Mood Ring Music

Whitesnake and I go way back. Back to when my religious mother dragged me to church three times a week and I'd play hair bands in my head just to survive.  Back to when I rushed to my after-school job at Arthur Treacher's, where I mopped up the baked potato bar and ran the register for hours. Having to strategically place the fast food joint's hat over my big hair was totally worth it to get away from home. I wasn't actually allowed to watch MTV because it was filled with “demonic groups and debasing music” according to mom. That didn't stop me from sneaking videos whenever possible. After tonsof research by way of her church's “literature,” mom had decided that red and black colors in conjunction with rock music were the devil's calling card. Just try to find an 80's video that didn't feature a skin-tight red dress or black leather pants and if you somehow managed to do that then the inevitable “harlot makeup” would send mom off the deep end. I mean...

  A few lines into the old disco classic “Shame” and I’m standing in my parents’ very first apartment where my love of music all began. A few days before Halloween, my parents threw a party for all of  their friends. The night before had been my kiddie party in our basement. I wore a Wonder Woman costume that was so NOT a Wonder Woman costume because it had a skirt and no lasso or boots. I remember a punch bowl and bobbing for apples, and little else. But my parents’ party, well that was the real deal. There was neat lighting, a table full of sweets that I was never allowed to have, and all our doorways were hung with beads that you were supposed to walk through.   I was seven years old and beginning to develop my own taste, and thanks to my dad’s music obsession, disco was a big part of it. When I was about five, he started to train as a DJ at a local radio station, and his little record collection on a tiny cart with wheels suddenly took over a whole wall of our living ...

  When I was a little kid, I couldn’t wait for my senior year of high school. The idea of adulthood and being able to make my own decisions seemed incredibly exciting, so I was sure being in 12th grade was going to be fantastic. When it finally arrived… boy did I have it all wrong. Instead, I was greeted with classes that I hated, friends that betrayed me, and a home life that was the polar opposite of what I actually needed . Worse yet, the internal battle with myself was just starting to rise up .   Being a few months from graduation and on the cusp of adulthood really freaked me out because I felt like I was the only senior that didn’t have a plan for what they were doing next. Everyone around me was heading off to college or going to work full-time for a company that sounded great, and here I was, clueless. I spent every afternoon of my senior year in a cosmetology class at a tech school, but I knew that I wasn’t going to devote my life to wrapping spiral perms and applyin...