and I could get tickets, transport and accommodation for $1000 or less, I was there in a flash, no questions asked.
On August 1 this year, Blur announced they would be playing in Auckland at the Big Day Out in January. In terms of sheer, unadulterated joy, this was the equivalent of discovering I'd won Powerball while enjoying a full body massage from a Swedish bikini model.
Everything was perfect: I was going to be in Auckland at that time anyway, tickets were fairly cheap, I wouldn't have to fork out for enormous air fares or accommodation costs. It was going to happen, something that I never thought possible. I was going to see Blur.
I purchased tickets to the concert with the fevered excitement of a 17-year-old lining up at a bar two minutes before his birthday. Two minutes (and $400) later I reclined on my bed, mentally calculating the exact number of minutes it would be before I could watch my musical heroes stride out in front of 25,000 people - one of whom, gloriously, would be me. (9,072,000, if you're interested).
On November 24, Blur pulled out of Big Day Out, citing organisers ''moving the goalposts'' too much, and for the first time in several years I cried real, genuine man-tears.
You should never try to meet your heroes. Be content with that idealised version you keep in your head. Most of the time, the real thing will just let you down.
Emile Donovan is a Dunedin student.
