Music Monday—Back to the Cassettes, It’s New Wave Time

Ah, looking at the yard sale cassettes and I’m smack back in the 80’s and in the synthe-y, dancing New Wave days.  Let’s take a closer look at these four.  Maybe a reader or two will relive their 80’s days along with me? 

Or maybe not. 

And if you are saying, “Oh yeah, that’s when I was born,” you can just hush up. 

I was there for the original days of music videos and, oh, did they widen my world of music.  I will say watching these now makes me think I musta had a thing for British singers. 

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Psychedelic Furs—Here are two of my favorite Furs songs.

1.  1982’s single Love My Way from the album Forever Now

You know when you’ve spent your life singing the words you think it is, to then find out you’ve been wrong? 

• Phoebe: Uh, see, I-I think the one that Elton John wrote for, um, that guy on Who's the Boss?.
  Rachel: What song is that, Pheebs?
  Phoebe: Um… [singing to "Tiny Dancer"] "Hold me close, young Tony Danza…”

I realize now after 28 years, it’s actually:

love my way
it's a new RULE road
i follow where
my mind goes

2.  Heartbreak Beat from my 1987 cassette Midnight to Midnight 

These songs are still so good!

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Tears for Fears-- 

Listening to TFF now, gotta say it’s not doing anything for me. 

Mad World, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, and Shout were the big hits off 1985’s Songs from the Big Chair.  Shout was probably my favorite at that time. 

Wonder what the TFF boys are up to these days? 

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  Thompson Twins—

The biggest singles from my 1985’s Here’s to Future Days cassette were:

Lay Your Hands on Me and King for a Day

Those two were good songs, but 1984’s Hold Me Now is probably my fave from TT.

Lies was their hit from 1983 and that was a cool video.

So do you remember being surprised that no members were named Thompson, nor were there twins? 

But the red headed guy is Tom. 

And get this, if you Google “Thompson,” the machine gun comes up before the Twins.  Gary thinks that it is so the way it should be.  I know without even running it past him. 

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Adam Ant--1983 Strip

Oh, Adam Ant!  I was so into his songs and his glam punk pirate buccaneer clothes.  Strip, ugh, bad video; Puss in Boots, ugh, ditto, bad video.  I cannot believe how campy, but don’t you just have to say ooh la la looking at him? 

Adam’s Friend or Foe album from 1982 gave us really good songs like Goody Two Shoes and Desperate But Not Serious.  Boy, do those take me back!  I still think Desperate could have been a Bond movie theme song.

  Prince Charming was out in 1981 while he was still a part of Adam and the Ants, and was not yet the solo Ant.  Check out Stand and Deliver.  Aye-yi-yi!

Before that, there was 1980’s Adam and the Ants Kings of the Wild Frontier and Ant Music.  Kings would be my favorite to listen to now.  Love the drums! 

Poor Adam, aka Stuart Goddard.  I see right now he’s again hospitalized related to his long-suffered Bipolar Disorder.  Here’s hoping he’s soon out of the hospital gown and back into a puffy shirt.   

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Oh no, they sigh.  You mean we’re not even 50% done with this stack of cassettes? 

See you next week!

He’s a Gas Gas Gas

 

Last night as we passed MotoMart coming home, Grant announced, “Mom, look!  Gas is down to $2.75 for unleeded!” 

[Now the kid follows gas prices?  I didn’t even know that.]

Me:  Actually Grant, it is pronounced unleaded.  They stopped adding lead to the gasoline, so it’s called unleaded. 

Grant:  Well, I still don’t think it’s safe to drink.

It’s May

 

The days are perfect for Sam and Sauce to do their trampolining.  They graduated from preschool Sunday night.  Dead camera battery that day, so you’ll just have to imagine the cuteness.  They sang the Star Spangled Banner.  The rest of the kids, too, still get their trampoline time in daily afterschool.  But then school’s out in just three more days!

Gotta say, I’m loving all the green in the yard.    

  .  Jack helped put 600 flags out on veteran’s graves on a 26 acre cemetery last Saturday in preparation for Memorial Day.  Grandma Betty was really proud of him. 

Me, too. 

This joker still lives here.  Am I nice or what?

Caroline got this nest from our neighbor, Mr. Flowers.  We are definitely gonna miss the people on this street.   

 

Scooter says my blog is boring. 

Hey, it’s my favorite summertime shoes!

Here’s the new picture window and it’s a biggie, about 60 x 90.  It looks so much better than the old bow window and should be far more energy efficient.  Scooter was outside the fence while it was being installed.  Once he came in, he noticed it immediately but didn’t know what to think about it.  Then he went kinda nuts over it, doing his full-speed crazy run around the yard.  The big goof.    

All the big jobs are done so now just some final sprucing up and the Walton house is on the market, and we’ll soon be moving to the farm. 

Music Monday—My Dead Day

Last week I alluded to posting about my days day as a DeadHead and today I am gonna make good on that.  It’s Monday and it’s about music.  Let me forget this moving business for a minute.

I was in grad school at Eastern in the late 80’s and made some really great friends.  It just naturally happened that the people you spent so much time in class and study sessions and labs with, also became the ones you spent your limited but fun free time with. 

(Yes, my education has included English, but I do like to end sentences with a preposition.  Just bein’ me, typin’ like I talk.) 

You’ve heard over and over about best friend Candi, but there was a whole group of us.  There was Skip.  He was from Rockford and his mom proclaimed herself a witch, like a true one that could lay curses and spells, etc. 

There was Todd from Shelbyville who was Mr. Conservative Christian and wow, did that introduce some diversity to our EIU-in-the-80’s wild scene; Barb from Effingham that dreamed of starting a home for behaviorally and emotionally disturbed children (and they called me Polly Purebred?); Debbie from Farmer City that to this day can trigger a mutual laughing fit just by saying “Stattler,” an inside joke that is now twenty-one years old.  And then there was this special fella we called Sutes.

John Suter was his name and he was from Springfield, Illinois, and just a couple of years older than me.  He was this smiling, totally laid-back, ultra-kind guy who was funny and played tennis.  He was, overall-in-general, such a cool guy (overlooking the chewin’ tobacco).  I spent so much time hanging out at his place of action with his interesting roommates, this huge, ancient house not far from Old Main, so typical for off-campus housing in Charleston at that time (maybe still?).  John Suter had a Ben Stiller build with dark hair, but insert a stubbled baby face.  That’s him.

Sutes was the closest I had ever come to a real-life DeadHead.  He talked Grateful Dead bootleg tapes like I talked my Clapton discography.  He was responsible, a very smart and serious student, but whenever he had the chance, he followed the Dead, and had since he was in high school.  Jerry Garcia was his god.

The group of grad school friends remained close, especially through our internship year, despite being spread across the geographically long state of Illinois.  Even after graduation and landing jobs, at least once a year we were guaranteed a chance to get together at our annual Illinois School Psychology conference.  Once there, we hung out together non-stop--the kind of friendships that just pick up where they left off and it feels like no time has passed.

Candi and I had always been intrigued by the stories of John’s Dead life.  We decided we must experience the phenomena with him,  so John got us tickets for when they came to Riverport Amphitheater in St. Louis, July 1995.  Candi’s husband, good sport Doug, came along for the ride, too. 

From sitting in the backed-up traffic trying to enter Riverport, I could tell this was going to be a long, strange trip (pun intended).  Individuals were standing along the road, all alone except for maybe a backpack and a sign printed with something like, “Got an extra ticket?”  They were dressed in flowing clothes and I thought looked a little haggard for being young.  Here they had made it to the next venue on the tour, but didn’t even have a plan for how to get in to the show.  Well, I guess the plan was actually to find someone, friend or stranger, who would get them in.  Apparently that worked at least sometimes since there were several doing that.  Me, being all Ms. Plan-it-out-and-know-exactly-where-my-next-meal-is-comin-from, just so could not work that way, but now I recognize that was part of what made the atmosphere of the community.   

We finally parked and then, like tailgating happens at sport events, there’s the Dead version.  People were cooking, I guess chicken?, kebobs and other foods on the trunk of a car and selling them.  There were braided string bracelets and other goodies that people sold, I guess to fund their way to these shows and to live off of.  John saw friends he knew at almost every step it seemed. It was definitely a different culture, and I was brand new to this. 

But I liked it!  Everyone was nice and mellow.  And I loved the clothes. 

The show started and it was fun.  Grateful Dead shows are notoriously improvisational, so while I recognized Truckin’  (linked above) and a few songs, they had a different sound and seemed to go on and on forever. 

I am certain it wasn’t their best show ever, but still it was easy to lie back on the blanket and look up at the stars and just let the music get into your head.  I totally got into the whole climate, so much so that it only occurred to me later that it was probably a gross thing to go into the restroom barefoot.  Multiple times. 

Candi and I each bought matching t-shirts that night.  To those helping us move, do not be shocked but…I still have mine.  It’s my Sunflower Terrapin, worn just a few times, but so treasured in my box labeled Keepsakes:

It was so strange to hear of Jerry Garcia’s death just a few days following.  They had two nights of shows in Chicago following us being there in St. Louis, and then he was dead of a heart attack.  I always felt lucky that I had the experience to actually see a real Dead show and get a taste of Sutes’ other life, if only just one night out of Jerry’s thirty years of doing it. 

Nice sweats, man

Maryland Heights, Missouri 

July 1995

Music Monday—Clapton. Cassette? What’s that?

 

Ah, memories and music-- so tied together.  For our yard sale/big clean out this weekend, Gary and I discovered that between us, we had three cases of cassettes.  And by cases I mean, carry-on suitcase-sized cases-- the zippered, padded nylon CaseLogic cases that were high tech stuff back in the day. 

Eric Clapton—Time Pieces

This was from my EC “obsession” phase.  It peaked in the early 90’s.  I collected everything Clapton --  Cream, Bluesbreakers, Derek & The Dominos, his solo stuff, the biographies, ticket stubs.  I used to travel to places out of state to see him, back when I was a single professional with money and freedom to do whatever I wanted.  Not quite to the DeadHead level (which may or may not be next week’s Monday topic), but let’s just say, I was a fairly obsessed fan.

       

Candi and I went to see him at Riverport in St. Louis, August 1992, during the height of his MTV Unplugged era, though he was plugged in that night.  Either way would have been fine with me. 

Setlist: (why yes, thank you, Internet.  Love ya! ) Looking at it now, how impressive!

1. White Room
2. Pretending
3. Anything For Your Love
4. I Shot the Sheriff
5. Running On Faith
6. She's Waiting
7. Tears in Heaven
8. Before You Accuse Me
9. Old Love 
10. Tearing Us Apart
11. Badge
12. Wonderful Tonight
13. Layla
14. Crossroads
15. Sunshine of Your Love

It should have been a great show. 

I had last seen Eric in Milwaukee in May with excellent seats, and was so pumped to be seeing him again, and with my bestest friend in the world who was also an Eric fan.  We were completely comfy on the Riverport lawn, thoroughly enjoying the summer night.  I can’t even remember the opening act, but then when Eric came out and as I initially saw him on the Jumbotron, I was puzzled, just totally confused.  “Who’s this?”  Then I screamed!  Not out of crazy fan excitement, but because I was shocked.  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  My knees buckled and I almost went down.  Oh, no!  It could not be happening!  Nightmare!  Don’t be true!

HE HAD CUT OFF HIS HAIR!

The Eric hair was a big part of the obsession and now this?! 

How could you?!!

I felt compelled to apologize over and over to Candi.  “I am so sorry.  He doesn’t normally look like this.”  I can’t even remember the music from that night.  Frankly, I couldn’t process after the initial blow to my brain.

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I will say I eventually recovered, halfway forgave, gave him another chance, and saw him once more.  That was at the Kiel in St. Louis in April 1998 with Candi again, and this time we took husbands.  That one turned out to be anti-positive-memory also because:

1.  I was so bummed by the general tone of the night.  It was the Pilgrim tour and yeah, not a happy time for Eric and it showed. The music was slow and blah and I was a big preggers gal wanting to go out and shake it up that night and it just didn’t meet my expectations. Sorry, Eric, strike two, buddy.

2.  I was big and preggers with Jack and what is it with me going to concerts big and preggers?  To get to the show, we took the MetroLink over and back.  I had in my mind that people would be especially kind to a lady in my condition, but no.  After the show as everyone from the entire Metro St. Louis area wanted on the same train car, I found out that big belly full of precious first baby does not buy you any special treatment, not even kind treatment.  It was smash city.

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So, thanks, CaseLogic cassettes.  I may have made less off of you than even what one of those cassettes originally cost, but I was happy with the $7 and it seemed to make two guys very happy.  Surfer-type voice:  “Look it’s Queensryche, man!”

To me, it’s the music memories that are priceless.  

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Eric, if you are reading this, and “obsessed fan” would have thought you probably were, I will give you one more chance.  Come to St. Louis and I might see you again. 

EC, still touring in 2010

Moral of the Story: See, Sometimes It Pays to Keep All this Junk Around

What do you get when you cross a “classic” jacket with a report on Ulysses S. Grant?

 

    

 

Us Lately

Jack finished up Spring tennis. 

What I Wore This Week almost missed the bus. 

We appreciated our teachers. 

Love to all our teacher readers!  Awesome job you do!

Sam does not look at the camera.  And can someone please send him some shoes that fit?  Stat! And Grant sprouted a beard.

Nice color match, no?!

Betcha Didn’t Know Something Legless Could Do That….

Today at the bus stop, Grant and I were watching all the excitement that was happening in the gutter after last night’s rain. 

We spotted a worm and watched it for awhile. 

Then as it cruised on, Grant made an interesting observation,

“That worm has a limp.”

Back By Popular Demand—Music Monday

And by back by popular demand, I mean Karen casually mentioned yesterday that I missed Music Monday last week.  So I totally took that as the world needs me to share my music on Monday and here I am.

And ironically, this post will be about music that should not be shared. 

One night last week, we heard Nickelback on the radio and I mentioned to the kids how I am more a fan of a soft, shriveled pickle than I am of Nickelback. 

Yes, I was but one proud member of the Facebook group that, now that I look, seems to have served its purpose and vanished.  BUT I think we made our point. 

Here’s totally lame Nickelback TV if you feel you must punish your eyes, ears, and brain today. 

So anywho, after the Nickelback song,  1999 by Prince followed by Since You’re Gone by The Cars came on and I lectured we discussed how this was so much better music.  Part of the explanation included that it was music from the 80’s and most anything you know from when you are a kid, you think totally rocks. 

Then Grant asked if there was any music from when I was a kid that I did not enjoy and with that, in a reflexive flash of one millisecond, out came these two words: 

Air Supply

Here’s a sample of some of their if-these-are-Love-songs-why-do-they-evoke-such-Diane-Hate?

Listen and you will learn.  Watch and you will be entertained.

Chests with gold chains, crazy-arse hair, bad acting, and the whiniest voice on Earth.  When I shared with the kids, even Caroline commented on the “tightness” of their pants. 

(I apologize in advance for all the Vevo ads, but really, such a small price to play for free music laughs.)

The One that You Love --  1:10 the original wardrobe malfunction? I spy with my little eye an only 50% popped collar. 

1:33 just imagine if this was a his vs. hers hair fight, too scary 

2:45  is it just me or does this just scream Weinie!

Young Love  -- love the mirror image feature, you get twice as much to make fun of

Keeping the Love Alive -- 1:00 see the yellow pants?  Mine were by HangTen and exactly what I wore for my freshman picture in 1981

Time for Love -- :40 do these shoulder pads make me look taller?

Making Love Out of Nothing at All -- :30 says it all; 1:12 hahaha

2:33 to catch my my favorite AS lyric.  Yes, you heard right…. The beating of my heart is a drum and it’s lost and it’s looking for a rhythm like you

3:05 if I jump wearing cowboy boots will I look taller?

Lost in Love  -- 3:53 see, it hurts his ears too

And these are just the “Love” songs.  There’s a host of other lame-o Air Supply songs.  Gary’s personal non-favorite:  Without You.  He says it’s the worst of all the whiney songs ever.  If you click you’ll see it’s by Air Suplly. 

Just never forget this:

It is better to have loved and lost than to listen to "Lost In Love" by Air Supply.

[I will admit if I had to pick one Air Supply song to be subjected to for eternity in He-double hockey sticks, I would pick Lost in Love for its lesser-annoying sound.  I may or may not actually like their harmonies on that one, in the tiniest way of course.]

And if I were casting Air Supply-The Movie? Get me Jeff Daniels and Richard Simmons.  

Amazing

Remember when we went to play at the Lincoln School gym one day this spring and I got attacked by a severely stinging jump rope across my back while trying to do a basic simple-twirl-the-rope-and-jump-over-it?  And Ross and Karen were all showing their we-wanna-double-dutch?  It’s longish but you gotta watch this!

What a Weekend!

  

          

BIG thanks to you all for all the hard, hard work you put in.  It never will be forgotten, and can I just say it again, we have the best family ever!   More full of drive and determination than one family probably needs to be, but then again, look at the results. 

We are so grateful.

Plan to come for some relaxation and fun next time.  Love you all!