Smells Like Teen Spirit revisited

So I am driving down the road, windows open, Smells Like Teen Spirit comes on the radio, so of course I turn it up. But it got me thinking, because it's 2015 now, and the song is 25 years old. I wasn't even 25 when I first heard it, which was probably driving in my beat up '85 Impala, heading to Moraine Valley Community College or maybe just driving aimlessly with no particular place to go. So some things were the same, but I am driving a relatively new car, and I have 2 kids riding in the back seat who no doubt think this music is lame. I moved through 7 states, finished 3 degrees, learned to scuba dive, fly a plane, went to war, came home from war, lost both parents, along with many aunts and uncles, and changed jobs several times. So much has happened in those years, so much has changed, and yet here I am, rocking out to the same song, at around the same time of year, juggling school, work, family and friends. Not sure what that was all about, but felt like writing it down.

Strange memories of music

I was checking out some music on iTunes, when I had something of a flashback. If you are old enough, you remember the Walkman (and the Walkman copycats). This device made the audio cassette tape the king of formats in the 1980s. The availability of dual cassette decks on boom boxes and home stereos enabled people to make mix tapes. But what I suddenly remembered while checking out some new music was the smell. The smell of a brand new cassette tape from a band, maybe a new band, maybe an old favorite. After taking off the stupid plastic wrapper, you would open the plastic jewel case and take out the cassette. I remember that smell and then I remember dropping the cassette into my Walkman and listening to the album for the first time, while reading the album insert with all of the lyrics and other nonsense from front to back.

Weird the way memory works somedays.

What should I write about today?

I am sorry to my readers for not posting in a while.  No doubt you have all deleted this page from your bookmarks and I am now just writing for the pleasure of the vast almost intelligent internet.

Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head?  Not even something someone was singing, not something from the radio, just a song that started playing inside your brain and wouldn't stop?  I had this experience a while back.  Remember Michigan J. Frog?  He was the singing/dancing frog in Warner Brothers cartoons.  He was a one hit wonder-his only hit was an old song called "Hello, Ma Baby".  Here is the chorus:

Hello! ma baby, Hello! Ma honey, Hello! ma ragtime gal.
Send me a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fire!
If you refuse me, Honey, you'll lose me, then you'll be left alone;
Oh baby, telephone and tell me I'm your own.
Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello there.

By the way, the best way to get rid of a song in your head is to give it to someone else.  Sorry.

Here are some links:

• A blog about the frog
• An audio clip of the chorus
• A google search (over 66000 hits!)
• And of course, the obligatory You-Tube clip

One of my sillier posts, to be sure, but I have been meaning to post this one for a while.