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Musical Methadone - Volume 2


Gym playlists are one of the most shared streams on music streaming services, and there was a time when I had my gym playlists on my MP3 player all set for when I went to the gym. Yes, my experience of gym playlist goes back to pre-streaming era when I had to go to Plan-NOT Fitness, and it was all I could afford on my single father salary. My experience today is as an empty nester that started building my home gym several years before the covid-apocalypse out of garbage picking and Craigslist finds. The entire scene here gets more casual as I set up a screen to listen to and watch my podcasts (usually Megyn Kelly or Sara Gonzalez) but I do make a habit of listening to the 80’s rewind Top 40 every week too. It’s not the usual power metal or symphonic metal I listed to on the old MP3 player, but this brings me to the topic at hand, with a little background. 

Of course I have playlists on my YT Music, and I base them all on the decade. I have the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s,10s, and am working on the 20s as the 20s happen. Being old I am fining that I am more in the 80s and 90s and less extent in the 00s. The 70s had some good stuff but not enough to get e jazzed and the 10s and 20s are most of my symphonic metal so it isn’t all that diverse. One day I was mowing the lawn, and I had the headphones in and was listening to the VJ Top 40 Rewind from 1988 or something like that and was thinking ok this will be good. Why? Well because as I got old, I started listening to the 80s music that I totally hated when I was a teenager and thinking that “I didn’t know how good I had it,” which is a theme when you get older. Of course, I knew I was going to hear 40 total bangers that I missed out on in my youthful ignorance. Hardly. 

Just to be clear I was being old and mowing my lawn and having one of the greatest “get off of my lawn” moments ever. “The Sun Always Shines on TV” came on by the band A-ha, which got my mind churning. “See A-ha wasn’t a one hit wonder!” and my mind was working on a blog for it (which apparently took 7 months to incorporate into this blog) and self-righteously I was proud of my decision to listen to this station. Then the next song came on “Digital Display” by Ready for the World. The dumpster started catching fire immediately. Well, this song isn’t exactly Oh Sheila, is it? It steadily went downhill from there, with some bumps up and down. It was nice to hear Huey Lewis and the News (Power of Love), Tears for Fears (Everybody Wants to Rule the World) and Dead or Alive again (You Spin me Round), but there were all kinds of garbage top 40 mixed in it all. 

The general feeling through this was a 40-60 mix of good to bad. There were a lot of good songs I probably didn’t appreciate along the way, intermixed with more songs that were as bad as I remembered them to be. I have made it part of my weekly routine since to listen to whatever wee and year they were doing the top 40 from every week since. It’s like a strange sort of torture, but it keeps my reality in check when I am chewing on memba-berries. For example, the realization that “Mr. Roboto” may not have been the song that ended Styx, it was probably just the day every realized that Styx was never that good and the charade had to end someday anyway. Blasphemy, I know, but place them alongside their contemporary's using hindsight, like Kansas, Boston, or Asia and they just don’t belong. They are basically the Buggles with a better manager. 

Now of course I haven’t only used this method of musical nostalgia for mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, or working out when I ran out of YouTube I wanted to watch, to crap on the era. There have been a lot of treasures in the dirt. Remembering the things from 40 years ago that were epic with no comparison today like a Ratt or a Dio song that took everyone by surprise, or that cultural phenomenon that was Quiet Riot shooting up to 5 on the Top 40. Things that can be tied to my moments in time and bring me back to the good or the bad is worth doing at least once a week. Remember I existed and all and I want to hold onto that as long as I can, until of course I don’t exist anymore. Well don’t exist on this plain anymore.

Still one of the greatest songs ever - Rainbow in the Dark by Dio

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