My day job is anything but boring. Whether attributed to my co-workers or the various writing assignments -- usually both -- I genuinely look forward to coming to work every day. That being said, having something even MORE fun to look forward to is the icing on the cake.
I recently became acquainted with online radio on my computer at work. Specifically, a selection of streams playing nothing but hits from the 80s.
Ahhh. My people.
I have been treating myself to some pretty fabulous ear candy -- The Cure, Depeche Mode, the occasional musical styling from Morrisey/The Smiths. It's brilliant. Of course, there are THOSE songs from the Big 80s that make you cringe, but you love them anyway. George Michael (extra bonus points if it's a Wham! song), Madonna, Terence Trent D'Arby... even one-hit wonders like Scritti Politti, Matthew Wilder or Charlie Sexton. Then there are the songs you hear, may not particularly care for, but they bring back such a rush of bittersweet teen memories, you just have to keep listening. Case in point, I just sat through Billy Idol's rendition of "Mony, Mony." Never been a big fan of that one, but it was played at each and every Friday night sock hop we had in high school. (Of course it was a crowd favorite, given the ad libbed lyrics everyone shouted. Everyone but me, that is. Not that I considered myself too prudish to join in; but it was a fairly crass statement.) But I digress... I cannot hear that song without pausing to remember dancing with my friends for two solid hours in the gym, glad the week was over and having the entire weekend before us.
Not long ago, I was radio channel surfing in my car, and paused upon hearing one of my favorite songs from the 80s. Imagine my surprise when the station ID followed the song, and I realized it was playing on the local "oldies" station. Apparently, they had refreshed their playlist to cover said "oldies" spanning the 70s and 80s, rather than the 50s, 60s and 70s as they had before. Oldies were ... well, ... OLD. Surely the favorite music from my teenage years cannot be considered old ... ? Then I remembered how each and every week when I read the entertainment section of the Sunday paper, and glance through the top 10 hits I rarely recognize any song, let alone the artists themselves.
So, I've come to accept the fact that I have become desperately out of touch, and it's perfectly fine with me. I guess my musical growth period topped out somewhere around the late 80s/early 90s. Maybe I just figured the music couldn't get any better, so I decided to stay put.
That's OK. Bring on the 389 different "Hits of the 70s, 80s and 90s" streams online. I'm all ears.
1 comment:
That'd HILARIOUS!!!! Back at my last "real" job, we had a few radio stations piped into the OR including an oldies station. One day, as we listened to the oldies, a Prince song came on and I nearly fell into the patient's abdomen as I exclaimed that Prince music is not "OLD". Apparently 80's was considered old as much as eight years ago. Talk about a life changing event...
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