In the spring of 1992, I was a shaggy-haired, loud-mouthed, baggy-jeans and flannel shirt wearing sixteen year old learning about life and love one rock and roll song at a time growing up in Northeastern New Jersey.

My chums and I would go to see shows at The Acadamey, Roseland Ballroom, The Wetlands and Irving Plaza in New York City almost weekly. We saw practically every nineties grunge or grunge-infused band that was on the circuit. Soundgarden. The Beastie Boys. Rage Against The Machine. Tool. Spearhead (before Michael Franti found profit from the words “I Love You”) and virtually every other relevant rock act from that era.

But the band we sought out the most was Belly. Tanya Donelly (Throwing Muses) and Gail Greenwood were like the yin and yang of our pubescent desires. Sweet and sultry Tanya paired with rough-and-tumble Greenwood put on some of the most fun shows that we had been to at the time. I recall a Halloween show at the fabled Limelight in NYC – it was a “radio show” – put on by pop station Z-100 – and, even though it was in one of the coolest nightclubs in the country at the time, that show never matched the energy of the Academy dates.

On the “Star” tour, Belly was out with a new band from the UK called Radiohead. All that we knew of them was the single at the time – Creep – and that the lead singer was a tiny little fellow. But at the end of the show, he joined Donelly for a version of the Belly song Stay (which also closed the Star record).

ANYWAY – those shows were instrumental for me, personally, as they were the first times that I was able to fully experience the emotional charge that one can get from an incredible live show. We had the record after hearing the single on MTV or the radio (remember when?) and we’d pick up the Village Voice to see what shows were coming that month and go to the video store in Garfield at seven in the morning to queue up for tickets to the shows we wanted to hit. Service fees were maybe fifty or seventy five cents then so the highest price for a NYC club show for a hot band would be MAYBE fifteen or twenty bucks. We’d count down the days, scribbling lyrics onto our binders and trading mix tapes – each trying to outdo the last – until the show day came and we’d borrow someones parents car (usually mine) and drive through the Lincoln Tunnel and into the playground of midtown-Manhattan.

Maybe got a hot dog or a knish before the show. If we were lucky, someone had some decent weed and we could still buy tall-boy cans of beer at the bodegas on the streetcorners.

And then we’d go into the show. Usually right when the doors opened. And we’d get our spots right at the edge of the stage, sixteen and sweaty with our Doc Martens laced up tight, we didn’t want to miss a single note.

We nodded our heads through Radiohead’s set and I recall not being overly excited about them. Even didn’t make a big deal about it when little Thom Yorke was out in the pit with us during Belly’s set.

But then, they played their radio song – Creep – and closed out their set. And the house lights came up, stagehands took the stage and switched out the gear. And those fifteen or twenty minutes between the opener and the headliner seemed like an eternity. We were all at a point with Belly where we knew every word to every song and so did the rest of the seven hundred or so kids packed into the room waiting.

And then, at a random moment, the house lights went off. And before nearly every single show of Belly’s that we saw, they played this song. This eerie, creepy, dark, brooding instrumental strings song. It was spooky. Like something from an indie thriller film. And I didn’t know what it was. Didn’t really care at the time either. But as the years went on and I remembered those early club shows so fondly, I yearned to hear it again. I wanted to use it at MY shows. Because, thinking about it, it was just PERFECT. Belly didn’t have the most cheerful lyrics, but DAMN if they weren’t fun shows. And this track- this three and a half minute piece of music – was the most perfect introduction to the show that ever could have been.

The years went by and from time to time, I’d think about that song. How great it would be to hear it again. I could use it as the opening music to many of the shows we do today…because it’s just that perfect. But I had NO way of finding it. Short of finding the promoter of the Belly shows at the Academy in 93 or tracking down Tanya Donelly herself, there was no way I could Google “eerie instrumental song used to open Belly’s shows in the early nineties”. And I couldn’t verbally describe it either- “Hey, you ever heard this song? It goes like….”

Never mind.

But I was at The Pub last night having a drink. We opted to hang downstairs because it seemed like kids night on the second floor. And we were just hanging out. Enjoying an Allagash….and then I heard it….the opening bars…that eerie, familiar sound. And it took a minute for me to place it- but when I did, I nearly fell out of my chair. “CHRIS!” I yelled to the bartender. “CHRIS! Is this on your iPod!?!?”

(It was)

“WHO IS THIS!?”

And he told me – it’s a Radiohead song. Called Cogs (Last Flowers Til The Hospital) and it was on a B-Sides collection.

I FREAKED. And as soon as I got home, I stumbled my drunken fingers all over the keyboard trying to find it. But I COULDN’T FIND IT. There is another song that was released with In Rainbows called simply Last Flowers Til The Hospital but not the track I was looking for. Helpless, I turned to Twitter. And I Tweeted my plight. And @gspence and @yammerin and @aglikesilver came to my rescue and, together we found it.

And here it is-