I thank my dad for my love of ’80s music. My parents divorced before I can even remember, and I used to see my dad on weekends. Every weekend for years, he’d give me $20 and let me go in this little local record store run out of some guy’s house. You’d walk in and be immediately surrounded by a billion records. But right up front were the 45s, each of them $2. He would let me grab ten of them and wouldn’t charge me tax because “the government doesn’t charge kids tax.” If I remembered his name, I’d look him up today to see how long he’s in prison for some kind of tax fraud. It’s probably better that I don’t recall his name, but I do remember picking up the latest hits from Culture Club, Whitney Houston and Debbie Gibson, which as a 12-year old couldn’t have possibly been as lame as that sounds to me right now. I’d walk home with my dad and pop all ten of them on the record player (I still remember the turntable that actually held multiple records with the arm and would drop them one, sometimes two, sometimes three at a time — those were the days). We’d actually fill out index cards with the name of the song and the artist and assign each record a number which we’d put on the inside of the sleeve in pencil, which might explain why I always feel the need to keep all my music in order.

You know, I never really thought about it before, but maybe this is partially why I had a secret desire to be a librarian, too. Up until now I thought it was the hot librarian ass I’d get back in the horticulture section while no one was looking, but maybe that’s not the case after all. Anyway, I still have a bucket of those records today, and while not one of them factors into my collection — I started back over from scratch many, many years later — it certainly was a jumping off point as to why I chose to love the ’80s. So I guess I need to thank my dad for this; if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be able to talk about shitty Corey Hart songs with you. The world works in weird ways.

Let’s keep on keepin’ on with the A’s this week. (more…)