Takin’ It Back to that Ol’ School!

Assalamu alaikum, I think that’s actually a title of a Too Kool Chris mix CD featuring old school house music. Anyway, one cool thing about having a Rhapsody subscription is that in many cases, though certainly not all, you can find all the stuff you used to listen to when you were younger.

I used to love music when I was younger, still do sometimes, though as I said, it’s really a struggle! I guess when you’re blind you relate to things that are audible in nature and not visual, obviously, though I can’t say it’s true for all blind people. Perhaps the more vision you have, or had if you lost it later in life, the more visually you relate to and interact with the world around you.

At any rate, music was my way of escape, it was my way to get away from the rest of the world. Plus, I liked to sing, and that used to make me feel happy and help me if I was having a bad day! When I was a kid, I wanted to be a singer, although my father discouraged it, he htought that I should pursue a “real career”. Heck, some of my family used to tell me that I should try out for American Idol, though, one negative remark from Simon would have had me in tears, yeah, I can be pretty sensitive.

When I was 7 years old, my parents put their old stereo in my bedroom, and I had a couple of story records for small children, and oddly enough a huge stack of 45’s which included Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean, and Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing, which I didn’t like anyway and I think was promptly (and mysteriously I think) taken out of my room, once the adults found out that I had it.

I think I had a Pat Binatar album in there too, and an album by the group Moving Pictures because I absolutely loved that song “What About Me”, anyone remember that?

Anyway, when I was that age, I listened to WLS in Chicago, because the FM receiver wasn’t very good on the stereo I had, and AM got better reception. And this was when WLS still played music. At that time, my tastes were mostly pop/rock oriented. I really liked Deph Leopard, Quiet Riot, Michael Jackson, Shannon, hmmm, who else, I think Madonna was starting to get popular around that time. When I was turning ten, my mom got me my first “jam box” or “ghetto blaster” or what we’d today call a “portable radio”. I seem to recall having arguments with kids at school as to what exactly was the difference between a “jam box” and a “ghetto blaster”, something about the Jam box’s controls being on the top of the unit and a ghetto blaster’s being on the front, and the ghetto blaster sounding better, or something.

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