Tag: nostalgia (Page 5 of 11)

Of Cold Wars, Nuclear Nightmares, And Safety Dances

October 7, 2013 / DB

Man, it’s like there was some kind of conspiracy to troll the over-energetic part of my brain that is responsible for nostalgia last week.

First, Alexander Zaitchik wrote for Salon about how close we may have come to nuclear war in 1983, and how that, along with The Day After, freaked out some of us Gen Xers with nightmares about the nuclear apocalypse. Then Sunday’s American Top 40 was from ’83. And you know how AT40’s mess with my head.

Seriously, people. Stop getting inside my mind.

I’m going to spare you the 3000 words I could easily write about 1983 and just link to the Salon article. But know that I’m doing it with “PYT,” “The Safety Dance,” and “Puttin’ On The Ritz” playing on an endless loop in my head.

By definition, autumn forebodes a coming darkness. Death’s answer to spring, a poet called it. The emotional link between autumn and nuclear fear was forged for the previous generation during the Septembers and Octobers of 1961 and 1962, when back-to-back crises in Berlin and Cuba nearly trip-wired WWIII. Our nuclear autumn was condensed into those three months in 1983, covering a host of landmark Cold War events now at their 30th anniversary mark. If our generations still think about nuclear war, we likely share the expectation that nuclear crisis and war, should it come, will occur during the months of September, October and November.

Inescapable, apocalyptic dread: The terrifying nuclear autumn of 1983

Korleone

September 24, 2013 / DB

Man, I remember the early days of Korleone Young well. First, there was that unforgettable name. Then, the fact an allegedly world-class high school baller was coming up in Wichita about the same time as JaRon Rush in KC. KU fans dreamed of those guys playing together, along with Quentin Richardson. Alas, while Rush and Richardson were once committed to KU, none of the three ever enrolled in Lawrence.

Richardson’s had a long and solid, if unremarkable, NBA career. Rush, infamously, washed out at UCLA and never lived up to his hype. It was cathartic and kind of sweet when he showed up at KU games with the mother of his son, a KU alum, when little brother Brandon was playing for the Jayhawks. I loved the happy grin and wave he gave the camera when they showed him on the video board before a game early in Brandon’s career.

And then there was Korleone. He got the full Grantland treatment last week. How crazy is it that his NBA career literally lasted 15 minutes? There are thousands of stories like his, of athletes who seemed to have the world in the palms of their hands and limitless futures but found a way to throw it all away. His story strikes a little closer to home because I first heard of him when he was 14 or 15, and because he grew up in Kansas.

”That’s a sad one there,” said Gentry, now a Clippers assistant. “He was one of those guys — he was the poster boy for what they do now, making them go to college for one year… Korleone was one of those kids that if he would’ve gone to college, even for a year, he could’ve had a doggone decent pro career. But he was so deficient in so many areas that he just wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready for this league.”

The Forgotten Phenom

R’s – Recalling Better Days

August 13, 2013 / DB

Man, what a ride. I have a feeling, when we look back on this season, we’ll look at last weekend, when the Royals hosted Boston, as the high point. Big crowds, including the first August sell-out since 2003. Exciting games, including the great, six-run sixth inning Friday night. And a feeling that the Royals mattered again. MLB.TV was acting up much of the time, so I listened more than watched. What struck me were the roars from the crowd. Those were roars that I grew up on. In the 90s, those roars were fewer and fewer. Aside from Opening Days and the first two-thirds of 2003, they largely disappeared over the past decade. But for one weekend they were back.

The numbers still don’t look good for the Royals. Despite all their winning they’ve barely gained ground in either the division or Wild Card races. It’s going to take the miracle of sweeping five games in four days in Detroit next weekend to bring the division title back into the realm of the possible. Winning less than three games could be disastrous for the Wild Card race. They survived Salvador Perez’s injury. Now Miguel Tejada and Lorenzo Cain are both on the DL, Mike Moustakas might be injured. But they keep finding a way to crank out wins.

We can worry about all that next weekend, though. For now, I prefer to bask in the afterglow of last weekend while enjoying another solid game against Miami Monday night.

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So Very Eighties

August 1, 2013 / DB

Last weekend I was sitting around, enjoying an 80-Acre Hoppy Wheat when Madness’ classic 1983 tune “Our House” came on the radio. Being the reflective cat I am¹, I savored my beer and considered that I very well could have been listening to the same song exactly 30 years before that moment. I also thought if you had to sum up the 80s, that would be a pretty solid song to do so. I jotted down some other songs that were “very 80s-ish” and tucked the list away in my virtual notebook.

So here is my list of the Most 80s Songs Of The 80s. What the hell does that mean? Well, these are not necessarily the best, or most played, or most memorable songs of that glorious decade. But rather these are the songs that sum up the decade the best. When you hear them, you are immediately transported back to some vague point in your youth when MTV was determining what pop music was for our generation.

A few disclaimers.

First, this is my list, thus reflects what I think of when I think of “80s Music”. Which is music that has a heavy New Wave influence, crashed the top half of American Top 40, got heavy MTV airplay, and was generally released between 1981 and 1985. Someone five years older or younger, or even someone my age who had different tastes back in the day would likely put a very different list together. This isn’t meant to be definitive.

Second, I did not put a ton of thought into it. I thought about the biggest songs and bands of the decade, did some quick filtering on that initial group, scanned a couple online lists, and mashed this together. I imagine if I spent more time considering it, it would be a little different. But I’m about to reconsider my 25 favorite songs of all time list and will put much more effort into that than I did to this.

So with far too much explanation for a silly music list, here goes.

The ↁ’s Notebook Ten Most 80s Songs Of The 80s.

(Year charted, peak position on US Top 40)

“Our House” – Madness. 1983, #7. I bet you can hear this song at least once a day in every radio market in America. Punchy horns, bouncy bass, a wonderful string backing track, and perfect sing-along chorus. A little ska, very British, and all pop.

“Don’t You Want Me” – Human League. 1982, #1.

“Tainted Love” – Soft Cell. 1982, #8.

“I Ran” – A Flock Of Seagulls. 1982, #9.

A healthy chunk of British New Wave bands were synth pop artists, and these three songs were the best of the bunch. “Don’t You Want Me” is an undeniable, timeless classic. “Tainted Love” is one of the greatest covers of all time and sounded like it came from 20 years in the future with its dark, erotic sound. And “I Ran” is the stereotypical 80s song, produced on synthesizers by bizarrely-coiffed performers with minimal music talent.

“Hungry Like The Wolf” – Duran Duran. 1983, #3. Bridging the gaps between disco, pop, and rock, “Wolf” seemed like it was everywhere for about nine months and signaled the arrival of one of the biggest bands of the decade.

“We Got The Beat” – The Go Gos. 1982, #2. Arguably the best girl group ever produced the prototypical American New Wave song, equal parts rock and pop.

“867-5309/Jenny” – Tommy Tutone. 1982, #1. In a decade loaded with one-hit wonders, there was no bigger one-hit wonder than this creepy theme song for stalkers everywhere.

“Pour Some Sugar On Me” – Def Leppard. 1987, #2. All hair metal, pop metal, and radio friendly hard rock led to this massive 1987 tune. And then it all came crashing down in an avalanche of acid washed denim and <a href=’http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakkar_Noir’>Drakkar Noir</a>.

“Borderline” – Madonna. 1984, #10. Not necessarily her best song, but certainly her most 80s song. It’s sweet and simple and a reminder of how great pop music was in 1984.

“Let’s Go Crazy” – Prince. 1984, #1. Listen, I love Prince. But I debated a long time whether to include him here or not, as his songs are of their own age, regardless of release date. But “Purple Rain” was one of the two or three biggest albums of the decade, and no one represented the diverse pop sound of the decade better than he did.

“Billy Jean” – Michael Jackson. 1983, #1. This song is the 80s. A singular star. An amazing song made unforgettable by an endlessly played video. And from the biggest album of the decade, and one of the most essential albums of all time.

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I love when I get to call myself a reflective cat. ↩

Summer Lovin’

July 30, 2013 / DB

It’s been a few days since we’ve been to the pool. The weather began to change the middle of last week, we were at the LVS over the weekend, and so far this week it’s been too cool to get in the water.

With just two weeks until M. and C. begin school , we’ve enjoyed our first year as members of a pool. We had been averaging four trips a week until this week, usually for about two hours at a time. The girls have made a couple new friends there, but usually either play together or with girls they knew before we joined the pool. And I’ll again be completely honest: there are a number of attractive babysitters/nannies/moms who frequent the pool. Do not judge me.

Kind of related to that last comment, I also enjoy watching the 10, 11, 12 year old boys who follow a few of the female lifeguards around like puppies. There’s one lifeguard in particular who always greets her young fans with a smile, a joke, and a few minutes of conversation. I like it because I remember being there, at the edge of puberty when you first start to realize that girls are kind of cool to look at and you’d like to find a way to hang out with them.

Specifically, a summer in the early 80s when I spent a few weeks hopelessly chatting up a lifeguard at the pool near my grandparents’ home in central Kansas. I don’t remember how I found the courage to begin talking to a cute high school girl, although I’m pretty sure one of my older cousins knew her and that was the ice breaker. Anyway, I recall waiting for her turn on the lifeguard stand, then casually walking over, saying hello, and spending the rest of her shift talking to her. About all I remember of those conversations is me reminding her constantly that I lived in Kansas City. I think I knew the odds were slim a 16-17 year old girl would be interested in a skinny 11-year-old, so I had to go with my biggest selling point: being from the city. As wheat stalks bowed in the breeze just beyond the pool’s fence, I’d talk about going to Worlds Of Fun, Royals games, and other cool city to try to impress her. To her credit, she was always friendly and never told me to beat it and let her do her job. But neither did she ever offer to share some Laffy Taffy during adult swim.

So props to the pre-teen boys all over the country who are going through their first real crush this summer courtesy of an older lifeguard. And even bigger props to those lifeguards who take the time to cheerfully talk to the goofy boys who trail them around the pool deck.

It’s Been Such A Long Time

June 17, 2013 / DB

Mid-June is always busy with remembrances large and small here in Casa de B. June 2013 is extra special, as it marks the tenth anniversary of many of these events.

Last Thursday, for example, was the tenth anniversary of S. graduating from residency. That’s not one we celebrate but, as it was a part of a huge weekend ten years ago, we did acknowledge it this year.

Then Friday was our (first) tenth anniversary.¹ We don’t make a big deal out of anniversaries, so we didn’t really have a celebration planned. But thanks to our neighbors mentioning they had a sitter for a couple hours and one of my sisters-in-law stepping up to watch our girls, we were able to duck out for an impromptu dinner with them.

And ten years ago tonight we hopped into our cars, drove east for eight hours, and at roughly 2:00 AM the next morning, pulled into the driveway of our home for the first time as owners.

A lot of shit happened in a five day span in June 2003.

But the biggest anniversary is still a little over a week away. June 27, 2003 was the first official post at this site’s first home. None of your lives have been the same since then, have they?

Time really does fly. In some ways that doesn’t seem like so very long ago, as though we left the house for a few busy hours, came home, and suddenly we had three kids, a couple career changes, and were in our 40s. But when I pause to consider who I was back in June 2003 and compare that to who I am today, I think, “Did all of that really happen in just ten years?” I don’t think I look dramatically different than I did in 2003² but I am, in fact, a completely different person. Which is kind of mind blowing.

We’re not the only ones in our group of friends celebrating ten years of marriage this summer, so I’m sure several of you are going through the same kinds of reflections. So happy anniversaries to all of you. It’s hard to believe what we’ve done, isn’t it?

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For those new to our family history, we had a small wedding in June that knocked out our legal and church requirements. A month later, after we had moved, we fulfilled the party with friends requirement with a second ceremony. Of course we are still one event shy of our friends the B’s, who had three wedding events in the spring of 2002. ↩
Now that I’ve grown my hair back and after dropping those 30 dad lbs. two years ago. ↩

Farewell To The Kidd

June 11, 2013 / DB

I realized Saturday, as I was flipping through the latest Sports Illustrated, that I really should have written something about the retirements of Jason Kidd and Grant Hill. There aren’t many professional athletes still playing who were in college at the same time I was, and these were two of the very best to grace the game while I was a student.¹

Grant Hill was the Duke player everyone secretly liked. While most of his teammates seemed like pampered pricks, he always seemed cool and calm and confident without being cocky. He handled himself perfectly on-and-off the court through his entire career. As much as I’ve hated seeing it rerun for the past 22 years, his impossible catch-and-dunk against KU in the 1991 title game was one of the signature moments of college hoops in the ‘90s.

But Jason Kidd was something else. He’s the first ultra-hyped high school recruit I remember. I’m sure there were others before him, but he was the first player I began reading about when he was just 16, when people were already saying he would change the game. I remember the excitement when he announced that he would take a trip to visit KU, and the legend that grew from how he chose a college². There was his spectacular play in the 1992 tournament, leading Cal past Hill and Duke in the second round before they fell to KU in the Sweet 16.

My biggest J-Kidd memory, though, came the next fall. He returned to Cal for his sophomore year and brought the #6 Bears team to Lawrence for a preseason NIT game. I’m pretty sure it was a Saturday night, and it was a late start, so the crowd was extra pumped. He had fellow future pro Lamond Murray running with him while KU had a couple older role players (Steve Woodberry and Richard Scott notably) and a bunch of young pups (Jacque Vaughn, Scot Pollard, and Nick Proud, who would have his only big game in his very short KU career that night³). KU got up big early, but Cal cut the lead as Kidd began to take the KU defense apart.

On one sequence in the second half, Kidd took the ball in the backcourt and raced forward. Near half court, he did a 360 to spin around Jacque Vaughn who attempted to reach in for a steal. Kidd continued to the lane, did another 360 to avoid Scott, and dished to Murray for a dunk. It was a ridiculous, unbelievable, ‘who can do that?’ play. And he made it look easy.

Also significant was the hoops fashion trend Kidd launched that night. He began the game with a baggy t-shirt under his jersey that was apparently too baggy and bothered him. At halftime he cut only the right sleeve off to free his shooting arm and played the second half with one bare arm, one covered by the shirt. He continued that look in future games and soon kids all over the country were sporting the one bare arm, one covered arm look.

KU won that night, rather easily as I recall. Kidd scored 22 points and handed out six assists, balanced by seven turnovers. But he made an impression only a few visiting players ever made on me, right there with Anthony Peeler’s 43 points or Randy Rutherford’s 45.

Jason Kidd wasn’t as smooth with the media or as good-mannered off-the-court as Grant Hill was. But I will always remember him as one of the signature players in college basketball when I, too, was a college student.

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I realize with the length of my undergrad days that pulls in a lot of players. They still top the list. ↩
Kidd shares his modern version of it here</a>. Back in the day, though, there were several versions floating around, each from the perspective of a school that came up short. ↩
12 points, four rebounds in five minutes. As I recall, they all came when Cal had cut the lead to less than ten and he helped re-extend it. He also tweaked his bad knee that night, only played more than ten minutes against a D1 opponent twice that season, and ended his college career in January after just 16 games. ↩

Snow Day

March 6, 2013 / DB

Another rumored major snow event in central Indiana was a bust. Such as been the norm in the winter of 2012-13.

We got 4-5″ overnight, less than the 6-9″ that had been predicted, turning Wednesday into a two-hour delay for the girls rather than a real snow day. They were disappointed when we told them they just had to hang out and play inside for a few hours and then head to school. It’s good packing snow, though, so snowmen and snowballs are in their future this afternoon.

Which got me thinking about my favorite snow day ever. I know, I know. Old school friends are shaking their heads, saying, “OF COURSE he has a favorite snow day.” In my defense, I can only remember what I did on two, maybe three, snow days ever back in the day. So it’s not like I have a list of my 20 favorites stored on my hard drive somewhere.

So cut me a little slack.

That said, let me take you back to February 1980. As I remember it, it was during the Winter Olympics. But it could have been anytime that winter and my mind has just stuck this in the midst of the games.

This was before we moved to Kansas City, and we were still living in southeast Missouri. We went to school as normal that day, but a big snowstorm rolled in and they sent everyone home early.

I was part of the original generation of Latch Key kids, so I got off the bus, played around in the snow a little, and went into our quiet apartment to watch the Olympics until my parents got home.

Soon there was a knock on the door and my parents’ friend Jerry, who lived with his wife two buildings down, was there. He was an unemployed construction worker with no kids and kind of took me under his wing. While he was around 30, he was still just a big kid and loved to take me to do stupid kid stuff.

He told me to come on and we hopped into his rusty, blue Ford pickup. We went to Wal-Mart, he made some purchases and gave me a quarter to use in the vending machines outside. Let’s say I bought a new Super Ball, although I have no idea what I spent that quarter on.

On the way home, in the midst of a deserted county road, he yanked the steering wheel hard to the left and hit the brakes putting the truck into a spin. As we began to rotate, he floored the gas and we continued to spin faster. I remember kind of levitating in the seat, since there was no way I had a seat belt on in 1980.

We circled for a moment or two before he let off the gas and I sunk back into the seat. I’m sure I gave him a wide-eyed look, as I remember him laughing and saying, “You’ve never done donuts before, have you?”

I shook my head and started laughing, relieved that he intended for us to spin out like that and we hadn’t been on the verge of going into the ditch or something.

“Wanna do it again?”

I nodded and off we went. All I remember from the rest of that day is sliding around the front seat, laughing myself silly as we turned circle after circle on deserted, snow-packed roads on a cold day in 1980.

So here we are, over 33 years later, and that’s still one of the first things I think of when the girls have a snow day. One of these years, I’ll have to find a deserted parking lot and go spin them around a few times.

Quien Es Más Macho

October 1, 2012 / DB

Sometimes the most important questions do not get asked. Or at least they’re asked by the wrong people, never get answered, and fade away.

Yesterday, as I knocked out dishes and laundry, I listened to the American Top 40 rerun of the week. It was from September 1985. Good times for me, back then. In my first month of high school, the Royals had just caught and passed the Angels and were on their way to two more comebacks in October.¹ We were also about to move into a house, the first of my life after 14 years in apartments, duplexes, etc. I think I was drinking a lot of Cherry Coke, too, which had just hit the market.

More importantly, though, there was a certain television show that had captured my imagination, along with that of the nation. A couple stylish cops from Miami who drove fast cars and tried to battle the local drug kingpins. As important as Crockett and Tubbs² were to the fall of 1985, so was their soundtrack, headlined by a Czech electronic artist named Jan Hammer.

The biggest mover on yesterday’s countdown was the “Miami Vice Theme”, which jumped 13 spots to 21 in its second week in the Top 40. There was probably no hotter point in the Miami Vice craze than late September/early October 1985.

Which got me thinking about another artist similar to Jan Hammer, Harold Faltermeyer. Most famous for “Axel F,” his synthesizer-driven theme for Beverly Hills Cop, Faltermeyer was another central European artist (German in his case) that used the exploding possibilities of electronic music to hit the American charts.

So, after all that, I was left with a simple question: who was better: Jan Hammer or Harold Faltermeyer?

Hammer, who worked with tons of people as a session musician in the 1970s, didn’t do much else after he stopped doing the music for Vice in the late 80s. He does get bonus points for keytar use, though!

Faltermeyer handled the themes for two other huge movies: Fletch and Top Gun. He also did the music for a couple other movies. He got his start with Giorgio Moroder, helping the legendary Italian artist with the music for Midnight Express and to produce music for Donna Summer. Faltermeyer also worked with Laura Branigan, Billy Idol, Pet Shop Boys, and Bonnie Tyler, among others.

You could spend hours going back-and-forth between the Miami Vice Theme and Axel F, attempting to decide which was better. But when it comes to overall body of work, Harold Faltermeyer was much better than Jan Hammer.

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Also the last Royals postseason appearance. ↩
I have two old iPod nanos that are on their last battery legs. One is white, one is black. Their names are Crockett and Tubbs. ↩

My Musical Youth

September 4, 2012 / DB

On occasion a memory from the past will trigger something in my brain and I’ll fall into a deeper hole of nostalgia. That’s been the case recently concerning summer music from the 1980s.

The trigger, this time, was two separate American Top 40s I listened to on recent Sundays.¹ One was from 1984, and was loaded with Prince, Bruce, Tina, Cyndi and the Footloose soundtrack. That was one of the truly great summers ever, between some epic pop artists and the LA Olympics.

Two weeks later I heard one from 1982, this time an interesting mix of the Go-Gos, Men at Work, John Cougar and other artists I was listening to back then with others like Air Supply, America, and Elton John, all music that my mom was listening to at the time.

After much over-analysis of those songs and the memories they stirred, I decided 1982 was a hugely important musical year in my life. That was the year I officially transitioned away from most of my music being influenced by my mom and her friends to picking my own music. We still listened to a lot of the same music – another bonus of having a mother only 19 years older than me – but she was drifting away from the music of the 70s and into “lite rock” while I was discovering New Wave and harder rock. There was still a swath of mainstream pop music we both enjoyed: Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie were the most obvious examples. But ’82 was the year that common ground began to shrink rapidly and soon there would be almost no overlap in our tastes.

Which led to more over-analysis about the changes in radio over the past 30 years, most of which I’m sure I’ve written about before. While much of the music of the 1980s was pretty awful, historically speaking, it was still a golden age for pop radio. There just isn’t the variety of music represented in mainstream pop today that there was back then. Now it’s all dance/hip-hop derived music. In the 80s there was dance music, rock, all the New Wave artists, a dose of pop-country, and then the massive artists like Prince that defied easy labeling.

Was it better then? I think most people will argue the music of their pre-teen and teenage years was the best of their lives. I do think that common culture, represented by what Casey Kasim played on AT40, was better. You could go anywhere and people your age would have that common base to work from.

That said kids today have far more access to music than my generation did. They aren’t reliant on Casey or MTV to tell them what to listen to. They can go out and sample 1000 different bands from 100 different sub-genres and decide what they like on their own. They don’t have to sit and wait for the songs they like, they can get them whenever they want them.

What does it all mean? Hell, I don’t know. All I know is I’ve had these songs, and all the memories and feelings associated with them, bouncing in my head for the past few weeks. As much as I tried to find some meaning in them, I could not. So I figured maybe if I shared this experience, and overdose on 80s summer pop over the holiday weekend, I’ll be ready to start anew on Tuesday.

Happy Labor Day weekend, everyone.

One of the local retro stations spins old AT40s every Sunday. I try to listen in a little each week. ↩