Two-thirds Of My Life Ago

Remember this? I just listened to a few songs from this album, and boy o boy did that bring back some strange memories. I was 13 when this record came out. I had only recently figured out that the rising and falling . . . as it were . . . had a direct cause and effect.

There was this 15-year-old girl up the street. I tried very hard to get to the bus stop in the morning early to maximize my time with her. She skipped school a lot though, so sometimes I had to ride my bike past her house a couple dozen times a day to check up on her. Usually she would notice my persistence.

She loved this Loverboy record. I remember a whole bunch of summer nights sitting on a stone wall in front of her house with a boom box, just playing this tape over and over, talking about whatever. Best song was Take Me to the Top. When we got tired of that tape we listened to this one:


Nothing came of this relationship . . . . until a couple years later, and that turned out to be the quick end of it.

Funny where music can take you: memories, or to more deeply re-live the past; usually just to think of the next old, good song.

I'll sound like an old fart if I say our kids won't have the same experience with popular music, but you know what? They won't! But that may not be bad. We had a few AM and FM radio stations to listen to, and those had far more latitude to play what they wanted, but today, if you like a certain sound, there is a place to find it. It may be on the computer instead of the radio, but it's there. The ability to dig deeper into your tastes is greater than ever.

But I do fear the shutdown of free airwaves. That's a topic for another day, because I'm not of the XM world quite yet. For now, I'm enjoying that time of night when I'm free to listen to whatever I please . . .