My old friend Dana first played Luna’s “Lunapark” for me in her suburban bedroom in the early 90s; we sat cross-legged on her crunchy green carpet listening along, rapt, to the slithering bass and warbly guitars. Dana and I couldn’t have been more opposite. Pictures of us from high school are a study in contrasts: she with long, curly black hair and a knack for dressing that reminded everyone of an idealized 1960’s flower-child vision; me with slack dirty-brown locks often caught in a pony tail, tan corduroys that might have been my father’s and a brightly-striped shirt. In one photo, I’m making the “OK” sign while clutching a half-eaten banana as she poses in front of a flowery tapestry. I had this picture hanging in my bedroom for a while; its symbolism seemed weirdly logical. Of course, we both changed significantly by the time we reached the other end of high school, our commitments to ever-changing hairstyles played no small role—I’d dyed mine black, green, pink; she chopped hers off entirely—but music was a thread that kept us tied tight for a few years.

Back in 1992, neither of us knew Galaxie 500 or Dean Wareham. I’m not sure where we picked up “Lunapark” or how we determined we ought to have it, other than perhaps deeming its retro artwork to our liking. At that time in my life, I was just beginning to discover music that wasn’t REM and the Sundays—I might have just read about zines in an issue of Sassy. The history of pop music was still totally unrevealed to me. That afternoon, in a tiny bedroom on a small street in a suburb on Long Island, that history was just starting to be written.

One of the first real rock shows I went to—at the now-vanished Academy—was Luna opening for the Sundays. A friend’s mother drove us in for the show and parked her minivan nearby, gracefully allowing us the privilege of watching the show on our own. We were a pack of teenage girls clutching our Ticketmaster ticket stubs, moving en masse toward the stage in the dark room filled with adults drinking and maybe—we sniffed the air—smoking pot. The bands took the stage and the smoke machines did their thing. I was floored. I thought that I’d somehow gotten high—it was so loud, the bass seemed as though it originated from somewhere between my ribs, and Harriet Wheeler’s voice could have been piped in from some otherworldly source.

I wasn’t high—that’s what music sometimes does to people.

Luna’s put out six albums since “Lunapark”—my favorite will probably always be “Penthouse”—but now they’ve said they’re calling it quits. For my birthday this year, I received tickets to see them play again—thirteen years later—at what might be their last show ever.

It’s not just Luna’s music that’s so compelling to me, but that they came into my life just as I was starting to sort out my taste in music—and my own adolescence.

Here’s one of my favorite songs by any band ever: Luna’s Time to Quit.