Mood Ring Music

(ICYMI- written a day after George's death on Christmas Day, 2016) George Michael's death kind of feels like shutting the door on my own childhood. I can still see my dad coming through the door with a big grin on his face. It was the summer of 1984 and he was carrying a record in his right hand. That 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 particular occasion, it was a group called Wham! 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 tu...

  When I was nine my parents moved us into a huge old house on top of a hill. It was maybe 2 miles from our other house, but far enough to mean a new neighborhood, new friends, and a new school. As we were moving in, I realized that this street was filled with kids. To the right of us was a brand-new playground that had been built where a very old hospital had stood for 50 years before (yeah, we're gonna go there eventually). Total kid magnet and I was so close to it that I had tennis balls come flying over the fence and into my yard several times a day. The end of our yard faced an alley that was also lined with kids my age, so at a glance, this looked like a pretty good situation for me. We moved in at the beginning of summer intentionally so that once school started I'd already have friends. If you walked to the very end of my yard, on the left was another backyard, on the other side of a silver fence. As my parents first carried boxes into the house, I met Jennifer, a girl ...

The other day we took a ride to do some shopping at a mall about 25 miles away. There are outlets about five minutes away but ironically enough (especially for a house full of book nerds) the nearest big bookstore is at that mall, so off we went. We moved to this area years ago and there are a few constants in "the salt life": there is humidity even during boots weather, deer, raccoon's & ducks do coexist in our backyard and last but certainly not least,  Hall & Oates  is  always  on the radio. Always. We noticed this pattern after a few months. Every time we get in the car there's a Hall & Oates song. Eventually, the kids were sold on this duo and when I started to rebuild by record collection we "had to" get Hall & Oates. Not that it took a lot of convincing. I was raised on Daryl and John. I think my dad had all of their early stuff and by the time they were making slick videos in the 80's I was totally sold. I mean, does any 80's ...

 I don't really remember a ton about being 11 years old but there is one thing that does stick in my head and that is that 1982 was the year of  The Human League  in my house. I'm not sure if my dad was still working in radio at the time but he certainly still had his radio buddies and the ability to get his hands on any new music from just about anywhere. Let's back up, in late 1981 The Human League released  Dare , their third studio album which didn't really strike too much of a cord here in the states until they dropped " Don't You Want Me " and its unforgettable video. I'm really not sure what it was about the video that made it become so iconic, but for whatever reason, the visuals really stuck and somehow felt way ahead of their time. My dad didn't just love "Don't You Want Me" but he had to get his hands on a special German (I think) extended mix import that featured what sounds like machine guns on the track during the chorus...

  When I was really young my parents lived in an apartment a few blocks from my grandparents. My dad’s side of the family was really small and this was the kind of neighborhood that no one seemed to leave behind. My friends down the block and living in the alley behind our house all had their grandparents right around the corner too. We moved to a different part of town the summer before third grade but those first few years made a lasting impression on me.          Our apartment was small, but it was always alive with art, books, and music. Saturdays were for music shows like American Bandstand and Soul Train and Wednesday afternoon always meant a trip to the library. I can actually remember coming home from a library trip and my mom filling the bathroom sink and dragging a chair over to it so that I could let my Fisher Price Little People swim while she watched her favorite soap, “Another World”.          We h...