A Record Year

We cleaned out our garage a few months ago. Got rid of all the spare junky kitchen stuff that accumulates, glasses, vases, plasticware. Reorganized the shelves, garden stuff in one area, Costco purchases in another, kitchen/baking/serving dishes in the third cabinet. The 4th cabinet? Held my albums. I just stared at them. I am quite attached to them even though they have not spun on a turntable since probably 1989. Soren has asked me many times if I was going to get rid of them and finally I decided this was the time (along with the turntable I had kept just in case I may need to spin a few records……?

Anyway, I sat down and started going through them and was flooded with memories. The Eagles Hotel California (stolen from my brother DJ,) I love that song Try and Love Again. Michael Jackson Off the Wall, I bought that album the year before I moved to California, I was 18. Michael looks like Michael and was so cute and normal, how bizarre a twist has his life taken since this album (and Thriller?) Psychedelic Furs, Love My Way, one of my favorite all time songs. It came out right after Cathy moved to California and we had a blast, threw our first (of many fun parties,) that Christmas and I played that song all night long. Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA (come on, we were all Courtney Cox when that song came on,) Talking Heads, 77, Remain in Light, Cities, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Speaking in Tongues, all inbedded in my brain along with the very fun times listening to them in the apartment on Clinton Ave.

I remember the first time I saw the Talking Heads in 1982 at the Civic Center. They were playing with the English Beat and Black Uhuru. I had no idea what to expect from the T. Heads, I only knew that one song Psycho Killer which was a little creepy in a cool way. I have never seen a show that was so full of energy, strange music (African, Ska, New Wave.) I remember looking up at all the entry ways into the center and seeing outlines of people dancing from the lights in the hallway outside, it was sort of like that scene from a Charlie Browne Christmas where everyone is dancing to Schroeder, all to their own style and beat. I was so psyched to have moved to California and to be at that concert.

REM Life’s Rich Pageant, Echo and the Bunnymen The Killing Moon, The Stranglers, Simple Minds New Gold Dream, XTC, New Order Power Corruption and Lies, Big Audio Dynamite, Shriekback, Dire Straights, The Blow Monkeys! Lots more….all remind me of working at Esprit, making friends with Susan and Karen, going to concerts, wearing strange clothing and having bizarre angled hair all sprayed to defy gravity.

Each cover I remembered a different event, night, or friend. Listening to the music, drinking too much, but never really having that bad of a hangover, how does that work when you are in your 20’s????? Is there some magical compository in your system that allows you to drink night after night and stagger into work, with barely a headache?

Anyway, it was quite sentimental going through the albums and took a long time figuring out which ones I would pass along to my nephew Chris. I ended up giving him a few choice Talking Heads, Echo and Bunnymen, New Order, Total Cuelho (I EAT CANNIBALS), Warren Zevon, The English Beat, Robert Palmer and a few other singles that I paid a ton of money for since they were considered rarities. I also gave him the turntable.

I gave the albums away, AFTER I downloaded them all from iTunes. What, did you really think I was going to give up ALL that fun???