Mood Ring Music

  I can still see my dad coming through the door with a big grin on his face. It was the fall of 1981 and he was carrying a record in his right hand. The sight was actually quite familiar, because back then dad worked at a radio station, and he made a habit of “borrowing” records overnight. He would tape them on a scrap tape and then add the song to the mixtape in his expansive musical library where he thought it sounded best. The next morning, he would slip that record back into the pile at work and act as if he never had it in the first place. On this occasion , it was a group called Quarterflash that had put a smile on his face. He was barely in the door when he began telling me about the song and how I had to hear it, right then and there .   I followed Dad upstairs and curled up in his big green armchair as he fiddled with his turntable before turning to put his headphones on my head. I had just turned ten and was already familiar with Q uarterflash . We d idn’t have MTV in

  I can remember the exact moment when Latin freestyle music entered my life. I had just started my junior year in high school and things were going pretty well for me. Aside from school, I was also working at two completely different jobs. Most nights I would spend doing the closing shift at a local fast-food restaurant. The fish smell was awful, as was the baked potato bar, which was forever covered in streaks of cheese sauce, but the people were so much fun. Sure, I had to do piles of dishes, but I got to do them while blasting Motley Crue or Great White. Getting paid to listen to music wasn't a bad gig.   I also worked as a shampoo girl at a local hair salon, which meant tips and free boxes of hair color were handed to me just for showing up. Again, not a bad gig. Both jobs put a decent amount of extra cash in my pocket, and I spent much of it on music. Every new hard rock album that was released, I pretty much grabbed it immediately because I've always been a rock chi

  Some of my very favorite childhood memories involve long car rides with my dad. Just the thought of sitting in the backseat of his big gold Buick Skylark makes me smile to this day. That car was built like a tank, and nothing was cooler than driving it a little too fast on a winding country road, windows rolled all the way down as the radio blasted the hottest music around. Weekend drives were a thing, especially on Saturday afternoons, once lunch was devoured to the beat of American Bandstand , of course. I loved the trips that involved a stop at a shopping mall about forty minutes away, or the excursions to play miniature golf, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere. It was never about the money spent back then, and honestly, everyone around me seemed to be equally broke, so it was all about the experiences. The family time together was really what mattered the most.   I guess it makes perfect sense that the most memorable drives with Dad were often wrapped around music. Trips