Ever.
Almost everything I've ever listened to, including the comedy and novelty stuff, has been rock n' roll based.
More importantly, I am not and have never been a Jock.
Nor have I ever been known to Jam.
However, I was there when Hip Hop started.
I wasn't paying attention, and mostly didn't give a crap, but I was there.
Though I was still only listening to comedy at the time, and drawing Heavy Metal logos on my notebooks at school, the importance of the great Disco vs. Rock War Up the Lake cannot be understated.
Nick's sister Chrissy with Catherine and Patricia from our group of cabins liked "Disco" as they called it back in the early days of Hip Hop. The girls in the cabins down in the field liked Rock.
Actually it was Heavy Metal they liked, which I ended up connecting with on my own later on. At the time, due to the notebook thing, I pretended to like it without having heard almost any of it. This led to one of those childhood challenge moments, where fortunately, my wits were stronger than my musical knowledge. A loud song came on the radio and one of the field girls looked accusingly at me and said, "If you really like AC / DC then who sings this song?!?!?!"
Having never heard "Dirty Deeds" before, but knowing of its existence and being quick to pick up context clues, I confidently stated,
"It's AC / DC"
"Huh...all right then." was her answer.
In another Circle of Music moment, "Dirty Deeds" was on the original "Catchy Stuff" tape.
However, during the summer of the war, most of the time we stayed with "our" group of girls, and agreed that we liked Disco, mainly to keep Chrissy from throwing Nick's "sun tan lotion" from her purse into the Lake again.
Privately, Nick and I agreed that we both preferred "new wave."
Honestly, I had no idea what that was either. I wasn't in the mood to argue about music when I didn't care about it either way.
The girls had the radio, so we listened to the "Disco." Music is more about context than content some times, and many of those early hip hop classics on the first Jock Jams album bring back a lot of fond memories. Plus they are all, "A Bop" according to my daughter's definition and were great for putting a spring in my step when running to the cassette. "Bounce" worked particularly well giving me more hang time in my loping gait. The music also works well for driving, and juggling.
For anyone who is interested, the Disco side won. This happened following the Rock side carving out the word "Disco" Catherine spent most of the summer etching into a dock. They settled it down the beach one night, first informing the rest of us kids that no one else would be allowed down there for the confrontation. I'd venture there were about seven hundred of us hiding in the bushes around the beach that night.
There was another resurgence of those tunes that made the album require a technological update, retain impact, and make it onto this list. It was when I briefly dated a woman who greatly enjoyed visiting the (to me) alien landscape of the dance clubs of Hoboken. As stated at the start of this exercise I had a dozen tapes in the TDK pouch in my car, pulled from my huge collection of strangeness, so I always let the passenger choose which one went in while I was driving. Ninety-nine percent of the time, she would pick Jock Jams as one of the tapes to hear on any of our trips, since we had virtually nothing else musically in common. This added positive memories to the catchiness associated with the songs.
As a contrast, I dated someone else who would, ninety-nine percent of the time, choose a Power Classics tape I had of various "Mighty" classical pieces. Some were and still are on the "Mighty Stuff" tape. That album did not make this Mighty Catchy impact list, because after she put it in for the fourth time on a seven hour trip home from a friend's wedding, I pulled it out of the tape deck, threw it over my shoulder into the back of my truck, and never saw, or heard it again.
Not all music memories are positive ones.
Besides it being good to keep me happy and peppy on a drive, the other side effect of these tunes are surprising my daughter that I like any of this kind of music. We listened to the whole thing coming back from a college visit with her dancing all the way, and she's still pleasantly surprised when tracks pop up in rotation, because-
"I forgot you have any of this stuff," as she starts busting moves in the passenger seat.
"I forgot you have any of this stuff," as she starts busting moves in the passenger seat.
Next Week, A Science Fiction Double Feature
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