Face The Music

In the 8th grade, the highlight of my week was spending the weekend at my mother's. I would watch NBC's "Friday Night Videos" and based on that, make a tentative decision on what cassette I'd be buying the following day. I'd get up early Saturday morning, take a shower, and tell my mom that I was off to the mall.

It was about a two-mile walk to the shopping center. My strategy was to go on streets that were less traveled; I enjoyed the relative quiet of these side streets. The second half of the walk was adjacent to one of Winona's lakes. It got mighty cold there in the wintertime. I sometimes felt like Bryan Adams in the "Run To You" video.

Once I hit the mall, all was well. I'd head for Face The Music and take a look at the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart before browsing through the latest cassettes. The music store obviously played music while I was there, but it generally wasn't from works that I was interested in getting. There was one time, however, when they played New Edition's new one.

Many times, getting a recording was a crap shoot as there was no way of knowing if the songs on it, other than the hits, were any good. I once asked myself, which was better, excitedly walking to the mall wondering which of the dozens of works that were available that I'd purchase or the walk home, when I had picked one out and would be able to listen to it once I got back. I decided that the walk home was superior.

One winter afternoon, I strolled to my mom's with Tina Turner's "Private Dancer" in my pocket; "Better Be Good To Me" is probably my favorite track from it. This tradition continued for a number of years. On one sunny 1986 day, I bought both Madonna's "True Blue" and Wham's "Music From The Edge of Heaven".

I mentioned in my last post that I had been watching the BBC miniseries "Electric Dreams" (about a contemporary family who live without modern-day devices).


In the 70's episode, the 12-year old said that he was impressed with records, that it was nice to have something physical to look at and read while one is listening to the music. He mentioned that this isn't the case when one downloads music by computer. I feel the same, though am more than fine with CD's. The main positive of buying a compact disc is being able to play it in the car. I know that it's possible to listen to downloaded music in one's vehicle, but am not quite ready to make that jump.

Last Tuesday, for the first time in quite a while, I bought a CD on its release date: Duran Duran's "All You Need Is Now". I had been listening to a number of tracks from it on YouTube over the past couple months, and when I saw that it was being released with several more songs on it on March 22nd, I knew I wanted to buy it. I never thought as a teenager in the 80's that I'd still be buying new music by the band in my forties.