Could it really, really be?

Oh, you sing of love and longing, the joy and the helplessness of it, better than anyone. That sweet, easy voice--stronger and more primal than actual memory, woven into my childhood mind and heart, even if it was coming out of a tinny Toyota radio.

And then, when I grew up, and loved and longed for "sweet----wonderful you" with "your mood...like a circus wheel, changing all the time" while "waiting for the sun to come up," the words and the tone and the feeling merged and I understood what you were doing more deeply.

These Tusk songs mean more to me than the formative stuff on WLAP when I was a kid, somehow. Maybe because they are (relatively) new discoveries, made in adulthood. And "Songbird" is too unearthly to even hear outside of life events.

Somehow, because I didn't hear her singing these out of the car radio or from vintage vinyl of their perfect, signature album, the songs are mine, to me, for me, from her.

If it don't turn you on Just say the word and I'm gone

Every half-week, I remember what beloved First Stage Theatre Academy Director Ron said to or in regard to a deflated theatre student who wouldn't be able to take classes that particular summer: "Sometimes doing Theatre Academy means not doing Theatre Academy." 

Sometimes, your absence is action. 

This one keeps making moves. It's all action, now, 37 years later, without the pleader and the leader of the song.

And, sometimes, writing here means not writing here, but going outside for a walk. I need that too. 

So goodbye, but please don't take my heart

You are twenty, and a romantic.

Then you hear this song.

Why won't Jimmy pledge allegiance?

Freedom
Love
Joy
Peace

Let's get some.

The beautiful ones U always seem 2 lose

I always thought you'd be by my side

Me Now: How come u didn't go to the Purple Rain tour when you could have?

Me Then: I liked him, but I had to spend my money wisely--on L'Oreal eye shadow and Duran Duran import 12-inches.

Me Now: Gah---gackkk--ah. DUMMY!You liked Purple Rain...you liked it a LOT.

Me Then: Yeah, but I didn't buy it. Taped it off the radio...

Me Now: One lousy dime!!

Me Then: But none of my friends were going. I think. No, they weren't.

Me Now: You couldn't find a way to go?? I mean, you had to figure it out sometime. How else would you finally see U2 for the 45 (50?) dollars no one else was gonna pay to go with you?

Me Then: Yeah, but the concert was on a Saturday, and we had a speech tournament that day. We had to have. Or I had to work (and then go directly to Record Bar and buy another 12-inch).

Me Now: Just...just watch this:



Me Then: Goddamn.

Me Now: GODDAMN.

...since you took your love away

This is not a radio. But this jukebox is participating.


Mary J. Blige & Prince - Nothing Compares 2 U... by FerrellSouza

Just tell the D.J. to play your favorite tune

I don't remember everything about the two "Welcome 2 Chicago" Prince shows that I witnessed in 2012 at the United Center.

But I do remember a moment of anticipation, standing in line at one of the fancypants bars on the upper concourse, listening to the preshow playlist, and letting this groove get me to move:



I like to think, now, with everything that's changed so drastically in just one noon hour, that he put that preshow list together, selected the songs to feel the spice of life, together, before he brought us together even more.

Maybe that's why you're around.

Spring's arriving, emerging from Bowie-mersion, and finding I'm sort of becoming addicted to Tusk.



It needs to be mobile--on the iPod.

I'm already standing on the ground.

Here we are again.

Another who constructed sonic wallpaper of my growing up is gone.

This is my first true love -



But this is Glenn in his earliest glory. Not his song, but he took it and made it, gently, his own.

Sail over heartaches.

Because this is when I really, really liked him, but he was not vital. And because I can't even touch Ziggy Stardust or Heroes yet...

Seemed like pop fluff at the time, but it resonated with me more a little less than 30 years later on Saturday (January 9, 2016) as I listened to my handmade Bowie playlist whilst cleaning the bathtub. And it apparently was a very thoughtfully-crafted song, too, not a trifle churned out to add to a film soundtrack aimed at getting 80s summer airplay, and one that marked a turning of a corner for Bowie's craft.



If our love song
Could fly over mountains
Could laugh at the ocean
Just like the films
There's no reason
To feel all the hard times
To lay down the hard lines
It's absolutely true