It's confession time. When I was in high school, I pretty much listened to, and bought, whatever flew in my ear and settled there. It would be in college that I actually started thinking that some music appealed to me more than other kinds of music. When I started thinking about music, I started to think while I listened, and the winnowing process began. At 42, I am at the point now where I am far more interested in hearing something I have never heard before than I am in listening to what was on my turntable (you remember those, don't you?) in 1982.
For clarity's sake, I will offer three examples today of music I not only listened to, but actually purchased. It is embarrassing to admit this, but here goes.
In the summer of 1981, I purchased April Wine's Nature of the Beast because I thought the cover was cool. Seriously. I listened to it so much that summer and the next that I actually wore out some of the grooves.
I used to say that my biggest regret was buying Loverboy's first LP. I am happy to say I never repeated the mistake, but their song "Working for the Weekend" was a staple of the almost-weekly high school dances I attended. I'm not sure which is worse - the cowbell or Mike Reno's headband.
It was a near thing, the contest to present my biggest musical faux pas, until I realized that the winner had to be my purchase of and continued listening to, Journey's Escape. What can I say except, "I'm sorry" and "I'm listening to Soft Machine as I type this".
