I've written before about how I encountered the album this comes from, Computer World, during an odd period in my life when I had no access to hi-fi gear beyond a shitty tabletop radio and one of those pre-Walkman shoebox types of cassette tape recorders. It's the only time in my adult life I have found myself in such a predicament and it only lasted six months. I was mostly doing without, which was weird enough, but a friend thought I should hear the Kraftwerk album and also Devo's New Traditionalists, which he put on the other side. I liked the Devo well enough, but Computer World is what kept bringing me back. Even at that I would not necessarily call "Computer Love" the best song on it—that would more likely be "Numbers" or "Pocket Calculator," because they also have the humor—but it's the longest, which makes me think it's the best at reproducing the experience of listening to this album, so full of such lovely, meditative, and humanizing music. Lasting more than seven minutes, and the story, such as it is, essentially a variation on the Greek story of Narcissus—so the humor is there after all, I finally see: "Could it be your face I see on my computer screen" (on the other hand, for those inclined to see in them prophets of the future, webcam interfacing decades ahead of its time)—it seems made to order for playing the way I did, in bed at night before turning in, under the covers, with the cassette recorder tucked beside one of my thighs. It was cold outside, one of the worst winters I saw in Minneapolis.
