2/14/11

He Doesn't Look A Thing Like Jesus*

In May of 1994 most of my graduating high school class headed to Wildwood, NJ for Memorial Day weekend.  I was not allowed to go, as my parents were horrible strict Nazis whose main goal was to ruin my life. 

My friend Melissa invited me to her family's shore house, and, since there would be a chaperone, I was granted a reprieve from my tower.  On the ride down we listened to tapes on our walkmen (how lame, right) and I fell in love with an album called August and Everything After by The Counting Crows.  I don't remember really loving a band or artist up until that point, save for Madonna, which every girl my age had to love growing up.  But here I was, down and dirty with the love, and my affair with The Counting Crows ran deep, and carried through my college years.

Boston was special in many ways, one of them being the existence of small music stores, as well as large well known chains, and so I was able to build my CD (I know, lame again) collection.

Those four years were filled with The Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, The Wallflowers, and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and I re-discovered James and Toad the Wet Sprocket.  It wasn't unheard of for the elevator doors to open on my dorm floor and hear Hootie and the Blowfish's Let Her Cry blasting from someone's room, which remains one of my favorite songs to date.  And one of my fondest memories is happening upon the Barenaked Ladies playing in an outside pavilion while shopping with friends on a Saturday.  Not to be outdone by when someone handed me a white blank CD at an expo asking me to take a listen to an up and coming band: No Doubt.

After graduating, I returned to NJ where I listened to a lot of dance music, as well as some vintage freestyle, thanks to Gina.  I went nuts over Sporty Spice's I Turn To You and I think I might have died when I watched the 1999 Grammy Awards and Ricky Martin sang La Copa de la Vida.

And THEN.  Oh and then.  In 2000 I watched a summer show on The WB called Young Americans.  And that's when I heard David Gray for the first time.  And I quit my job, moved him with him, made him my boyfriend and have been baking him brownies ever since.  I've only seen him in concert once, last year at the Theatre at Madison Square Garden, and I only cried twice, so that was progress.  Not even the enormous fight Greg and I had after that concert can take away from that night--that was the best concert I've ever seen, and the twinkling lights from the disco ball that reached every square inch of the theater during A Moment Changes Everything took my breath away.

These days I spend my time listening to Christine Stone and Richard Blade tell me what to like on Sirius Spectrum and it mostly consists of The Avett Brothers, Mumford and Sons, Florence and the Machine, Gomez, Amos Lee, and Bob Schneider.  Guster is NOT a fave of mine, but I melt when Mr. Blade says that word in his sexy English accent so I make an exception.

My daughter loves her some Rihanna (doesn't matter which song, she loves them all), and Katy Perry, and Train, and all three of those names sometime hurt me to say, but hey, to each their own.




Thank you all for the nice words about my last post.  Believe me, I wasn't trolling for compliments about my actions, but I sure do appreciate what everyone said.  If there is one question I was asked more than any other, it was if, as I was running to the flipped car, did I think about what I could possibly find inside there.  And the answer is no, I couldn't even remember to turn off my own car the first time, do you really think I was thinking about anything at that point?  Honestly, my biggest fear was that a child would be stuck in the flipped car and I wouldn't have been able to negotiate the focacca strap/hook deal that keeps the damn seat attached.  When it comes to gadgets, technology and mechanics, I am not bright.


**A line from a Brandon Flowers song.  It's catchy.



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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope that your 17 YEARS OLD daughter dosn`t want to go down to Wildwood with her friends,with out supervision,for a wild weekend after graduation,because i am afraid, that you to, will become a NAZI GENERAL.

Deenuts Dana said...

Ladies and Gentleman, it's my father! The crazy Nazi! Still crazy after all these years.

Anonymous said...

To anonymous,
Dana was a good girl in high school. Fun, but still good. You would have had nothing to worry about!!

Anonymous said...

I was never worried.I was and i am,still,CONCERNED.