The Music of My Life – 2005

Welcome back to The Music of My Life, where I feature ten songs from each year of my life. In most cases, the ten songs I choose will be ones I like personally (unless I explain otherwise). The songs will be selected from Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100 Chart, Acclaimed Music, and will all be released in the featured year.

I turned 35 in 2005. There was plenty going on in my personal life at this time. We were doing various therapies for my son, who had been diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum. I had settled into my position at 94-5 The Moose in Saginaw as their afternoon guy and music director. I was certainly loving that. And at some point during the year, my mother’s cancer returned.

At the time, My Space was pretty popular. I was blogging a lot on there. Somewhere, I have a Word document with every one of those blogs. I had to contact them to get them. I had stopped posting there after joining Facebook, and at some point they moved content. I was thankful to get those blogs as they covered the time leading up to my wedding, the birth of my sons and the death of my mom.

I posted a lot about new songs we were playing on the radio, too. A few of them make this list. Let’s head into 2005:

The legendary Ray Charles passed away in 2004, but before he did, he recorded an amazing duets album. Genius Loves Company was the best selling recording of Charles’ more than 50-year career. It was a collection of duets with Norah Jones, Natalie Cole, Elton John, B.B. King, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall, Michael McDonald, Johnny Mathis, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor.

The album entered the Top 10 on the US album chart more than 40 years after Charles’ previous appearance on that same chart. This broke the record held by another act who also made his comeback with a duets album. In 1993 Frank Sinatra’s Duets reached the Top Ten 25 years after his previous Top 10 album.

Here We Go Again was a song that Ray had recorded in 1967. Then in 2004 he re-recorded this as a duet with Norah Jones for Genius Loves Company. She recalled collaborating with Charles on this song in a 2010 interview with Billboard magazine:

“I got a call from Ray asking if I’d be interested in singing on this duets record. I got on the next plane and I brought my mom. We went to his studio and did it live with the band. I sang it right next to Ray, watching his mouth for the phrasing. He was very sweet and put me at ease, which was great because I was petrified walking in there.”

This song won Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Best Pop Collaboration in 2005 eight months after Charles passed away. In addition Genius Loves Company was awarded Album of the Year among six other awards, as the American music industry paid lavish tribute to him.

Unlike Frank Sinatra and Willie Nelson, Ray Charles’ voice is as strong as ever on this recording. I felt Sinatra’s voice was weak on his duets albums. Willie is still putting out albums and at times he sounds like he’s just speaking the lyrics. Ray, however, sounds fantastic. I love the blending of these two voices.

Here We Go Again

The next song is an example of a song that I first heard in a polka. You read that right – a polka. Weird Al Yankovic has done quite a few polka medleys on his albums. The medley usually contains a verse or chorus from a pop song done as a polka. When I first heard Beverly Hills by Weezer on the radio, I found I liked it.

Weezer lead singer (Rivers Cuomo) explained in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that this song is about how he could live in Beverly Hills, but he wouldn’t fit in. “I could live in Beverly Hills, sure,” he says, meaning he could afford it easily. “But I couldn’t belong there.'”

Songfacts explains:

The song comes off as satire, but that wasn’t what Rivers Cuomo had in mind when he wrote it. “I was at the opening of the new Hollywood Bowl and I flipped through the program and I saw a picture of Wilson Phillips,” he said. “And for some reason I just thought how nice it would be to marry, like, an ‘established’ celebrity and live in Beverly Hills and be part of that world. And it was a totally sincere desire. And then I wrote that song, ‘Beverly Hills.’ For some reason, by the time it came out and the video came out, it got twisted around into something that seemed sarcastic. But originally it wasn’t meant to be sarcastic at all.”

The music video was shot at the Playboy mansion. It included appearances by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and some of the Playboy bunnies. Two of those bunnies were Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt.

Beverly Hills

When I was music director at the Moose, I spoke with a lot of record people. One of the industry folks knew I loved music from the Rat Pack. She asked me if I had heard of Michael Buble’. I hadn’t. She sent me some MP3’s of his music and I was hooked.

The song could have been sung by just about any artist who tours. The lyrics sound as if they could be autobiographical. It is sung by someone who spends a lot of time on the road with great success. With that success, there is sacrifice. He is missing his home, particularly the woman he loves.

Despite the fact that Home only reached #72 on the Hot 100 chart, it was a breakthrough song for him. The song hit #1 on the Adult Contemporary survey in July 2005. Three years later Blake Shelton reached #1 on the Country chart with his cover of Bublé’s hit.

Bublé and Blake Shelton teamed up in 2012 to record a holiday version of this song for Shelton’s, Cheers, It’s Christmas album. The collaboration happened after Shelton sent Bublé an email saying he hoped to record a yuletide-themed rendering of the tune. “I had the idea of doing a Christmas version of ‘Home,'” he said.

This was the song that proved to folks that Michael was more than a cover artist. His original songs are just as good as the standards he records. He is also more than just a Christmas artist. It bugs me that people pigeon hole him and label him like that. He’s one of my favorites.

Home

My on air name was “Keith Allen.” As a music director, I got to hear all the new music before it went on the air. I popped Play Something Country by Brooks and Dunn in the CD player and loved it. On my first listen, I thought they said my name – Keith Allen. I suppose, in a way, they did. But the lyrics refer to Toby Keith and Alan Jackson:

Said, I’m a whiskey drinking, cowboy chasing, hell of a time
I like Kenny, Keith, Alan and Patsy Cline.

I have to tell you my favorite story about this song. When my program director and I first heard this, we said, “That’s a number one song!” We told our consultant that we wanted to add it. He said he didn’t feel like it was a hit. We were both shocked. We both told him that we felt it would be number one. He fought us.

He fought us for a few weeks on this one. He finally said that if we really felt it was a hit, we should add it. We wound up making a wager. I told him that if it didn’t go to number one, we’d buy him dinner. He said if it did hit number one, he would buy US dinner. The week it hit number one, he called us for our weekly music call. When we answered we started giving him restaurants we could go to!

His issue with the song? The “wolf-like” howl of the chorus.

Play Something Country

The next song is one that everyone jokes about on October 1st every year. “Someone needs to go wake up the guy from Green Day!”

This song reminds me of Fastball’s The Way. I say that because it starts with a simple acoustic guitar behind lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong. Then the song kicks in with drums and the rest of the instrumentation. I love the sound of that.

Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong wrote this song about his father, who died of cancer on September 1, 1982. At his father’s funeral, Billie cried, ran home and locked himself in his room. When his mother got home she knocked on the door to Billie’s room. Billie simply said, “Wake me up when September ends,” hence the title.

“My father died in September of ’82, and I purposely, up until that point, never went there,” Armstrong said in an interview. “I think really what I was doing was processing that loss that I had with this person that I never really knew. So I wrote that song for my father and about that loss and how 20 years had passed. I remember right after I wrote it, I felt this huge weight off my shoulders.”

Wake Me Up When September Ends

Another country newcomer makes my list this week. I have actually written about him, and the song. Here is that blog:

Tune Tuesday – Must Be Doin’ Something Right

Must Be Doing Something Right

The next song is one of the slowest chart climbers in history. It was on the American Hot 100 chart for 23 weeks before it entered the Top 40. KT Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See” was inspired by another artist, Patti Smith. Tunstall said, “The inspiration for the song was Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph of Patti Smith on the cover of her album Horses. I was staring at it one day thinking it was incredible. It’s everything I love about music – mysterious, inviting, frightening.”

Suddenly I see
This is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me

“The chorus was me thinking, ‘that’s what I want to be,'” Tunstall told The Guardian. “Not a famous pop star with lots of money, but like this woman who’s living her life as an artist. I’d been trying for more than 10 years to be a professional musician. I was just exhausted from trying to persuade other people I was good enough.”

I remember hearing this song shortly after realizing that my first marriage was over. After all I learned and discovered through therapy, the title spoke to me. Suddenly, I saw just what was going on and I realized that I couldn’t do it anymore.

Suddenly I See

There were some really good country songs around this time. There were many new artists and some really distinct sounds that were on the radio. I was impressed with Josh Turner from the first time I heard him. I couldn’t believe the tone of his low voice.

Your Man is a song that I wish I could have written. Here is a guy who has been thinking about his woman all day long. He tells her to lock the door, turn the lights down low, and play some music.

I’ve been thinking about this all day long
Never felt a feeling quite this strong
I can’t believe how much it turns me on
Just to be your man

That’s LOVE right there!!

I love the entire feel of this song. It’s the perfect song to “sway” to.

Your Man

As the “Nostalgic Italian,” I think it is safe to say that I believe in the power of a photograph. The memories that can come from looking at an old picture just amazes me. My Friday Photo Flashback is always fun to do. I think that is because of the stuff that comes to mind with those old pictures.

I know there are plenty of people who hate Nickelback. However, Photograph is a song that I can relate to in so many ways. (From songfacts): This song is about reviewing the memories (missed and forgotten) from the band’s childhood in Hanna, Alberta. The lyrics are a chronicle of real events and personal landmarks lead singer Chad Kroeger recalled as he wrote it.

“It’s just nostalgia, growing up in a small town, and you can’t go back to your childhood. Saying goodbye to friends that you’ve drifted away from, where you grew up, where you went to school, who you hung out with and the dumb stuff you used to do as a kid, the first love – all of those things. Everyone has one or two of those memories that they are fond of, so this song is really just the bridge for all that.”

Someone once said, “If you don’t think photos are important, wait until they are all you have left.” I couldn’t agree more.

The photograph Kroeger is holding in the video is the one that inspired the song: It’s a shot of him and their producer, Joey Moi, at a New Year’s Eve party.

Photograph

We wrap up 2005 with a One Hit Wonder. Defining a “one hit wonder” isn’t really easy. Most feel it is when the artist fails to have their follow up released crack the Top 25. There are certainly many songs that fit into that category.

Daniel Powter’s album was released in America in 2006. Bad Day was released in the UK in 2005. In the fifth season of Americal Idol, the song was played over a video montage of the contestant that was being sent home that week. This helped the song gain popularity.

Powter is from British Columbia who later moved to Los Angeles. “Bad Day” was his first single released on a major label (Warner Bros.), and his only hit. He later described it as “a blessing and a curse.” Powter said:

“I was touring the world and performing for thousands of people, but I felt like the song was starting to define me. I actually found myself getting almost angry about it.”

This was the top-selling digital download of 2006. This was the star of people prefer downloading songs to buying CDs. It was part of a shift toward digital distribution of individual songs. In America, the album sold 500,000, but the single was digitally downloaded over 3 million times!

My mom was doing chemotherapy and radiation for her breast cancer at this time. She found the song to be inspiring. It basically says that even if you have a bad day once in a while, things will get better. My mom always tried to have a positive outlook. She battled cancer for 10 years and by this point she was tired.

My mom had the gift of gab. She was always on the phone. She assigned Bad Day to be the ringtone for her cell phone. I believe it was on there until she passed away. When I hear this song, I am taken back to those final weeks of her life.

Bad Day

What song from 2005 did I miss that was your favorite? Drop it in the comments.

Next week, we’ll focus on 2006. On my list is a song about a steeplechase runner, a song that became a hit because of Grey’s Anatomy, and a song that was a hit on the Adult Contemporary Chart and the Country charts. It also has a great Drifter’s cover song, one that took on a whole new meaning for me when my daughter was born, and a creative way to insinuate profanity without actually using it.

Thanks for reading and for listening! See you next week.

“Bad Days Build Better Days”

I don’t feel like blogging. I don’t feel like being here. I have so many thoughts running through my mind. I feel like my insides are being torn apart. I am sad and want to cry. I am mad and want to scream. I am tired and need to sleep. I am frustrated and don’t know what to do. I am a huge mess. I don’t feel like blogging, but maybe it will be good to just vent.

I keep telling myself all the things that have helped me over the past 4 years:

“Control what you can control.”
“Never let a bad situation bring out the worst in you. Be strong and choose to be positive.”
“Stay Positive – better days are on the way.”
“Let it go.”
“Pay no attention to toxic words. What people say is often a reflection of themselves, not you.”
“Life becomes easier when you delete the negative people from it.”
“You never fully see how toxic someone is until you breathe fresher air.”
“Let people do what they need to do to be happy, mind your own business and do what you need to do to make you happy.”
“Forget the negative and focus on the positives.”

Man, that’s just a handful of quotes that have helped in the past. To a degree, they helped a little today. Basically, though, as I thought on them, all I could say was, “I know.” It was just extremely hard to follow the instructions in those bits of wisdom.

Once Upon a Time – A Fairy Tale

In life we all have monsters or ogres that cause us trouble. The ogre in my life was working overtime over the past 48 hours. My days consisted of text messages, e-mails, phone calls, and communication from the ogre and its believers. To say that those things have exhausted me is an understatement.

As I thought about ways to describe my ogre, I was immediately reminded of the biblical person of the Antichrist. If you are unfamiliar with him, all you need to know is that this person is set to come in very peaceably, speaking kind words, promising to get things right, and leading people astray in belief of his lies. Then, this peaceful man will seek to destroy the world. He will do terrible things. My ogre is like that.

“If it is easier on you …” “Oh, that’s no trouble at all….” “I’m glad to help you with that …” and then, when the time is right, it turns on you. Suddenly, everything you thought was being done in kindness, is used against you. Things that you thought you’d agreed on, are now twisted and turned to make you look bad. The ogre begins to spread lies, and telling half truths to make situations look like something they are not. The narcissistic ogre is like a category 5 hurricane or an EF-5 tornado, looking to destroy anything in it’s path, while looking angelic to it’s followers.

What is truly sad is the effect that this has on the innocent. The pawns in the beast’s game of chess. These poor clueless pawns are brainwashed by the control of its words. They say if you tell someone something enough, whether it is true or not, they will start to believe it, despite no proof. The manipulation and the subtle way that the ogre controls these pawns is invisible to those under the spell of its black magic. Woe unto those poor souls!

If the ogre only affected me, I think I would be able to cope with things more. However, the ogre is a powerful beast. It knows how to work its way into my circle. It not only affects me, but my friends and family. It is not happy unless it is making others unhappy. I’ve seen this first hand. It’s not just with me as the ogre loves to cause trouble in the lives of others. Planting seeds which causes others to argue, gossip, or throw someone’s life into chaos. Once the seed takes root, the ogre sits back and watches the madness, the struggles, the anger, and chaos with great delight. How sick is this beast that it gets such pleasure by hurting and destroying others?!

Sadly, the ogre is not something I can just cut out of my life, though I wish I could. The ogre will be around for some time. Perhaps there is some mythical creature that can be used as a mediator, but alas, I have not found it. I’ve never felt like my life was that entertaining, but it seems like it must be, as the ogre spends a lot of time worried about me and what I am doing. All I can do is to continue to pray that with time, the ogre will leave me alone and find someone else to focus its attention on.

The End – I hope.

As they used to say on old radio shows – Any similarity to persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Scarlett O’Hara

Though I have never seen Gone With The Wind all the way through, I am familiar with quotes from the movie. I’d like to close with one. While today was a bad day, I have to remember what Scarlett O’Hara said, “…tomorrow is another day.”

Questions and Answers #2

questions-and-answers

In my current full-time job, sometimes you get called off because patients cancel their appointments. This can really suck, especially when you’ve slept all day in preparation to work all night long. At any rate, on nights off, I usually read or write. I had a bout of writer’s block and so I went to my Facebook friends and asked for questions they’d like answered. They never fail to ask questions that force me to think, dig deep in my memory, or get creative.

Question #1 – Denise

Denise’s question is radio related. “On average, how many of the songs you spin (love that she is speaking DJ here!) take you back to an exact moment in your memories and is there one particular song you avoid playing for that exact reason?”

ANSWER: One of the things I love about music is that there are many songs that so exactly what you state in your question – “take you back to an exact moment”. With the station I work on today, I would guess that 2-4 songs a show can do that. If I were at a different format (like classic rock, country, or oldies) it would be more. We play a lot of current songs where I am now, with a sprinkling of 80’s and 90’s. The older songs can certainly do that, for example, a song from 1999 or Little Red Corvette by Prince can take me back to a high school dance.

I did country radio for almost half of my radio career, so there are plenty of songs that I can remember hearing for the first time. I was the music director and had a hand in helping the program director pick the songs to play on the air. My job was to listen to every new song that an artist put out. It was exciting to hear a song and get a gut feeling about whether it would be a hit or not. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong. I would think many of those songs I can remember hearing them for the first time while sitting in my office.

Now regarding the second half of your question, all stations have a play list. Sometimes, you have the freedom to play requests, but usually, you are playing from the list of songs that was scheduled for you on your shift. That being said, there is one song that I have to turn down the volume when it plays – Daniel Powter’s Bad Day.

That was the song that was the ring tone on my mom’s cell phone in the last few month’s of her life. I guess she used it as an anthem. She battled breast cancer for 10 years. She’d been through it all – chemotherapy, radiation, and countless painful procedures and tests. She had good days and bad days – more bad than good. She would still keep that positive attitude and often say “Don’t sweat the small stuff”, but cancer isn’t small stuff. She related to that song. “You had a bad day”… but she kept fighting. She was one of the bravest and strongest women I have ever known. I have to turn down the speakers, because when I hear it – I hear mom’s phone…

Question #2 – Marcia

Marcia and I have known each other since elementary school. Our mom’s knew each other and it is no surprise that her question is about my mom. “What’s your favorite memory of your mom?”

This is really a difficult question. Maybe for some people they could pick just one, but for me, there are so many special moments. I could mention the many nights that she stayed up with what my dad called “The Warren Boys Club” and played pinochle until all hours of the night or how she used to stay up late on Saturday nights watching terrible Kung Fu movies on Channel 20. I could also mention her falling asleep in the waiting room at the hospital as she waited for Dante’ to be born, a moment that is caught forever on film. Instead, I have narrowed it down to three.

These three memories, in no particular order, are definitely in the top ten memories of mom. To answer your question, I allowed myself to jot down three memories and stopped there. Perhaps there are others that just weren’t lucky enough to pop into my head on command, but these three did immediately, so they appear as the answer to your question.

Mom memory #1 – I was 20, soon to be 21, when I moved to Ludington for a radio job. I had ever been away from home before. It was scary and yet my folks were supportive of the move. Mom was pretty strong, even though I think it bugged her more than she let on. After the first week, I think she missed me more than she wanted to tell me. She used to send me a letter or a card a week. It was usually something silly just to say she was thinking about me and that she loved me.

I remember the first night I was there. I had a small apartment and every single noise kept me awake. I remember the second day I was there, she called to ask how I was. As much as I tried to keep it together, I couldn’t. She listened to my cry and told me she was proud of me and that everything was going to be ok. I remember coming home from the radio station at night and having messages on the answering machine from her. What I wouldn’t give to have those letters and cards (ruined in a flooded basement) or the answering machine tape!

Mom memory #2 – Dante’ was 4 and loved trains. He watched Thomas the Train all the time. When mom found out that Thomas was coming near my house, she bought tickets for all of us. This was probably in August, so it was two months before she passed away. She was sometimes using a walker or a wheel chair to get around, but she was not going to let anything stop her from going for a ride with Thomas and Dante’! As tired as she was, she sat next to him and sang the Thomas theme with him. The day was captured in some of my favorite pictures, and even though the day is foggy for Dante’ today, he still looks at those pictures and remembers grandma.

Mom memory #3 – One year after mom passed away, my brother came home. We were all going to go to the cemetery on the anniversary. While at my dad’s house, I believe it was Chris who found a stack of envelopes. Each envelope was addressed to members of the family. They were letters that mom had wrote to each of us. The letter to written long before Dante’ was born, so he wasn’t mentioned in it. There was, however, a wonderful message from mom to me. “Know that I love you” was the first line written to me. It was a wonderful message from beyond the grave, that I still have locked away, so that I can read it whenever I need to.

Question #3 (in two parts) – Stephanie

Leave it to my friend Stephanie to give me a serious and silly question. (1) “What comedy or drama movie would you make into a musical and what would be the name?” and (2) “What is something you recently realized that you can’t believe you didn’t realize earlier?”

Part 1 – As I thought about some of my favorite movies, I laughed at the possibility of them being made into a musical. As you know Young Frankenstein was made into a musical, and so was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Blues Brothers already is considered a musical, so I started to look at a few others.

Smokey and the Bandit would be hard to make into a musical. However, I think it would be fun to have Buford T Justice sing “Sum Bitch” in a song! Airplane! is a comedy classic, but how do you make this into a musical. Animal House might be one you could do as a musical – I could see Flounder singing about Bluto giving him that name or Dean Wormer singing a rant about Double Secret Probation. I guess if I had to pick one, it would be Johnny Dangerously…because the name of the show would be easy: Johnny Dangerously: The Fargin’ Musical!

Part 2 – I have an answer to this question that is kind of obvious, but because I am a bigger person, I will not use that answer. What I will answer is this: I realize now, just how fake some people can be. It is sad to see how people are quick to judge you on the thoughts or stories of others. They make their judgments based on those things without ever coming to you to see if they are true or hear your side of the story. It is sad that so many people will pretend to be your friend and then as soon as you leave the room, begin to talk about you, label you and judge you.

I realize now that there are some people who are not happy unless they are making others unhappy. I realize now that there are people who feel the need to be in control of every situation, no matter what, and have to get their way. They will say things to make you believe things that will work in their favor, even if it means alienating you from friends and family.

The biggest realization I have had recently is that before you can make others happy – YOU have to be happy. It is not worth living a life to make others happy while you, yourself, continue a downward spiral into sadness, unhappiness, and depression. You must weed out negative people in your life and live happily and positively! You should be happy in your job, happy in your relationships, and happy with yourself. The hardest, and best, decision I ever made was to find happiness and surround myself with it.

Question #4 – Connie

Connie asks another question that is difficult to answer. Connie and I often spoke of Stanley nickels and Schrute Bucks in the office, and now she asks “What is your favorite episode of The Office?”

While there are MANY episodes that continue to make me laugh out loud, it is hard to pick just one. At the same time, some episodes consist of brief moments that make me laugh like hell, but the rest of the episode isn’t as strong.

If I had to name a few episodes off the top of my head, I would start with Diversity Day. We truly get a sense of Michael Scott and just how awkward he is in this episode. The uncomfortable situations that he often creates really start to show with this episode. Next I would say The Deposition. Classic Michael/Jan tension. The Dinner Party is also a great episode – the awkward relationship that Michael and Jan have is showcased here (snip snap snip snap!).

The Dundies is just a great episode! The thought of an office party – well, an awards show – and Chili’s while real customers are trying to eat is hilarious. So many great things about this episode. Threat Level Midnight is another one I liked because it showcased some cast members who hadn’t been on the show for a while, and it shows you the incredibly bad movie Michael wrote.

Scenes I could watch over and over and over:

Michael screaming “No” over and over when Toby returns
Jim’s spot on impression of Dwight – Bears, Beats, Battlestar Galactica
Kevin’s famous chili
The Fire Drill scene (“save Bandit!”)

Question #5 – Hope

Hope and I talk music a lot. She’s a Beatle fan and played trumpet in band. It is no surprise that her question is musical. “Are there specific songs that remind you of your childhood? If so, which ones and why?”

Absolutely! Growing up, my dad played in a wedding band, so I heard him play a lot of songs and was exposed to a lot of genres of music. One of the first songs I remember was “Dream Baby” by Roy Orbison. My dad had it on a vinyl LP and I asked him to play it all the time.

My friend, Jeff, had this album of novelty songs called “Dumb Ditties”. Every one of those songs cracks makes me think of when we were kids listening to it. Dumb songs like “I’m a Nut”, “Gimme Dat Ding”, “Ahab The Arab”, “Purple People Eater” and “Charlie Brown” were on it as I remember.

Anything of Willie Nelson’s Stardust album and Johnny Paycheck’s Greatest Hits (Volume 2) makes me think of summers at my grandparent’s trailer up in Caseville. There is a blog I wrote about an old 8 track that is full of songs that remind me of road trips to Caseville, too.

I remember many songs from 1988 and my senior year of high school – Wild Wild West by Escape Club, Don’t Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin, and Bad Medicine by Bon Jovi Come to mind. I remember buying Huey Lewis and the News Sports album for I Wanna New Drug. Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, Need You Tonight by INXS, Rock Steady by the Whispers, and The Final Countdown by Europe were all songs I remember from high school dances.

I remember the first slow dance I ever danced to was Crazy for You by Madonna. I remember wondering if I was doing it right. I mean, I was literally swaying back and forth. “Is this right?!” We used to go to dances and just stand around and BS. When I was asked to dance, I really had NO idea what I was doing!

Question #6 – Joe

Joe and I have been friends since Jr. High. We met in first hour band class. His question is “How well do you remember that day we all met in junior high in the band room?”

I don’t recall much. It was the first day of junior high and I remember being scared to death. I remember Steve, Kevin, John, and Joe. Yes, there were others, but those are the ones I remember from the beginning. As far as the first day, I don’t recall much. I remember getting chair assignments and lockers, but that’s about it. The first day wasn’t the “…wanna be friends?” day, was it? Your memory may be better than mine, so please feel free to fill in the gaps.

Conclusion

This is the second blog that I have written based on the questions that friends have asked me. It’s actually something I really enjoy. Thanks to those friends who served as the “thought starters” for this blog. I hope I answered your questions and you enjoyed reading this as much as I did thinking about the answers and writing them.