One little boy/one little man (funny how time flies)
I’m back at the 331, my favorite home away from home, listening to Chris Koza and being That Guy on a laptop. There are few simple pleasures I enjoy more than writing at the 331 while watching live music, and fortunately this place has always been hospitable to That Guys like me.
It’s still muggy out from the rain earlier, and the walk over here was the first time it felt like summer.
Earlier this evening, I got home from work utterly drenched after riding my bike home in the rain with the guitar solo from “Shout” by Tears For Fears in my head.
(Which, by the way, good lord what an excellent solo.)
So I dug up and listened to Songs From The Big Chair.
(Meaning I opened iTunes and typed “TEA”, then “SON” then hit “return”—the modern-day equivalent of slipping the vinyl out of the sleeve and blowing on it and setting it on the turntable and dropping the needle).
I say “dug up,” but this album has never lain dormant for very long; I don’t think that, during the past twenty years, I’ve ever gone longer than six months without listening to it very intently. I’ve discussed this before.
And yet somehow, it still evokes a period in my life as distant as it is specific, the summer when I was all of nine years old and wore Lacoste knock-offs and bowl-cuts unironically and didn’t have a care in the world.
(I also had a Care Bear. Tenderheart, I think.)
And the intro of “The Working Hour” was synonymous with riding through Appalachia in the family car, and the guitar solos in “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” a rental cottage at Bethany Beach.
And everything in between only further cemented for me just what it was to be a young person utterly in music’s thrall, and Songs was an overwhelming force picking me up where the Beatles left off and carrying me forward into the next thing.
Posted: May 24th, 2006 under Music.
Comments: 9
Comments
Comment from John
Time: 25 May 2006, 01:31
1) Not that this adds anything to the post, but “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is one of my favorite songs from the 80s.
2) You are sporting what may be the cutest smile/smirk/applecheeks of all time.
3) The stuffed animal’s head being bigger than Joe’s head = priceless.
3) You should bring the short shorts back, unironically.
Comment from Jake
Time: 25 May 2006, 23:49
#1 totally adds to the post. In many ways, “EWtRtW” encapsulates everything that was good and perhaps also dangerous about 80s pop culture: ephemeral, selfish, pleasureable, and yet the best of it—eg, that song—endures.
To make extra money this summer, I’m totally bringing back the short shorts look, so I can make my friends pay me to please take it away again.
Comment from Joe
Time: 26 May 2006, 01:31
When was this taken? 1973?
Comment from Jake
Time: 26 May 2006, 11:24
I don’t know if you’re referring to our fashions, or my artsy-fartsy black-and-whitening, but I guess either one is fair game.
Comment from Joe
Time: 26 May 2006, 11:35
I was just making a hyperbolic reference to how old this photo is. Although, Mom and Dad were alive in 1973, but that was before their life became a rugrat-filled clusterfuck.
In other news, I used to be adorable.
Comment from John
Time: 26 May 2006, 14:57
Only the oldest of people were alive in 1973, and certainly not anyone who knows how to use a blog.
Comment from Robin
Time: 27 May 2006, 17:02
You and your brother are so precious it makes me violently ill.
You’re still not as cute as I was though.
Comment from Jacquie
Time: 20 June 2006, 10:15
My sophmore year of high school, I snuck backstage at a Tears for Fears show and ate cubed cheese with Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith.
Envy me.
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