1979: A life journey through music: 1986 - I Gotta Wear Shades and Lisa Lisa

In the second grade, I had this dual cassette player boom box. It was short and slim and black.. unlike the huge gray/chrome ones you'd expect from the 1980's. This thing took a TON of batteries. I feel sorry for the thing, because it took a lot of abuse. Between my sister and I, we busted buttons off of it, ruined the telescoping antenna, busted the long handle off of it, etc.

It was great to have a boom box, because I could always be ready with a blank tape. Listening to the radio, if I ever heard a song that I wanted to hear, I'd run over to the boom box and hit the play and red record button at the same time. It took some extra "oomph" to get those buttons down compared to the others. And, of course, you'd likely miss the first 4-6 seconds of a song if it was the first song on side A or side B.

I became pretty proud of my radio-recorded mixed tapes. Parts that made me cringe was when the DJ sang the last 5 seconds of the song, or started to chime in before the song was over. For the most part, it was one of my earliest moments of creation and expression.

In second grade, we had a single speaker tape recorder. For holidays, or those old crappy sideshows with film (and the tape would beep so you could go to the next slide), we had the tape recorder in our class room. For Halloween, our teacher Ms. Stone (a catholic nun who's name ironically was Sharon Stone), would play tapes for our little class parties. I had the idea we could play one of my tapes during art class.

I didn't really want to play the entire tape. I just really wanted to play "My Future's so bright, I Gotta Wear Shades" by Timbuk3. The words were easy to understand, and as a kid I really liked the song because it had to do with school. I gave Ms. Stone the tape. I remember to this day, the track was the second song on Side A. So I got it all ready so when you put the tape in, it would just play the song I wanted. That's something you cannot do with a CD that sort of makes you appreciate tapes vs. vinyl records, compact discs, or even mp3s. Ms. Stone said we could play it during art class.

Second grade art class was pretty easy. For Thanksgiving you traced your hand for the body of the turkey and colored popsicle sticks for feathers. For Columbus day you learned how to fold construction paper into boats in three sizes to signify the Pinta, the Nina, and the Santa Maria.

The time came to put the tape in. It played without a hitch. Ms. Stone wanted to play it again. She rewound the tape all the way. Embarrassingly, the first track on the side was "Head to Toe" by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam. The lyrics "I love you from head to toe" was pretty mushy and I remember trying to hold face so my friends wouldn't call me a girl. Luckily the rest of the songs on the tape were all top 40 hits and my perceived reputation as "one of the cool kids" was preserved. Little did I know other kids in my class recorded tapes too. This even inspired others in my class to bring in their tapes to play during art class.

Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - Head to Toe

There was a song on the tape by Boston called Amanda. There was a girl in my class named Amanda, and since she was the only Amanda I knew... it was like Boston wrote her the song. I asked her if she'd ever heard it before it came on... she asked "the country version or the rock version?" I was thinking "country?" Haha I still have that reaction to this day. So, lookout... there's probably a country version floating around. I was never a big fan of country music.

Boston - Amanda