blog – A Roaring Good Yarn

Background Music VI: Given to Fly

March 27, 2022May 25, 2023 Sue

“I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person’s day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something.” ~ Eddie Vedder

Two years ago in the middle of everything going on in the world, my writing muse decided to talk to me again after many years of complete radio silence. It wasn’t the right time. There were a lot of scary things happening. I was fearful for the well-being of my family and my business that I’d worked hard at for fourteen years. Everyone was going through similar fears and some faced worse tragedies. It was a lot to wrap the mind around and I didn’t need extra voices in my head feeding me dialogue for stories I didn’t want to write. One day I’ll share why I think that happened, and where the voices of my characters keep leading me. Right now I want to tell another story that relates to Eddie Vedder’s quote at the top of this page, one I happened to stumble upon while doing music research for the plot of the novel I couldn’t not start writing.

I stopped writing after my mom died in the late nineties. Truthfully, I stopped doing a lot of creative things. The very essence of creativity is feeling. I couldn’t even read a book beyond the first page. I had only enough energy in me to keep moving forward because, like it or not, life went on and people expected you to show up for it. While still grieving for Mom, we learned that Dad’s cancer was back and this time it was horribly aggressive. As devastating as it was to lose a parent suddenly, seeing another battle terrible pain over a long period of time was emotionally brutal. It was a lot to deal with. The first thing I did was quit my job. It was a part-time job working in a bookstore. It was something I did mostly for myself and for the great discount on books, and I loved every minute of it. But I wasn’t sleeping properly and it meant a long drive to work. I wasn’t in the right emotional head space for it. I still tended to burst into tears without warning. So it was just one more enjoyable thing I let go because I was mentally exhausted.

Closer to Christmas, one of the managers at the bookstore called to ask me if I’d come back to help out over the holidays. I was honest and told her I could barely face myself most days, so how was I supposed to face customers? She told me this new temporary position only required me to work weekdays, early in the morning from seven to eleven, shelving books and creating holiday displays. Since the doors didn’t open for customers until eleven, I wouldn’t have to see anyone except a couple of other co-workers. I was tempted. The hours fit perfectly around my husband’s work schedule. He was able to get our kids ready for school each day and I’d be home in plenty of time to pick them up. I thought hard about it and realized I wanted to do it, if only for the distraction from grief. The manager had no idea what she did for me with that call. Or maybe she did because I ended up staying on for years afterwards, even moving to a new store location closer to my home and into full-time hours. That job eventually handed me back motivation and my confidence.

I had to leave the house by six-fifteen to get to work on time. Every morning I left with a big travel mug of coffee and the hope I’d get through the day without crying in public. I couldn’t listen to music during the drive in the predawn darkness. I’d move the dial from one radio station to the next, but every song made me feel something I didn’t want to feel. I tried different CDs I had on hand. It was the same thing. So I drove in silence until my thoughts got to be too much and I’d start all over switching stations again. One morning I settled on a hard rock station. A song came on and I found myself smiling at a memory from back at the start of the nineties.

One time while my mom was staying with me, we decided to take along my toddler and baby to go visit my sister and her family. This sister lived close to me, but I didn’t see her much then because she worked long hours and was busy with teenaged sons, and I was busy adapting to new motherhood. When we got there, I heard music blasting from one of my nephew’s bedrooms in the basement and I was intrigued by what I was hearing. I wandered downstairs by myself and knocked on his door. It took several attempts to get his attention because the music was so loud. Finally he pulled the door open with a sullen expression that instantly softened when he saw it was me trying to invade his space. He hugged me and invited me into his messy room. I’m thirteen years older than him and I’d spent a lot of time babysitting him and his brother when I was around the same age he was then. I was still the cool adult, I guess, and perhaps considered young enough to remember what it was like to want to hear angsty rock music at the highest volume possible. I asked him what he was listening to and he tossed me the CD of his new favourite rock band Pearl Jam. The album was called Ten. I read the song titles. Interesting, I thought. I’d never heard of them. I’d heard of Nirvana and knew about the Seattle grunge music scene, which I’d decided wasn’t all that different from the hard rock and punk rock I’d liked when I was about his age. It just wasn’t where I was in my life musically anymore. My playlist at the time was softer, calmer. Less frenzied.

“You gotta hear this one,” my nephew told me as he started a song over. I sat on the edge of his bed to listen. The song was “Alive”. The emotion and the raw intensity of how the lyrics were sung burrowed into my chest to grip my twenty-eight year old heart. I asked him to play it again, at a lower volume this time. Then I asked him, “Do you think it’s a true story?” It had to be true. There was no way it couldn’t be. It was just too intense. My nephew shrugged. He was focused on the driving beat, while the writer in me heard lasting pain in the songwriter’s words. I’ve since learned that it is indeed a true story about when Eddie Vedder was a teenager and his mother told him the man who’d raised him wasn’t his real father, and that his birth father had recently died. Even if he’d wanted to, it was already too late for him to come to grips with it. There’s other trauma in the song too. I don’t know if that part is real, only the songwriter does. We listened to some more of the album before I went back upstairs to my kids.

I remember thinking I would’ve loved this band if I was my nephew’s age. Their music was emotional and honest and electrifying. I thought they were closer to his age than mine. I made that assumption based on the fact he related to them so well. I had no idea then that band members are my age and what I heard that day was many of the same rock band influences. The Stones. The Who. Pink Floyd. My beloved Led Zeppelin. More than anything, it had just felt good to be allowed into someone else’s personal space to hear what was currently most important to them. It reminded me of the times my brothers had let me sit quietly with them to listen to their rock albums. Or when they gave me a new cassette of older music because they thought my teenaged taste could use some fine tuning. It’s the feeling of belonging in a moment, just as you are.

“Alive” came on the radio that morning while I was driving to work, just before dawn lit up the sky for another day without my mom. I smiled tentatively and upped the volume to sing along. Who answers? Yeah. That is the question. It was the first time I’d heard a song in a long time that didn’t graze the edges of my grief and make me want to weep. I was only sad when it ended. I wanted that alive feeling back again, no matter how briefly it lasted. After my shift at the bookstore, I went and bought all the Pearl Jam CDs I could find. I stashed them under the driver’s seat and played them every time I was alone in the car. Alive brought me back to their music, but it was “Given to Fly” that reached my heart this time around.

“He could’ve tuned in, tuned in
But he tuned out
A bad time, nothing could save him
Alone in a corridor, waiting, locked out
He got up outta there, ran for hundreds of miles
He made it to the ocean, had a smoke in a tree
The wind rose up, set him down on his knee

A wave came crashing like a fist to the jaw
Delivered him wings, “Hey, look at me now”
Arms wide open with the sea as his floor
Oh, power, oh

He’s flying
Whole
High, wide, oh…”

There’s many interpretations of what the song is about. Eddie Vedder has only ever said it’s a children’s fable. Recently I learned it might’ve been loosely inspired by my most loved Zeppelin song “Going to California”, which explains a lot. For me it’ll always be about accepting emotional pain and then not allowing it to overcome me. “And he still gives his love, he just gives it away. The love he receives is the love that is saved.” Hearing those words makes me feel stronger and reminds me how fortunate I am to have always been well-loved and supported throughout my life. For that alone I’d say it’s my favourite. Pearl Jam’s music helped me to get back to myself during a very hard time and I’ve never forgotten it. This is my thank you letter to them.

**Flying!** Photo credit to New York Times, Wrigley Field

I first saw Eddie Vedder sing “Black” live a long time ago in the MTV Unplugged series. He didn’t just sing it, he lived it. For me it’s the most deeply personal song about heartbreak ever written and performed. I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve rewatched that performance, and all the others in the set, since rediscovering Pearl Jam yet again in 2020. Coincidentally right at a time when I needed another emotional lifeline tossed my way. In 2020 I started on the path of making some crucial personal decisions. I was looking for signs that I was doing the right things at a confusing time. Those timeless MTV Unplugged sessions led me to more of their concert performances on Youtube, recorded at different times throughout their thirtysomething years together. I needed to hear these guys again and there they were. They’ve aged, of course, just like me. They’ve grown softer around the edges, less defiant. More mellow. Well, same here. They still have important stories to tell, and so do I.

They’re one of the few rock bands whose founding members have managed to stay alive (pun not intended) and together, with the exception of drummers until Matt Cameron came along, and the addition of Hawaiian-born keyboardist Boom Gaspar. They live in the Pacific Northwest and Eddie has a second home in Hawaii. I think their vibe might be warmly familiar to me because of that. Jeff Ament is the great bassist and Stone Gossard is a guitarist and co-lyricist. In my opinion Mike McCready is one of the best and most underrated guitarists of his time. Lead singer and songwriter Eddie Vedder has the soul of a poet and vocals that can be melancholy and exhilarating at the same time. Many of his lyrics are infused with references to the ocean (he’s a longtime surfer) and nature, and the need to be alone sometimes, yet always fully present in the lives of loved ones. All the things that feed my soul too.

Seeing them perform live in real time has been at the top of my bucket list for as long as I’ve had such a list. I don’t care that they’re well into their fifties now because so am I. For sure I wouldn’t have appreciated it quite as much had I seen them perform onstage at the very start. Can you imagine me getting knocked around in a wild mosh pit? Not likely. I always need the elbow room to dance. Rediscovering their music has once again pulled me out of my head, reminding me that things will eventually be okay and sometimes change is out of my control and sometimes it’s controlled only by me.

It was finding Eddie’s background music quote that first got me thinking about the singer-songwriters I loved the most during my youth and still love today. It’s what prompted me to journal those memories and then a little shyly share them in this blog series. All the music throughout my life that has made me want to get up and dance, to sing along, to celebrate, mourn, and weep. Lyrics that have healed my broken heart, filled my soul, and gave me confidence to stand up for myself, to take a sudden turn, and to bravely let go of things that no longer matter.

I could never pick just one of Pearl Jam’s albums as my favourite. I could never pick a most loved book either. For me it’s not just about one story, it’s all the stories I’ve ever read, the entire library of words and thoughts combined. I can tell you which of their songs have helped to ease more recent worries: Given to Fly, The Fixer, Sirens and I Am Mine. You should listen to them. Better yet, watch them because Pearl Jam always delivers a comfortable feeling onstage of living fully in the moment. I hope they make you feel stronger too.

Below, in no particular year order, are Youtube links to favourite performances, along with my thoughts and some interesting song facts I’ve uncovered. I’ve already shared my feelings about “Long Road” in my previous post titled Love and Loss in the 90s. That song belongs to my mother’s memory. These belong to me. The performances are best watched on a laptop or tablet, and, take it from me, their music most thoroughly enjoyed with headphones on. There’s strong emotions in the details.

It’s a wrap for this Background Music blog series. Thanks for joining me on the ride. Perhaps Pearl Jam says it best, “I know I was born and I know that I’ll die, the in between is mine.” ~ I Am Mine.

Given to Fly – One of my favourite performances of this song. Love the energy of the massive crowd in London’s Hyde Park. It’s one of Michael J. Fox’s favourite Pearl Jam songs too. They dedicated it to him and his struggle with Parkinson’s while they performed it during their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Fixer – A good reminder that if something’s old “put a bit of shine on it”.

Sirens – With all the turmoil in the world, hearing this one never fails to calm me.

I Am Mine – “The sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied”.

Daughter/It’s OK – This 2018 performance is in their hometown of Seattle, with some changes in lyrics to reflect turbulent times in American politics. I always believe Eddie when he tells me things will be okay. “Daughter” is about a parent’s mishandling/abuse of their child’s learning disability and the lasting effects that can have.

Black – In my opinion, still the most profoundly poetic song about heartbreak ever written and performed.

Release – “Oh, dear dad. Can you see me now? I am myself. Like you somehow.” xo

Alive – The song that made me first sit up and notice them. This early nineties performance was filmed in a British studio that probably took days to recover from all the angst and long hair flying around.

Better Man – A song about settling, not loving honestly. Fun fact: Bradley Cooper modelled his rock star character in the re-make of “A Star is Born” on Eddie Vedder. I knew it when I saw the movie. You’ll see it when you watch this amazing performance in Madison Square Garden.

Oceans – Eddie has said he wrote this love song to his surfboard. It gets me dreaming about walking the beaches in Hawaii again.

Wishlist – The image in my mind created by “I wish I was the full moon shining off a Camaro’s hood” delights me every time because of long ago summer nights spent cruising around with a friend in her brother’s borrowed Camaro.

Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town – Melancholy story about a woman who never left a small town and an old flame who did leave many years ago and by chance comes into her store one day. “Memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.”

Even Flow – A great rock anthem! This video performance of it is absolutely bonkers. Confirmation I wouldn’t have been able to handle their nineties concerts. Band members have said they’ve often feared for Eddie’s life during shows. If you’re interested here’s a video montage of some of his stage climbs and jumps that were captured over the years. Recently I read a funny comment saying that while many musicians were doing heroin, Eddie Vedder must’ve been doing CrossFit training.

Yellow Ledbetter – The lyrics are intentionally incomprehensible to reflect the confusing loss of a brother during the Gulf War and it’s almost impossible to sing along with. In this early version in Mexico the lyrics “I don’t know whether I’m the boxer or the bag” were changed to “I don’t know if my brother is coming home in a box or a bag”. Mike’s guitar solo at the end of the song is always riveting. I love how they all step aside to rest and let him get on with it.

Guaranteed – Oh, this one speaks to me about the need to be on my own sometimes.

Love Boat Captain – “It’s an art to live with pain. Mix the light into grey. Lost nine friends we’ll never know.” Lyrics that include the nine people who were killed when the crowd surged during Pearl Jam’s set in 2000 at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. Devastated, Pearl Jam quit after that and Eddie Vedder’s idol Pete Townshend of the Who reached out to him after the tragedy because of similar circumstances that happened to his band in 1979. According to Pete Townshend, “When Roskilde happened, I just sent Eddie a two-word message: ‘Don’t leave.’ And they did stay. And I think it was very important that they did.”

Come Back – Sharing the studio version in order to hear the beautiful lyrics more clearly. I can’t get through it without getting choked up.

The Waiting – I’m including this duet with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers because I’m a longtime fan and it makes me very happy. Eddie’s “Long Way” from his new solo album Earthling is a tribute to Tom Petty’s style of songwriting. I sensed that the first time I heard it, so I wasn’t surprised when he confirmed the inspiration behind the song and many others on the fabulous album during a recently filmed conversation with Bruce Springsteen.

life

Background Music IV

February 22, 2022May 25, 2023 Sue

You Make Loving Fun: a mid-80s meet-cute

I never did believe in miracles
But I’ve a feeling it’s time to try ~ Fleetwood Mac

How often have we all heard that good things happen when we least expect them? Nobody mentions what can happen when we make a last minute decision to take a left turn instead of a right.

I’d already made up my mind by twenty-three that I was happiest when I wasn’t dating anyone. I decided I was done with the complications. No more trying to read the wrong guy’s mind or worrying about his hurt feelings. By then I’d grown accustomed to life on my own. Besides, it no longer felt awkward eating alone at restaurants with only my thoughts or a book for company. Sometimes I even preferred it that way. In my mind that was progress.

My older siblings cracked jokes about me already being jaded about love. An optimistic married friend stuck a magnet to my fridge of a cartoon frog wearing a crown with the caption you gotta kiss a lot of toads to find your prince. A single friend slipped under that magnet a “Purple Rain” photo of Prince on his motorcycle, just to be funny. Another friend taped a magazine photo of Charles and Diana to the fridge with a black felt pen X over Charles and Prince Toad!! scribbled under him. It was the middle of the eighties. By then even Bryan Adams had read between the lines of what was really going on with Chuck and Di in his heartfelt plea to “Diana”. I left all of those funny things on the fridge to remember I had people in my life who knew how to make me laugh at myself. It really is the greatest gift.

I was still working at the hideous secretarial job I talked about in my previous Background Music post, but circumstances had gotten marginally better because I’d earned a good promotion. Eventually someone else my age was hired to take my old job and the office manager’s verbal abuse that seemed to go along with it. I felt sorry for the new girl, so I got more emotionally involved in her workday problems then I probably should have. I didn’t really like her much. She tended to find the tiniest fault in anything good. In other words, she was a downer. I didn’t know her outside of work and that was fine by me because I already had a great group of friends. For the rest of this story we’ll call that long ago co-worker Sheila–not her real name but close enough.

One Friday evening, Sheila called me at home to ask me if I’d go out to dinner with her because she’d had a terrible day and could use a friend. I declined at first because I didn’t want to get involved in more office politics, especially outside of work and at the start of a weekend. But she tempted me with fish and chips at my favourite hole in the wall spot at the beach that she’d probably heard me mention once in the lunch room. She even offered to drive us there. It was her treat, she insisted, and it sounded so much better than anything I’d intended to reheat for dinner or watch alone on TV. We took a long walk on the beach afterwards because it was an unusually warm evening for so early in Spring. She talked non-stop about work problems and I kept walking ahead of her on the sand, looking to escape the drama. This was the moment I took that sharp left turn, against my better judgement. I blame it on the music.

We later walked up from the beach and found ourselves outside of a beachside neighbourhood pub that was blasting really good rock hits through the open doors of a patio onto the sidewalk in front. It wasn’t a nightclub and it looked a little rough around the edges. I hesitated when Sheila suggested we go in to get a drink and listen to the music for awhile. I didn’t have to work the next morning, but I knew she did, which meant that since she was driving we wouldn’t be staying long. So I finally agreed to just one drink. It didn’t look like the kind of place that had a dress code, which was a good thing because I was, to the best of my knowledge, wearing my favourite casual clothes that I always wore back then: old faded Levi’s and flat-soled, pointy-toed faux suede ankle boots that were called Peter Pan Getaway Boots. I wore those comfortable boots well past their fashion expiry date until one day they just fell apart.

“No dancing,” I warned Sheila. Not even if INXS came on. I adored Michael Hutchence then and “What You Need”, so that was going to be hard for me to resist. “And no flirting with guys,” I said to her and to myself, no matter how good-looking. One drink and then home. Deal? Deal. That was our agreement on the sidewalk before going inside. I should’ve known when Sheila paused to comb her wind-blown hair and put on cherry lipgloss that she fully intended to break the deal.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t busy for a Friday night. We easily found a table squeezed between a row of pool tables and the small, mostly empty dance floor. We ordered our drinks and put in a couple of requests with the DJ. I don’t think we’d even received our drink order before a guy with a pool cue made a beeline our way. Sheila immediately recognized him from back in her high school days and told me with a dramatic roll of her eyes not to invite him to sit down because he used to have a crush on her and she couldn’t stand him. Before I could tell her not to worry about it, he’d already pulled out a chair and sat down with us. My first impression was that he couldn’t read social cues because Sheila acted so cold towards him she nearly refroze the ice cubes in our drinks when they finally showed up.

They reminisced a little about school while I sipped my Screwdriver and thought about how this guy was a study in contradictions. He was wearing a stylish blue polo shirt that perfectly matched his bright blue eyes, and black slacks that looked like they’d been ironed professionally with sharp creases front and centre down the legs. I found out later that he couldn’t have cared less about clothes, so he’d walk into Bootlegger and ask any salesclerk on hand to make wardrobe decisions for him. He was a year older than me and an only child who still lived at home. His mom ironed his clothes. Red flags? I thought so, at first.

He also had the whitest teeth I’d seen outside of a toothpaste ad. He kept sliding that dazzling smile from Sheila to me. Back and forth it went. I couldn’t decide if he was cocky or confident. Both, maybe? The rest of his face was buried in hair. He resembled a younger, dark-haired version of Grizzly Adams. (A seventies TV character. Photo reference here.) His hair was too long and shaggy and he had a very thick, untrimmed beard. I really disliked scruffy beards, and still do. I’ve mentioned before that I tended to prefer messy guys over the more preppy ones, but this one looked like he’d been lost in the mountains for weeks and had stolen somebody else’s clothes on his way out of the woods.

Eventually he wandered back to take his next shot at the pool table behind us. The second he was out of earshot Sheila hissed at me not to make him so warmly welcome if he came back. I reminded her that I hadn’t spoken one word to him and the wildebeest was definitely her problem, not mine. In the middle of her next eye roll, Sheila the traitor accepted an invitation to dance from some other guy she seemed to already know too. I realized all of a sudden that this was Sheila’s usual Friday night hangout and I wasn’t going to get home anytime soon. Mad at her and at myself for getting played, I left the table in a huff and went looking for the restroom.

When I returned Sheila was still the dancing queen of the bar and Grizzly Adams was back sitting at our table. I was about to grab my jacket off the back of a chair to move on when he introduced himself and asked if he could buy me another drink. I told him no thanks and that Sheila wasn’t interested in him so maybe he should get back to playing pool with his buddies. He admitted that he didn’t like Sheila and never had because she had a bad attitude and thought she was better than everyone else. So true! He added that he’d noticed me the moment I walked by the pool tables and I was the reason he’d come over in the first place. Taken aback by his bluntness, I had to fight a smile as I impulsively pulled out a chair to sit with him while waiting for Sheila to run out of dance partners.

I can’t remember what we talked about that night. I remember laughing a lot. I thought he was funny, but also kind of full of himself and not at all my type. He asked me to dance and I agreed to just one, probably the INXS song I’d already requested. His wild dance moves needed some fine tuning. He was also too direct and tended to share every random thought that popped into his head. He was an open book and I hadn’t read one of those in a long time. It was pretty obvious right from the start that we were polar opposites. Yet there was something really likeable about him. He asked for my phone number and in a moment of weakness I gave it to him. I warned him as I handed him the cocktail napkin I’d written it on that I wasn’t interested in being anything more than friends. He agreed with a grin and some smart-ass comment that I think was supposed to be flirtatious, but fell so flat it thunked. I finally left with Sheila, hoping he’d lose my number.

I hardly gave him another thought until he phoned me the next afternoon. Somehow, by some miracle, we fell back into the comfortable rhythm of talking about nothing and laughing about everything for a really long time. Not surprising, we still have differing opinions about what happened from there. I think we made vague plans to do something together the following weekend. He says we went out that same night. Potato, potatoh. All I know is that I must’ve felt comfortable enough to let him pick me up at my apartment. I never did that on a first date, but then this wasn’t a date.

Someone else showed up at my apartment door for that first non-date. A complete stranger. A short-haired, freshly shaved good-looking stranger who smelled nice and offered me a bouquet of pink carnations as I glanced over his shoulder down the hallway to the second-floor elevator. Who was this dreamboat and where was the Grizzly Adams I’d just intercom buzzed into the building? Laughing, he assured me they were one and the same, and then jokingly offered to go back down to the lobby to start all over again. I noticed the familiar blue eyes first and then the teeth, and I had to catch my breath for a second. Apparently the bushman’s hair had gone down the drain right after I told him I don’t date guys with beards. I still maintain I wouldn’t have said that to someone I’d just met. He says I was pretty clear about it when I gave him my phone number.

We quickly went from not dating to seeing each other as often as possible. He claims he knew I was The One the moment he was about to take a shot at the pool table and saw me stroll by in my quote “painted on” jeans. I think I knew it when he stopped showing up with flowers and started bringing bags of groceries to fill my bare cupboards and empty fridge. One day he tossed out my you gotta kiss a lot of toads to find your prince fridge magnet while bluntly informing me he was the only toad I’d ever need. To this day he still signs most cards to me with Love, Toad.

He mostly liked country music and I never stopped loving rock bands. We couldn’t even agree on a future wedding song for our first dance. He liked Kenny Rogers and I preferred Led Zeppelin. My favourite LZ song has always been “Going to California”, which isn’t exactly first dance material. We finally agreed to have two songs. My pick was “Sea Of Love”, Robert Plant’s version from his short-lived Honeydrippers days. We’d met at the beach, after all, and it was about as Zeppelin as I was going to get at the wedding. He picked Kenny Rogers’ “You Decorated My Life”. When I think back to those early days, though, the background music in my mind begins with Peter Cetera’s “Glory of Love” from Karate Kid 2 because it was on a mix tape of movie soundtracks we always brought along with us on summer road trips. It ends with “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman, which reminds me of our many camping holidays and Richard Gere looking fine in uniform.

Slowly he started bringing more of his things to my place and leaving them there until one day he just never left. Not long after, we got engaged and then we bought a house together. Did we agree on everything? Rarely. He liked playing baseball and the great outdoors–fishing, camping, and off-road four wheeling in his truck. I mostly liked going to the movies or staying in, curled up with a stack of library books. I’m a homebody and he still drags me outdoors every chance he gets and never minds if I bring a book or my knitting. I stopped inviting him to movie theatres a long time ago because he can’t stay awake and snores too loud. My dad once joked, “the boy could fall asleep on a clothesline if he had to.” My mom decided he must have a clear conscience.

Almost thirty-four years later, we still agree that our wedding was the best one we’ve ever attended. We had so much fun at the reception that we didn’t want to leave. Finally some of our tired guests formed a long human chain and kind of just swept us out the door. We honeymooned in Hawaii for two wonderful weeks and we might not have left there either, if we hadn’t run out of money first. Newlywed life moved quickly. Our first baby arrived the following year. Two years later, we welcomed our second child. I watched those early years go by in a blur on the highest fast forward setting possible.

Now all of us, our grown children and their spouses, still get fish and chips at that same favourite hole in the wall spot at the beach. Sometimes I wonder where my life would be if I hadn’t taken that long beach walk. What if I’d said hell no instead of yes please to stepping off the sidewalk to follow the music inside? I’ve made some wrong turns along the way, but on that night I chose the right left turn.

Stay tuned for more Background Music and a little about life in the 90s. Rock on and thanks for tuning in.

Feel like following the music with me? Below are the Youtube links to the artists and music mentioned or thought about during the writing of this blog.

You Make Loving Fun – Fleetwood Mac

Purple Rain – Prince and The Revolution

Diana – Bryan Adams

What You Need – INXS (pronounced “in excess” in case you don’t know) I always want to get up and dance when I hear this song!

Need You Tonight – INXS Big love for all the 80s vibes in this video.

Never Tear Us Apart – INXS Reminds me again that Michael Hutchence was another bright light and talented songwriter who burned out far too soon. RIP 1960-1997

New Sensation – INXS (Live version)

Going to California – Led Zeppelin (Fav. live recording/video) The guitar, mandolin, and vocals still give me goosebumps.

Sea of Love – Robert Plant and The Honeydrippers version. (Great song! Strange video.)

You Decorated My Life – Kenny Rogers

Glory of Love – Peter Cetera

Up Where We Belong – Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes

Alone – Heart

Stairway to Heaven – The 2012 tribute to Led Zeppelin by Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson with the late LZ drummer John Bonham’s son on drums. I Included this more recent special performance because it’s amazing. Jimmy Page’s joy and Robert Plant’s tears are everything. I’ve only just figured out that many of the musicians I have listened to the most over the years seem to be emotionally connected to each other too.