On My "Starburst" Album: To make what life's about

Alright, I've already written about this over twelve years ago (!), so maybe my concerns have not changed in over a decade, okay. Maybe I'm trying to get back to feeling like myself while living solely and literally (forgive me) within four building walls and a 10-block area for the last year (!). 

But Starburst was the first non-child's, non-Disney record given to me in June 1978 (accompanied by the Grease soundtrack, as I noted a dozen ! years ago)--so it's also the first non-soundtrack record I had. 

In other words, this was the first grown-up, adult, on-the-radio music that was solely in my possession, to play as often as I liked and damage as quickly as my small fingers could with the plastic arm of my own plastic-carry-case record player.

God! Thank you for giving me these things! A record player and records! Had I shown interest? Did other kids have these things? My friend Eva down the street did, I think Rosemary did and Ruth, of course, had her brothers playing records and getting her quickly up to speed on Bowie and Warren Zevon at a tender age.

Thank you, whoever gave me Starburst! Two lps of disco, AM pop, funk, a little bit of rock, and...Meat Loaf. Well, let the man tell you what's on it:

This is pre-might as well face it, you're addicted, slick-suited Robert Palmer, coming off of several albums with covers featuring or suggesting women undressed (so maybe there is a theme, okay). Funky, chunky, and heartwarming, though, this one is. Palmer didn't write this track; instead, it was Andy Fraser, who also wrote this song by Free, which I have thought for time immemorial was Bad Company. But then it was the same singer, so same diff. Lord above!

What? Starburst. Being introduced to the idea of "every kinda people" before third grade struck me, and stayed with me. It will pop into mind when surveying some kind of panoply of humanity, the airport, the beach, the L, or someplace that's not these four walls/ten blocks. (The slightly terrifying view of a street-sized tent of white people dining out in the suburbs this summer doesn't count.)

Actually, I've thought a lot how "each and every man's the same inside" over the last year, forcing myself to return to this fact of biology and humanity as both are ravaged by nature and nurture.