A friend of mine tweets what she's listening to periodically and today, one of her songs totally sent my mind screaming back to high school. It was the closing song for the 80's classic movie The Breakfast Club. Don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about; you know you watched it and secretly wished you were part of the group. I wanted to make out with Ally Sheedy. But the song is Don't You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds. In case you need a refresher or haven't heard it in awhile, here it is.
Some songs span a whole period, but for me, this song is nailed to a particular evening, which like most of the times of years past that we remember most clearly, was a fairly mundane memory.
My friend's older brother is way into music. That wasn't emphatic enough. Let me try that one again.
My best friend's older brother is WAY into music. His musical collection took up a decent portion of their bedroom and he often subjected us to the minute differences in the various versions of the same song he kept scrounging up. Not only that, but he gets abnormally excited about things. You know how Tom Cruise jumped all over Oprah's couch because he was excited about his new squeeze Katie? Yeah, he would do that about going to Taco Bell (and he was 18). So you can imagine how excited he got about things he actually liked. There were times we were afraid he'd have an aneurysm. Also, all this happened before the internet was around and CDs were a new technology. I only throw that little bit of information in because it's essential to the story.
We were hanging out together with some girls at my friend's house, watching a movie or something that's gone now, overshadowed by the rest of the evening's events. I seem to remember that it was either a rainy spring evening or just a darkish overcast evening. It may not have been, but for some reason I remember it that way. Our viewing inertia was shattered when my friend's brother (for the sake of the story, let's name him Paul) burst into the room with an idea that it seemed was going to explode his head. It's hard to gauge the levels of excitement once they pass that "going to wet your pants with awesome" stage, so we thought it was just that he had rediscovered crayons or something and kind of blew it off.
Paul bounded in front of the TV and held hostage whatever it was we were doing until we listened to his plan. "Nononononono, WAIT!" he yelled. And then he outlined his devious plan. He had just decided that he wanted to hear this song and for some reason, it had to be on the radio. I can't explain this one because he undoubtedly owned 3 (imperceptible to everyone but him) different versions of this song in his CD collection. So he enlisted the 5 or so of us who were there to call the radio station and request the song. It's the same kind of logic we use when pressing the button to cross the street or call an elevator: if you press it once, it'll work, but if you press it 843 times, that'll make the system think there are far more people interested in crossing the street and change faster.
We were supposed to call the DJ at the radio station, tell him we were from different towns, give a fake name, and request this song. Because so many people (a whopping 5) from all over the area wanted to hear that song inexplicably at the same time, the DJ would be obliged to play it soon in order to appease his diverse listening audience, right? That was the plan, so we called, spacing out the calls a little bit so it didn't seem like we were crowding the phone lines to the radio station.
I remember thinking that I didn't really want to hear the song that badly, but it was unarguably a good enough song to request hearing it, so I didn't mind calling. I remember that the song played on the radio pretty soon after we called and Paul cranked up the volume on his fantastic stereo while we all danced and yelled the song at each other as best we could over the speakers.
I don't remember what happened after that because it doesn't matter. In that moment, we danced ourselves into a frenzy because we made something happen. It was a moment of high school that I didn't forget about. And I'm glad that Paul tied that feeling to a great song for me all those years ago.
My friend's older brother is way into music. That wasn't emphatic enough. Let me try that one again.
My best friend's older brother is WAY into music. His musical collection took up a decent portion of their bedroom and he often subjected us to the minute differences in the various versions of the same song he kept scrounging up. Not only that, but he gets abnormally excited about things. You know how Tom Cruise jumped all over Oprah's couch because he was excited about his new squeeze Katie? Yeah, he would do that about going to Taco Bell (and he was 18). So you can imagine how excited he got about things he actually liked. There were times we were afraid he'd have an aneurysm. Also, all this happened before the internet was around and CDs were a new technology. I only throw that little bit of information in because it's essential to the story.
We were hanging out together with some girls at my friend's house, watching a movie or something that's gone now, overshadowed by the rest of the evening's events. I seem to remember that it was either a rainy spring evening or just a darkish overcast evening. It may not have been, but for some reason I remember it that way. Our viewing inertia was shattered when my friend's brother (for the sake of the story, let's name him Paul) burst into the room with an idea that it seemed was going to explode his head. It's hard to gauge the levels of excitement once they pass that "going to wet your pants with awesome" stage, so we thought it was just that he had rediscovered crayons or something and kind of blew it off.
Paul bounded in front of the TV and held hostage whatever it was we were doing until we listened to his plan. "Nononononono, WAIT!" he yelled. And then he outlined his devious plan. He had just decided that he wanted to hear this song and for some reason, it had to be on the radio. I can't explain this one because he undoubtedly owned 3 (imperceptible to everyone but him) different versions of this song in his CD collection. So he enlisted the 5 or so of us who were there to call the radio station and request the song. It's the same kind of logic we use when pressing the button to cross the street or call an elevator: if you press it once, it'll work, but if you press it 843 times, that'll make the system think there are far more people interested in crossing the street and change faster.
We were supposed to call the DJ at the radio station, tell him we were from different towns, give a fake name, and request this song. Because so many people (a whopping 5) from all over the area wanted to hear that song inexplicably at the same time, the DJ would be obliged to play it soon in order to appease his diverse listening audience, right? That was the plan, so we called, spacing out the calls a little bit so it didn't seem like we were crowding the phone lines to the radio station.
I remember thinking that I didn't really want to hear the song that badly, but it was unarguably a good enough song to request hearing it, so I didn't mind calling. I remember that the song played on the radio pretty soon after we called and Paul cranked up the volume on his fantastic stereo while we all danced and yelled the song at each other as best we could over the speakers.
I don't remember what happened after that because it doesn't matter. In that moment, we danced ourselves into a frenzy because we made something happen. It was a moment of high school that I didn't forget about. And I'm glad that Paul tied that feeling to a great song for me all those years ago.
