I even started a WordPress blog a few weeks back, hoping a change of servers would get me back in the game. It didn't. I'm a stinky blogger. When I went back in today, I found that my WordPress username isn't being recognized, and neither are any of my passwords, so I've decided to come back to Blogger. Hope I don't overwhelm their servers.
Anyway, I've been giving lots of thought to my blogging tendencies lately, and have come up with the following observation: no one really cares what I have to say, so I don't have to worry about what I write about! I have the freedom of irrelevance. A forty-five year old guy doesn't have much for a hipness factor. I'm not really on the cutting edge of anything, except nostalgia. I can go on for quite a while about the pitfalls of aging if you want, as I watch my parents' health deteriorate. That could make for some serious belly laughs. Even my kids don't provide quite the same fodder as they used to; sophomores and eighth graders are pretty self-sufficient and aren't quite as prone to malapropisms or missed meaning the way they used to be. They are, however, pretty funny and awesome in their own rights, and I would much rather read what they have to say than anything I write. We'll work on that.
But today I think I'll write about something near and dear to my heart: 80's music.
A couple weekends ago, the family and I were crammed into the pickup, dropping off a bed for my mother for her new room at Woodlands Memory Unit. But I don't want to get off on a tangent on my parents' aging...
On the radio (yes, sometimes we still listen to the radio, rather than plugging in an mp3 player) there was a re-run of the American Top 40 from July 24, 1982. Casey Kasem's voice sounded as vital as it did bak then (probably because it was recorded, well, BACK THEN...) and far better than Ryan Seacrest's ever did.
You know what I found, as my son cringed uncomfortably in the back seat, and I sang along shamelessly to songs that (for good reason, it turns out) I'd forgotten existed? EVERY SINGLE SONG HAD A SAX BREAK. Do you remember the early 1980's, when saxophone equaled emotion? Kind of the same way cello=emotion these days? Strangely, all it took was a bar of each of the songs for me to say "Oh, yeah, 'HEY, PLAY THE GAME TONIGHT/CAN YOU TELL ME IF IT'S WRONG OR RIGHT/IS IT WORTH THE TIME, IS IT WORTH THE FIGHT?/CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF IN THE BRIGHT SPOT LIGHT/AND PLAY THE GAME TO-OO-NIGHT...' ", while my wife looked at me quizzically, saying "I honestly have no recollection of this song."*
Beyond that, I was struck by how horribly unadventurous the music was. They were the Top 40 songs in America for that week, and there were maybe ten that were worth remembering. That was somewhat reassuring to me. Back then, the Top 40 was what I lived for. I listened every week. I was just beginning to follow more underground music (I literally cheered when artists on this particular countdown such as Kim Wilde, Human League, Haircut 100, Soft Cell and the Motels made the countdown)** but I was still a Top 40 kid.
But I could name you hundreds of artists now who were much more influential and important than most of these Top 40 artists, but who rarely, if ever, made the countdown. My education as a music buff went far beyond Casey Kasem. And this is encouraging to me now, as I watch my students, and sometimes my own child, idolize the crappiest music out there. I could tell them they won't remember One Direction thirty years from now, but they won't believe me. However, I have faith that their tastes will, for the most part, improve with time. Their horizons will expand. And yet some of them, will still line up for that 1D/Jonas Brothers/Hanson triple bill tour in 2043. I hope they have fun, and are ridiculed roundly by their kids.
But it really dawned on me, the early 80's were a great time to be a sax player.
*I don't think this song had a sax break. But I don't want to listen to find out.
**Okay, so not every song had a sax break. But most of them did.
