Stuck in the '70s
There was a trivia challenge show on over the weekend that one of my daughters was watching on VH1. The show went on for hours and hours, some sort of marathon challenge. I watched a few minutes, while she seemed to be watching all weekend.
When I came back from dinner last night to continue working on the paper, our newest reporter was waiting for a board meeting to reconvene in open session, watching Jeopardy in our break room. I like Jeopardy, too. She volunteered that she had once tried out for the show.
One of our earliest family memories was the WoWo tape. It seems we had taped a concert off HBO not long after we moved to North Carolina. It was a 4th of July concert by the singing duo of Hall and Oates. Their signature song was “Maneater,” with resounding bass guitar in the chorus, followed by the words, “Wo Wo, here she comes.” My very young daughter at the time gave the tape the name “WoWo.” Great concert, by the way.
I remember very well record players with spindles that you put on to play 45’s. I remember 33’s of course, but I also remember well 78’s. Mom had lots of 78’s when I was young. I got to know Glenn Miller and The Dorseys through those 78’s. It may have been Mom’s music, but I knew it, too, and we had a common bond.
As the 78’s wore out, she bought a bunch of Ray Coniff Singers records. They were a lot of contemporary renderings of older songs. They struck a chord with Mom. They were beautiful recordings.
My daughter, Ashley, has been a fan of The Police, and of course, Sting, for many years. Her sister, Kelly, just came back from an archaeological field trip in Peru, but they took in a lot of the contemporary culture while there. She noted that the Peruvians play a lot of The Police. They broke up twenty years ago!
There are some interesting common chords here. A lot of it, as I have presented, is around music, though as game stores profit today, we have common themes in TV shows and movies.
Have you every thought about why concerts are so popular? I have certainly been to my share over the years. We obviously go to hear a particular artist or group that we like. There’s something else beyond that. We like being with a group that shares our like for that group.
It’s kinda like going to a UNC football game. If you’re weird enough to like UNC, you want to be surrounded by weird people like you so you don’t stick out of the crowd. (Just kidding, Joey and Keith and David and Steve and the rest of you, you...well you know what you are.)
What I’m trying to say is we like our values affirmed. When we cheer for The Police or the Tar Heels, we like the guy or gal next to us to say, “Yeah.”
I think most of us treasure our memories. Like they said about Norman Rockwell’s illustrations, most of us remember all of the good, and we minimize the negatives. It never really was as good as we remember.
We’re planning a trip to Cincinnati, though I’m not sure we’ll ever get there. We want to show Ashley where she was born. We’ve been trying to call our old next door neighbor that we lost contact with ten years ago or so. We can’t find if she is still living in the old house. She had gotten divorced, and may have remarried and moved somewhere, but we can’t tell.
I’m afraid we will go back and look for places we used to go when we lived there and not be able to find them because they will be gone. Surely Skyline Chili is still there, even though Riverfront Stadium is gone. Most of the places we will look for, I’m afraid, won’t say “Yeah,” when we search for them.
I guess it’s why people in Goldsboro are so desperate to hold on to the old Paramount.
Yes, the Reds are still in Cincinnati, but the (my) Big Red Machine is but a distant memory. There’s a Reds museum for guys like me, and a place for us to take our kids to show them our memories. I guess that’s what museums are for.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? And Johnny Bench?
When I came back from dinner last night to continue working on the paper, our newest reporter was waiting for a board meeting to reconvene in open session, watching Jeopardy in our break room. I like Jeopardy, too. She volunteered that she had once tried out for the show.
One of our earliest family memories was the WoWo tape. It seems we had taped a concert off HBO not long after we moved to North Carolina. It was a 4th of July concert by the singing duo of Hall and Oates. Their signature song was “Maneater,” with resounding bass guitar in the chorus, followed by the words, “Wo Wo, here she comes.” My very young daughter at the time gave the tape the name “WoWo.” Great concert, by the way.
I remember very well record players with spindles that you put on to play 45’s. I remember 33’s of course, but I also remember well 78’s. Mom had lots of 78’s when I was young. I got to know Glenn Miller and The Dorseys through those 78’s. It may have been Mom’s music, but I knew it, too, and we had a common bond.
As the 78’s wore out, she bought a bunch of Ray Coniff Singers records. They were a lot of contemporary renderings of older songs. They struck a chord with Mom. They were beautiful recordings.
My daughter, Ashley, has been a fan of The Police, and of course, Sting, for many years. Her sister, Kelly, just came back from an archaeological field trip in Peru, but they took in a lot of the contemporary culture while there. She noted that the Peruvians play a lot of The Police. They broke up twenty years ago!
There are some interesting common chords here. A lot of it, as I have presented, is around music, though as game stores profit today, we have common themes in TV shows and movies.
Have you every thought about why concerts are so popular? I have certainly been to my share over the years. We obviously go to hear a particular artist or group that we like. There’s something else beyond that. We like being with a group that shares our like for that group.
It’s kinda like going to a UNC football game. If you’re weird enough to like UNC, you want to be surrounded by weird people like you so you don’t stick out of the crowd. (Just kidding, Joey and Keith and David and Steve and the rest of you, you...well you know what you are.)
What I’m trying to say is we like our values affirmed. When we cheer for The Police or the Tar Heels, we like the guy or gal next to us to say, “Yeah.”
I think most of us treasure our memories. Like they said about Norman Rockwell’s illustrations, most of us remember all of the good, and we minimize the negatives. It never really was as good as we remember.
We’re planning a trip to Cincinnati, though I’m not sure we’ll ever get there. We want to show Ashley where she was born. We’ve been trying to call our old next door neighbor that we lost contact with ten years ago or so. We can’t find if she is still living in the old house. She had gotten divorced, and may have remarried and moved somewhere, but we can’t tell.
I’m afraid we will go back and look for places we used to go when we lived there and not be able to find them because they will be gone. Surely Skyline Chili is still there, even though Riverfront Stadium is gone. Most of the places we will look for, I’m afraid, won’t say “Yeah,” when we search for them.
I guess it’s why people in Goldsboro are so desperate to hold on to the old Paramount.
Yes, the Reds are still in Cincinnati, but the (my) Big Red Machine is but a distant memory. There’s a Reds museum for guys like me, and a place for us to take our kids to show them our memories. I guess that’s what museums are for.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? And Johnny Bench?
posted by Barry | 11:35 AM
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