I Heart the 80's, etc., Chapter 1

I am TERRIBLE at blogging. There are several reasons why this is the case.

1. As much as I talk, cough cough, I don’t often have things I want to say in writing. Sometimes, not often.
2. On the rare occasion I do think of something I want to write about I am usually driving or in the shower and then when I am finally in front of a computer, the thought is completely, and usually irrevocably, gone. Oh well.
3. I am, without apology, a great micro-blogger, haha. I LOVE Twitter. It was seriously made for featherbrained people such as I. :P

All that to say, I finally have something I want to blog. I’ve been thinking lately about the new phase of music appreciation in which I find myself. I’ve been listening to what I’m calling electronic indie music. I’m not really into techno or trance music at all, but I do like some stuff that’s labeled Electronic in iTunes--Memory Tapes, Junior Boys, Cut Copy, et al. I think maybe it started with listening to Wilco and Radiohead, who are not labeled Electronic, but do include a lot of electronic elements. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot gets labeled COUNTRY in iTunes, for crying out loud.

Anyhoo, it made me think of all the various phases of music appreciation I’ve had over the years and I decided to chronicle the years in terms of musical epochs. I will definitely be dating myself with this exercise. No, I am not young. :D

I started listening to music of my own choosing in about 6^th grade, which is pretty late I think. (This is not counting the Shaun Cassidy album I begged my dad for in the late 1970’s, haha, that my siblings and I ended up using as a frisbee some years later.) Most of the other kids in my grade were already listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which came out when I was in 4^th grade. That was what the cool kids liked. In 4^th grade I was still listening to my dad’s music. A teacher asked me in 5^th grade who my favorite singer or band was. I didn’t really know, so I sheepishly answered Paul Anka. The boys who overheard me saying that looked at me like I was an idiot; the teacher said he was her favorite, too. Yeah, I was that kid.

Anyway, that year, in 6^th grade, I started listening to the Go-Go’s. It was awesome. My friend would come over to my house and we would listen to the record and sing along to it. I was in a definite pop music phase then. All the cool kids were listening to KROQ; I listened to Mighty 690. I told everyone I listened to KROQ just to fit in, though. It wasn’t cool to say Mighty 690. I kept that to myself. It wasn’t too long after that that I discovered Duran Duran and fell in love. Literally. I wanted to marry John Taylor and somewhere in my little 12-year old, junior high mind, I was convinced that I would someday. I cut out little articles from teen magazines and taped them all over my walls. During junior high and high school I listened to Duran Duran, Rick Springfield, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Howard Jones, and oddly enough, U2. At least those were the posters hanging on the walls of my bedroom. I also listened to Spandau Ballet, Tears for Fears, OMD, Thompson Twins, The Bangles, and Cyndi Lauper, among others.

I remember a sleepover I had in junior high when my friends and I were listening to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” We were singing along to it and at the end when she starts to whisper, “time after time,” I kept singing along to it after everyone else had stopped. My friends teased me for whisper singing the end of the song. You’re supposed to stop before that, Alice. That’s the first time I realized I had a different relationship to music than my friends had. I had to sing it all the way to the end. I had that thought again in high school, when I used to sit in the band room with my tape recorder and listen to songs over and over so I could write the lyrics down and memorize them. (There was no Internet back then, kids.) People thought I was weird and wasting my time. Who cares about the lyrics? Just listen to the music. But no. The lyrics were important to me. I wanted to know what they were saying to me.

Thus began my lifelong love of music. 6^th grade through high school. By the end of high school I had gotten cool enough to start listening to The Cure, The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and New Order, btw. I got better. Next stop, college. I’ll tackle that phase at a different time. This has rambled on long enough. (Omg, I didn’t even touch on the Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful soundtracks. Love.)