Avenue C & Eagle Drive

I don’t think I’ve made this confession before on teh interwebz. I like old music. If it was made before the 90′s, there’s a good chance I’ve heard of it and enjoyed it. Anything after ’99? Fuggedaboudit. I either don’t know what you’re talking about or I’ve heard them and think they’re untalented hacks. Seeing as though I’m 19, this doesn’t make any fucking sense. But, I’m proud of my more “classical” tastes.

I own a turntable that regularly plays the great albums of classic rock. The only other tuntables I’ve seen anyone my age own play shitty hipster/screamo albums made on shitty vinyl by six-year-old children in Korea. I regularly go to my local used bookstore and almost always buy a used vinyl. My purchase could range from Little Feat, to Robert Palmer, to Billy Idol, to Sade. Yes, fucking Sade. My MP3 player can shuffle from Run to the Hills by Iron Maiden to Smooth Operator just as easily as it can shuffle from Eric Clapton to Hall & Oates. That brings me to another thing.

I have almost every Hall & Oates album in either digital or analog form. I even have their piece of disco excrement X-Static. I don’t know why I like them so much. Steely Dan is the same. Almost every album. Fleetwood Mac, too. In my defense, I prefer the pre-Stevie Nicks era Mac. Bare Trees was a much better album without Nicks’ sheep-like vocals. But I digress.

I always wonder how I got this way, and I think it was because of my Mom. From birth, I only listened to classic rock. On the way to elementary school, the radio was tuned to Q102, later, KZPS,  and for an incredibly short time, Country station KSCS. That’s how I became somewhat acquainted with the Country genre, but it also helped me learn to hate Country music. My mom still quizzes me to this day on who did certain songs. And I always answer.

I shocked some of my high school’s football coaches when I brought up Huey Lewis. He loved Huey Lewis. We proceeded to listen to Huey Lewis in the equipment van on the way to a game. He asked me a question he thought I couldn’t answer.

“What was the band Chicago called before they were called Chicago?” he asked.

I replied, almost without thinking “Chicago Transit Authority.”

His mouth was agape.

But all this still doesn’t explain why I enjoy 80′s pop. I guess I’ll never know. I do know that I’ll leave you with this: