| 8/25/2005 |
MANIC MONDAY by The Bangles
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The year was 1986. I was 11 years old when the song was released. I was in love with music even then. I can remember going to the Alco-Duckwall with my Aunt to see what songs were available as a single on 45s. "Different Light" was the first piece of music that I had ever owned. Records were still readily available, cassette tapes were the wave of the future.
Friday Night Videos was one of my favorite shows. Cyndi Lauper, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Duran Duran and The Bangles were all staples on Friday Night. The show had various comedic hosts, but that wasn't what I wanted to hear. I wanted to see the flaming orange hair of Miss Lauper as she flailed around town announcing to the world what girls just wanted. Soon, a new love took over. The all-girl musical stylings of Susanna Hoffs, Michelle Steele, Debbie Peterson, and Victoria Peterson. The Bangles. They were the cool girls in school who cut class and whom you thought probably smoked. Part misfit. Part poet. Part rebel.
I had to have more!
VCR? Not yet. My best friend for music was my hand-held bright red tape recorder. I would hold it up to the TV and record an entire program. Vigilantly I would stand guard over my tape recorder. Silently shushing anyone who walked by who might disrupt the purity of my Memorex. I would take these songs (television commercials included) with me when I went on vacation. My bag was packed, including at least a dozen various episodes of Friday Night Videos and the cartoon I loved at the time, Dungeons & Dragons. For weeks prior to going on vacation and since seeing The Bangles on TV I scoured every store. I had to find their album. I had to take it with my on vacation. I was rewarded one Sunday afternoon at our local Alco-Duckwall. A tragic sight to behold was my awaited cassette held prisoner in the too-hard-to-chew-through plastic security bracket the stores used. Prior to its purchase, it took all I was not jump over the counter, grab the store clerk by the ears, and demand she find me a tape recorder in-house for which to hear my preeecioussssss.
I took it home, locked myself in my room, grabbed my little red tape recorder, and listened to the entire album repeatedly until dinner.
Vacation time arrived. As we made the ten hour drive across the plains of Nebraska to our Wyoming vacation destination, I hid in the back of the family van clutching my little red recorder playing and replaying Manic Monday. I imagined myself in the my own version of the Manic Monday video, as I stared out the window, lost in the music. Susanna was singing just to me.
For two weeks while away from most modern conveniences, that little red recorder playing Manic Monday was my lifeline to civilization. |
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I posted this @ 8/25/2005 09:16:00 AM.............Need a link?..........
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