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My Profile
Retro-retrospection - 2008-10-06
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10:56 p.m. - 2005-07-06
Stole this from the marvelously delicious BTM. I am not a big music person* and a music meme sounded like a challenge. *What I mean when I say I'm not a big music person is that music isn't as essential to me as it is to a lot of people. I like music. I enjoy music. But I'm indifferent to most of the minutia music types memorize. Hell, it's rare I know the artist and/or the song title when I hear something on the radio. Makes buying music almost imposs. Time-Life compilations were invented for people like me. As far as the musicians themselves go, I don't care if someone leaves a band or does a schlocky duet with Celine Dion. I have no stake in the lives of my troubadours. Most of my musical 'insider' knowledge comes from watching those bitchy shows on VH1. I like VH1. I'm pretty happy with common everyday stuff too. A song is tacky? Okay. Overplayed and trite? Sure, whatever. Hey, I like The Archie's, okay? I have zero pride about my musical tastes and couldn't care less if my more hip friends think I'm lame because I don't have the latest bootleg from Bellicose and the Adenoids or the PMZ PowerFarts. I'm just not a music person. On with the meme 1. What song reminds you of elementary school and why? The song is Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks. The Teensytown School had a rather draconian cafeteria policy. We were seated boy-girl-boy-girl. No talking. No moving. On rainy days when we couldn't go out to the playground we had to sit with our heads down on the table and the teacher on cafeteria duty would play records. Jim Croce had recently died so his songs got a lot of play, but it was Seasons in the Sun that I remember best. I hear it nowadays and am immediately taken back to that basement cafeteria with the weird industrial flecked paintjob on the cinderblock walls and the tiny windows up near the ceiling with heavy stretched metal grilles over the wavy chicken wire glass. Otherwise Teensytown School was decent, but it had the Cafeteria of Doom. 2. What song reminds you of the first time you were kissed? My official First Kiss was a hurried affair sans atmosphere and soundtrack, but a song I do associate with kissing is Rocket Man by Elton John. The summer before 8th grade I had a very cute, very dim townie boyfriend named Marc. He was a fantastic kisser. And unlike my previous boyfriend, Marc wasn't always trying to get me to hold his penis. Marc and I would smooch for hours. Seemed every time we were swapping spit Elton John was on the turntable. Rocket Man was playing the first time my personal rocket went up, if you catch my drift. Thank you, Marc. Thank you, Elton John. 3. What song reminds you of a moment you were proudest? Okay, this is going to sound dumb. Would you believe Safety Dance by Men Without Hats? We can dance if we want to We can go when we want to 4. What song reminds you of a moment you were saddest? You know, I realized I still can't talk about this. I Want To Come Over by Melissa Etheridge. You figure it out. Pop Musik by M actually came out a couple years before I graduated high school, but something about that song seems to bridge that space in my life. Crossing over from the Hippy Dippy 70's into the punk/industrial/hard edged 80's. Not that Pop Musik was more than silly dance beat Euro fluffernutter, but it was a long way from James Taylor. And Floyd and Zep and ELP and Fleetwood Mac. Out with full orchestras and soulful guys with poignant 6-strings. In with electronica and lyrics you could sing while coked out of your gourd. Mrs B's daughter, Antonia, was in my class. We'd been friends since nursery school. But only on Pasta Night in Mrs B's kitchen. I didn't know this until my mother remarried and moved us back to Hometown. Since my return to the school district Antonia had affected a 'NOKD' attitude toward me. She made it clear she was on the fast track to the Cool Kid Crowd and I was about as cool as orthodontic headgear. And just about as welcome. I'd licked my wounds and eventually found my own gang. I remember one sunshiny morning in the fall of 79. Me and my pals had done our pre-homeroom bong in Jimmy K's van and were crossing the lawn toward the school. Antonia and her skinny double belt, designer jean crowd were clustered around a gigantic boom box on the picnic table. They were doing The Robot to Pop Musik. Buzzed on Acapulco Gold and Locomotive Breath I looked at the feather haired teen queens and saw the future. I had grown up in my own organic commune of one, keeping the faith with the spirit of the Woodstock Nation and abruptly came of age during the Reagan Days when greed was good, ketchup was a vegetable and your soul wasn't worth shit, your stock portfolio was the measure of your worth as a person. Pop Musik was herald and warning siren. Peace, Love and Rock-n-Roll were over. Singing in the subway Wanna be a gun slinger Talk about, pop musik And that was the end of that. And that's also the end of the meme. Thanks, BTM. A kiss in the location of your choosing. ~LA
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