Because of You.

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 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 chick. I've also always loved anything danceable, so when freestyle music took off in 1987, I was thrilled. 


Living in some suburban area two hours from NYC and Philly meant that I was aware of the music, but I struggled to get access to it.  The Billboard magazines that lived on my coffee table gave me song titles and artists, but local radio wasn't playing any of it. The owner of our local record store would chuckle when he saw me coming because I was inevitably going to pay him to order a 12" mix of a song that I had never even heard before! 


 That all changed when Open House Party came to my area in late 1987. My favorite local station was one of the first national stations to pick up the show. It was originated by John Garabedian who used his home in Massachusetts and a satellite dish to bring five hours of music and fun to the masses. He also had a thing for those dance hits that were making a real splash in larger markets and so he introduced a slew of Latin freestyle artists to middle America. I was truly obsessed because I saw OHP as a way to sample all those dance tracks before I spent money on them.  


I can still remember him introducing The Cover Girls "Because of You" for the very first time because as he talked, I remember just falling in love with the opening synth of the song. It caught my ear and then once the real beat kicked in, I was absolutely hooked. How hooked? Enough to order their first album, Show Me, the very next day. That cassette lived at the bottom of my denim hobo bag for my entire junior year beside all of the other music that my life required. If power ballads understood my heartbreak, then The Cover Girls knew how to pick me up out of any funk and make me dance. The best part? Thirty-five years later they still have the same effect on me. 

 

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