I certainly wasn't a kid in the eighties, but radio made me feel like one. I'd left country at the right time and discovered rock at the exact right time. My kids were still pre-teens, meaning they'd still agree to go places with me ~ drives to the mall, maybe a jaunt to pick up a pizza. And all the while our companion was rock radio. I foisted my musical tastes on them, swirling up the radio volume anytime a song I really liked kicked off. When "We Are The World" became a big radio hit, I patiently explained to them which singer was singing which part. My oldest really glommed onto Corey Hart's "Sunglasses At Night", a song I hated ("so I can...so I can..."), but I can never hear that song today without being reminded of that seven-year-old kid. On one of our yearly sojourns to South Dakota's Black Hills, Van Halen's "Jump" was the hot hit of the day. That organ-sounding guitar solo blasted out of the car radio's speakers approximately every seven minutes, to the point where I wasn't sure if I was experiencing car sickness or David Lee Roth-sickness. But my kids liked the song.
The eighties were the era of one-hit-band wonders, mostly British it seemed, but those tracks remain some of my favorite eighties songs to this day. The Dream Academy with "Life In A Northern Town", The Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy". And who could forget (or ever would be allowed to forget) Rick Astley?
Music snobs tend to denigrate eighties music, but I bet if they got a gander at my Spotify playlist they'd soon be dancing around their living rooms, or if they were male, at least tapping their foot. One thing about eighties music, it was joyous, not morose ~ not navel-contemplation. All that introspection is overrated. I like songs like this:
Yes, I am country at heart, but I wouldn't give up my eighties rock for the world. It speaks to me in ways that little other does.
Today is the first day of May. 2020, in case you forgot what year we're in. It seems like forever that I've been working from home, and it feels like a day. I don't know what happened to April, other than that I've gained more weight than I care to acknowledge. Let's call April the "forgotten month". I do know that I've had more meetings while at home than I ever had in the office -- and I hate meetings. Just when I'm getting into a work groove, I need to stop for a meeting. Meetings are a means of tricking the initiator into feeling a sense of accomplishment, but they are in actuality useless. I have to admit, I do like the personal connection, albeit via video chat. Left to my own devices, I would become a ragged hermit. Speaking of meetings, today was our quarterly all-staff meeting, held via Microsoft Teams. Naturally, we employees had tons of questions, so this was one all-staff I was actually interested in attending. I learned that our return-to-office date is "sometime after Memorial Day". Keep movin' it boys, and I will never actually return. I've begun making a list of personal items I will need to retrieve, which will occur on a Saturday, to avoid human contact. My retirement date is tentatively June 12, so I'm thinkin' I'll never actually go back. It's okay. Not really, but I try to accept the things I cannot change. I have a month and a half to finish out my work life. This is not how I imagined it. How did my week go otherwise? I, for whatever reason, am not sleeping. I've dealt with the problem, intermittently, my whole life, so I don't obsess over it, although it is annoying. On the plus side, I don't interact much with people, so it doesn't matter. I was a bit testy during another endless meeting, but that was due more to "what the hell?" than to my physical exhaustion. A funny thing happens when one is nearing the end of their career -- they realize how much useless crap they are subjected to and rebel against it. I briefly connected with my boss via phone this afternoon, and she asked me if I had plans for the weekend. I said, "Every day is the same". It's not that I'm a gadfly, but knowing that I can't go anywhere scrapes against my nerves.I would kill to simply browse the aisles at Target. Things I've done this week:
Laid awake and asked God to please let me fall asleep
Half-listened to talk radio.
Rearranged my chair configuration fifty-three times
Watched cable news and furiously stitched my current cross-stitch project
Ordered a face mask from Etsy.
Things I've learned this week:
SiriusXM has some new limited-time stations: George Strait, The Eagles, and Prince among them; although the Prince channel seems to only play "Manic Monday" by The Bangles. George, however, has enough hits to fill a full week without any repeats.
I miss my personal computer. I miss my bookmarks and I miss my in-progress novel. I'm sick of jerry-rigging this office computer to access my usual sites.
Week 8 is going to be awesome (yea). Stay tune. I know I will.
I was driving home from doing some errands last Saturday and "Delirious" came on the oldies station. I cranked it up. As the song played, I thought how happy Prince's music made me feel. "Delirious" has a lot going on in it. It's definitely rock and funk, but there's also some scatting and maybe a bit of jazz. I also get a kick out of how Prince pronounces "deliri-OHS". Then my mind clicked on Michael Jackson and how both he and Prince reached the peak of their fame around the same time. I thought it was rather unfair how Jackson was labeled a genius, yet Prince never was. I thought, well, Michael Jackson died young because his life was so messed up, so there was something to say for being "normal", because Prince was still alive and still creating.
I don't believe in prescience. I wasn't thinking about Merle Haggard right before he died. I chalk the whole episode in the car up to a weird coincidence. Yesterday I was half-listening to a news channel through my ear buds as I worked, and the host announced that there was a report of a death at Paisley Park. My stomach dropped.
I am not a Minnesotan -- I live in Minnesota, but I'm not from here, The people I work with are Minnesotans, and wow, the grief. Everyone in my office had to get up out of their chairs and go find someone, someone to help them sort out the news. My cubicle neighbor's sister went to high school with Prince. Minneapolis is a big, yet small town. Minnesotans claimed Prince, sheltered him. They were proud of the fact that the local boy who hit it big didn't take leave for LA or some other bigshot city. Prince stayed, he went to local clubs, he sometimes gave impromptu performances at those clubs and sometimes he just sat in the audience and enjoyed the show -- you know, like a real person would. Last night there was a street party in front of First Avenue, the club where Prince got his start. Thousands spilled into the street and danced and sang Prince songs. They had a good time -- just like Prince always urged people to do, through his music. He had to be a joyous man -- just listen to his songs. He wasn't filled with angst. Besides, angst is over-rated. Life should be joyous. It usually isn't, but maybe that's where Prince came in. He brought us something we were sorely missing.
This is my first post in which I can't share video of the artist. Oh, there are a few performance videos out there, those with fellow musicians, but Prince was very firm that he would control his music, and so YouTube doesn't have any of the real stuff. I think I even complained about that once in a post, that he shouldn't be so stingy -- he should share his creations with us. I'm okay with his decision now. Yes, I'd love to watch some of his work, but I can still listen.
Somebody tweeted something about how people shouldn't always try to relate an artist who's passed away with themselves. Well, why wouldn't we? Isn't that what music does? Plays the soundtrack of our lives? So, I am going to relate Prince's music to my life. I'm obviously not in the target demographic for his music. I wasn't a teenager in the eighties, but I did have teenagers, and thus MTV was a big presence in our home. You know how much I love eighties rock. Prince was a huge part of that. I bought the Purple Rain album (yes, album) and "When Doves Cry" has always touched me. I, even at my advanced age, thought Prince was cool. And who wouldn't? He was cool. He was unique. When one of his music videos came on the tube, one couldn't take their eyes off the screen. I also appreciated that he didn't seem like a jerk -- like he was condescending to perform for us little people. No, he just loved what he was doing and he wanted us all to join him.
I love the following Prince tracks:
When Doves Cry
Purple Rain
Raspberry Beret
1999
Let's Go Crazy
Delirious
and others I can't think of at the moment
I also really like this particular song that he wrote:
And, of course, this video played nonstop on MTV:
So, I guess I got to include a couple of music videos after all.
My home is a scant seventeen miles from Paisley Park. Thousands of people tonight are there paying tribute. I would never go. I don't want more sadness; I'm already feeling that enough. I would have gone to the street party, though, if I wasn't embarrassingly old.
But here are a few pictures of how my new hometown paid tribute to their hometown boy:
Shoot, we're going to miss you, Prince. Too, too soon.
