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Near the end of 1983, my parents told my brother and I that they were going to be getting a divorce... and on January 7th, 1984, my mom moved my brother and I to 26 N Wisconsin St where we rented out a house that my mom's friend was trying to sell. The house was a hundred years old or so, four bedrooms, still had the original furnace (coal burner, converted to gas)... the house was drafty and big, and somewhat haunted... The house was sinking in the middle and the floors kinda bounced a bit... which is a trait only good in bouncy castles. In the winter, the temperature in my room would drop down to about 50 degrees, so I was sick a lot. I think I was sick a lot anyway...
We lived there for almost exactly a year, moving out New Year's Eve of 1984. Less than a month later, my father passed away... but on the bright side of that I only had to do the "two houses" thing that kids of divorced parents have to do for only just a year.
But this story is not about divorce or death or boo hoo.
Its about a song.
I don't remember how much I got a week for an allowance, couple bucks tops I am sure, but that was enough to buy a new 45 a week...
A what?
A 45... A "single"... a 7" record ... A black plastic disc with a song on each side... yeah.. those... you remember those... Your parents had a few of them tucked in a weird cabinet somewhere along next to a dusty shoe box of photos and your baby book or something like that. The 45's that I bought I kept in a drawer next to my sock drawer. I didn't have that many at first. The drawer was big enough to hold a couple dozen, and as I accumulated more I would sometimes just take them out and count them, look at them, think about the best way to organize them... Cyndi Lauper, Duran Duran, Howard Jones....
But there is one that I can actually still remember buying it... I picked it up on my way home from school. It didn't have the colorful picture sleeve like many of them had. I think once a single had been printed and reprinted, they eventually did away with the picture sleeve and put it in a generic sleeve for the later printings. This one was in a tan sleeve with the recording company logo printed on it over and over. I ran home and probably played it a dozen times before giving my family a break.
It was "The Safety Dance".
I had just started collecting music; it was something that kept me going, something to look forward to... it was a rough time otherwise and all that (but see above where I say this story is not about the boo hoo) . To this day, most of what I consider "favorite music" is from that year, either released or acquired in 1984. And to this day, every time I hear even just the "catch" from "Safety Dance", I can remember back to the day that I bought the 45 for it; it was one of my first and was a constant favorite.
I bet you can't remember the day you downloaded such and such song... "ahh... right after I closed my Outlook Express and fended off some pop-ups, I navigated to iTunes and found it.... I had to wait WHOLE SECONDS before the data transfer was complete...." where's the fun in that?
I bet your friends don't dance.. and if they don't dance, well... there no friends of mine
We lived there for almost exactly a year, moving out New Year's Eve of 1984. Less than a month later, my father passed away... but on the bright side of that I only had to do the "two houses" thing that kids of divorced parents have to do for only just a year.
But this story is not about divorce or death or boo hoo.
Its about a song.
I don't remember how much I got a week for an allowance, couple bucks tops I am sure, but that was enough to buy a new 45 a week...
A what?
A 45... A "single"... a 7" record ... A black plastic disc with a song on each side... yeah.. those... you remember those... Your parents had a few of them tucked in a weird cabinet somewhere along next to a dusty shoe box of photos and your baby book or something like that. The 45's that I bought I kept in a drawer next to my sock drawer. I didn't have that many at first. The drawer was big enough to hold a couple dozen, and as I accumulated more I would sometimes just take them out and count them, look at them, think about the best way to organize them... Cyndi Lauper, Duran Duran, Howard Jones....
But there is one that I can actually still remember buying it... I picked it up on my way home from school. It didn't have the colorful picture sleeve like many of them had. I think once a single had been printed and reprinted, they eventually did away with the picture sleeve and put it in a generic sleeve for the later printings. This one was in a tan sleeve with the recording company logo printed on it over and over. I ran home and probably played it a dozen times before giving my family a break.
It was "The Safety Dance".
I had just started collecting music; it was something that kept me going, something to look forward to... it was a rough time otherwise and all that (but see above where I say this story is not about the boo hoo) . To this day, most of what I consider "favorite music" is from that year, either released or acquired in 1984. And to this day, every time I hear even just the "catch" from "Safety Dance", I can remember back to the day that I bought the 45 for it; it was one of my first and was a constant favorite.
I bet you can't remember the day you downloaded such and such song... "ahh... right after I closed my Outlook Express and fended off some pop-ups, I navigated to iTunes and found it.... I had to wait WHOLE SECONDS before the data transfer was complete...." where's the fun in that?
I bet your friends don't dance.. and if they don't dance, well... there no friends of mine
