56KBPS

One of the staples of any household in the 90s was a desktop computer. I'm pretty sure it cost a fortune at the time and had little memory, but it was literally a gateway to the world. I have fond memories of my dad installing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego and playing SimCity (hold the Shift key and type "FUND" for $10,000). I always marveled at his mastery of the DOS command box (c:/). We had a Gateway 2000 at my house, and they seemed like they were everywhere at the time. They even had brick and mortar stores. I think part of that had to do with the fact that my dad worked for the school system and we were familiar with them since they were everywhere in schools. We had dial-up internet provided by GTE running at a blazing 56kbps per our modem. The internet was obviously was fledgling in the late 90s, but two specific applications really changed things for me forever. Those two - ICQ and Napster.

With the introduction of Napster and ICQ, the computer quickly changed from a pure information/entertainment medium to a rabbit hole of time-wasting overnight - purely due to the internet. If you are not familiar with ICQ, it was essentially the first online instant messenger. Its icon was a flower and you were assigned a unique user ID number, much like a phone number. When you wanted to connect with people via ICQ you had to give them this number. The flower icon had different and different icons associated with it to indicate your level of availability to chat. This meant that the days of actually having to call a girl on her home phone were long gone. You didn't have to worry about some girl's dad picking up the phone on the other end of a little brother or sister listening in on your conversation. Similar to how teenagers use text messaging and apps on the phones without ever actually talking to someone. I felt like I used ICQ for many years and really did not get into AOL Instant Messenger until I was in college. Looking back, ICQ, meant the first time where I started to assume how people felt about me purely based on online interactions (based on an icon, an availability color, or a non-response).

I will most likely have many posts about Napster simply because it was such a big deal to a kid with limited disposable income. To say it was a game-changer for a music lover is a gross understatement. Not only was it an amazing medium to illegally obtain music, but it also indicated a culture shift. It introduced the modern pirate. Long gone were the days where I had to scrounge up $15 to purchase a CD. I could now just download individual songs that I liked and listen to them over and over without any cost. This obviously was dependent on the very limited space on my Gateway 2000's hard drive :). Like many my age, that did not have access to a T1 line, you woke up each morning, opened Napster, and tried to find a college kid's stream who had the song that you wanted and click download. You really hoped for someone who had a T1 line on the other end, even a DSL, but you would definitely take a hard swallow and settle for someone with a 32kbps connection if it really was a song that you wanted. There was one obvious caveat to all of this. My parents wanting to use the phone. I can remember many times being 75% of the way done downloading a song and my mom would pick up the phone and completely cut off our modem's connection - thus stopping the download. That simple. I then crossed my fingers that I could find another acceptable connection to finish out the rest of the download. That bonus track from your favorite artist that was only found on the Japanese release would have to wait.

It definitely was the wild west days of the internet. I think that many in my generation are such proponents of net neutrality because we grew up very much rooted in a culture of Internet piracy. We weren't taught digital citizenship - we were flagbearers on the Queen Anne's Revenge. You can't tell us what to do with our internet :). We were not accustomed to paying for things that we could find free. I continued to download songs illegally all the way into college until it actually hit home that students at my university were being fined thousands of dollars for illegally downloading songs. Money I did not have and a risk I was no longer willing to take.

I can still picture it. Me sitting in front of our desktop, playing Command and Conquer, chatting with some friend on ICQ, and downloading Len's Steal My Sunshine (not buying that CD).

Dr. Martens, Abercrombie, and No Limit

My dad used to tell this story when he briefly attended college in Iowa. Back then, Coors Beer was not available east of the Mississippi River and Stroh's Beer was not available west of the Mississippi. The scenario he described was simple. Buy a bunch of Stroh's, take it to Iowa, trade it for Coors and then sell it for a premium in Indiana. Was the beer really that good or was it that you just could not get it where you lived? I side with the latter. The same situation existed for me with Yuengling. It just does not quite taste the same in Indiana as it did when I had to go to Ohio to get it. In the 90s, this situation also existed for me. It was in the form of clothing with the words Abercrombie and Fitch. I have no idea when Abercrombie became so popular, but it seemed to blow up overnight. The problem for me was that the nearest store was two and a half hours away. Ordering from the catalog did not seem like something my mom would be up for at the time :).

The other problem was that you never knew when you were going to get to Indy and saving money was a new concept for me. By sophomore year I had a job but also had my license. Abercrombie anything was the thing to have. I heard stories of people going to Indy and spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on Abercrombie apparel. I think, looking back, I initially had a hat. An Abercrombie Lacrosse hat - what a poser. Once Abercrombie moved into Fort Wayne, like my beer analogy, it lost its luster. The fascination with Abercrombie clothes carried on for about a decade longer, but it never quite was the status symbol it was in my early high school years. The 90s was such a contrast in trends. Just a few years prior, JNCO jeans and Grateful Dead shirts were huge. We were now obsessed with looking like an east coast rugby player vacationing on Martha's Vineyard.

I have always loved shoes. I attribute a lot of this to the era when NBA/NFL/MLB players were all rolling out signature shoes. You looked up to these athletes and you thought their shoes would help you perform like them. You had to have them and some are now worth a lot of money. It was a harsh reality putting on Bo Jackson's Nike Air Trainer's and not being able to break a bat on your thigh :). Anyway, the summer I turned 16 I begged my parents for a pair of Dr. Marten's. Like Abercrombie clothing, I had seen the boots on some popular guys (that I looked up to) at my school and wanted to look just like them. We were on vacation in Traverse City and happened to go to the mall there. They had a Buckle and my mom agreed to make the purchase. It was the most expensive pair of shoes I had ever owned. I also knew that it was the only pair I would ever get, so I better take care of them. I remember getting into a car accident my sophomore year and my first thought - can the blood be cleaned off my Dr. Martens? I still have my pair. I still have a lot of shoes and my wife complains. I just take such good care of them because I'm afraid that I'll never get another pair. It's just something ingrained in me through experience.

When you're 16 you feel free. You get your license and you're off. I had an '87 Honda Civic. One of the first things I did was have my dad put a CD player in it. My friends did the same and some even added some sweet Rockford Fosgate's to the trunks. Bass was big! I really could have cared less about anything else in or on the car. One of the strangest phenomena of being 16 in Indiana (at least where I grew up) was the surge in popularity of No Limit Records. Like the trends mentioned earlier, it seemed to come out of nowhere and wasn't really that great, but it was EVERYWHERE and popular in the media. Once Master P's single Make Em Say Uhh! dropped, it felt like a new No Limit personality/rapper appeared each week. It seemed impossible to keep up with each new release, but my friends with Columbia House subscriptions were dealing their CDs in our school like they were illegal drugs. It was amazing how big some rappers from New Orleans posing in front of green screens were in the mid to late 90s. Those album covers were LEGENDARY. The hysteria grew even larger in the Fort Wayne area when Master P signed to play for the Fort Wayne Fury of the CBA.

Sophomore year was really strange....

Favorite No Limit Song: Big Ed - Rodeo

A Trip to Garden Grove

When I was a junior at Purdue University, I took an African-American literature class. Purdue is a very, very diverse university, but at the time, African American students were a very small percentage of that diversity. After growing up in a predominantly white community, I was excited to take a class with students from all walks of life. The professor was tough but engaging. She also had a sense of humor and was open to discussing very sensitive topics in a constructive manner. During one of the lectures, she simply asked if racism still existed in our society. A very blanket, general question, but one that garnered some major silence in the small classroom. I remember that we had one Purdue basketball player in our class (he happened to be African-American). He was the brave one that spoke up - knowing that he would be challenged by the professor. He responded that he did not feel that younger generations perceived race to be important. His reasoning - television and musical influences. He cited MTV, BET, HBO, etc. He explained that so much of our generation's influence came from the media - not news sources, but entertainment sources. For one moment our professor was speechless. The media of the 90s was a melting pot of cultural influence. I could not have agreed with him more.

Posts up to this point have had a really broad focus. I've covered years, genres, and trends, but I want to highlight one album that I feel really defined my current musical genre loves. A melting pot of an album that can really be classified into many genres. It's also fitting that this album came out right before I began high school. Everything from the songs, to the lifestyle, to the drama behind scenes really set into motion my high school years and beyond. The album I am speaking of is Sublime by Sublime. Their third and final studio album with their full cast of characters.

Every time a song from this album comes on, especially in a group setting, you can look around the room and see its influence. People mouthing the words and bobbing their heads. It's an amazing mix of punk rock, reggae, ska, dancehall, hip-hop, and dub. Everything that the 90s exuded. I remember getting into Bob Marley and reggae after this album. I remember looking up what Santeria was on Microsoft Encarta (haha). All of the videos associated with the songs are iconic. I remember singing the songs with the team on the back of the football bus coming home from games. It seemed to dominate my freshman year and is an album I continue to go back to over and over. I wanted to be those guys. I wanted to move to California and live that carefree, Animal House lifestyle that they portrayed. It would be later on that I would find out that there was a lot going on with the band behind the scenes and why they never released another album with this crew. Bradley Nowell, the lead singer, would die shortly after from a heroin overdose. A common theme in the 90s. Nowell was even ejected from the recording of the album before it was finished because of his addiction. One of those times as a kid when you realize that some of the people you look up to aren't as perfect as you think.

I would later get into the other Sublime albums. This one is just so iconic to me for many reasons. It blended everything I loved into one compact disc. I'm instantly transported back in time everytime I listen. I'm a huge Jack Johnson fan and his cover of the band's song Badfish is one of the reasons it is my favorite song. I used to teach English and would have my sophomore students complete a 90s research project. The only reason I got one student to turn in his project was because he liked the band and the historical events behind the song April 29, 1992. I think he later dropped out, but I got that assignment out of him :). He made the connection.

That Purdue basketball player was right and is still right. We can become better people with broadened influences. We can exhibit one message to the world through many different lenses. Thank you to Sublime and crew for doing that for me.

Boy Meets World

One of my favorite shows of all time is Boy Meets World. To me, it sums up growing up in the 90s. I wanted to be a mix of Cory and Shawn. At this time in my life I was the quirky, rule-following Cory, but definitely wanted to be the rebellious Shawn (if that is how you would characterize him :)). I wanted the girlfriend like Topanga and the hangout like Chubbie's Famous. I remember even trying to dress like Cory. At that time, bowling shirts were making a big comeback. This was the first time that I did not ask for a pair of basketball shoes for my back to school shoes, but something more fitting - a pair of Airwalks. Boy Meets World was such a great show and one that I continue to watch over and over. It was definitely TGIF era, but always maintained a realness about adolescence in the 90s. Without Cory, Shawn would have never made it and without Shawn, Cory would have been too naive for any situation. That is what friends are for, right? We all knew a Shawn, a Cory, and a Topanga. You may have even had an air-headed sibling like Eric. The show also mirrored the last year of my middle school experience. Up to this point, music was just music, it was for enjoyment, but I started to notice one thing amongst my peers - life imitating art.

I often comment to my wife that I miss the hidden, melancholy messages of 90s music. I'm not talking Dashboard Confessional emotional, but the type of emotion that you really had to listen to the lyrics. If you go back and re-listen to some of the albums I'll list below during this time period - you'll understand. Smart lyrics written by smart people. This was the time in my life where I started to realize that people were actually taking some of these lyrics seriously. Friends talking in class about trying marijuana, exploring their peer relationships further (very pc way of stating that), and expressing that their lives truly weren't that great. Grunge was huge and it was emotion-driven and expressive. The eighth grade was a bit like Blade Runner. It was a melting pot of rap, alternative, and classic rock. Much of everything reflected that from clothes to get-togethers.

One singular moment sticks out to me during this time period that sums up that I was not in Kansas anymore. I have no idea why I remember it, but I clearly do. The Foo Fighters first album had been out for a short time. Someone in my school clearly read the lyrics in the CD jacket and made a big deal about it. The song was This Is a Call and the lyric states, "Ritalin is easy, Ritalin is good". This was 1995 and I had no idea what Ritalin was. At the time, it seemed huge, but I'm not sure why. There were far worse songs with far worse lyrics, but this was the first mention of something that you would not necessarily see or hear on an episode of Cops. Definitely, a Boy Meets World moment, but one that shows how we grow accustomed to changes in society once we hear or experience them over and over. I think I remember one classmate in the entire grade (maybe the entire school) on Ritalin in the mid-90s. To me, that is crazy to believe.

That's it for middle school. Like most people's experience - a transition period. A period of finding out who you are and where to go. Man the music was great and still holds major weight today. I instantly see these album covers and know just about every song. From the awkward slow dances on a Friday night to skating around Angola on my cheap rollerblades - it's all there. It's an instant transport to my own Cory Matthews world.

95-96 album releases that summed up the melting pot:

• Jewel - Pieces of You
• Collective Soul - Collective Soul
• 2Pac - Me Against the World 
• Montell Jordan - This Is How We Do It
• White Zombie - Astro-Creep 2000
• Friday Soundtrack
• Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill
• Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters
• 311 - 311
• Dangerous Minds Soundtrack
• Monica - Miss Thang
• The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America
• Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds Five
• Garbage - Garbage
• Oasis - (What's the Story?) Morning Glory 
• No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom
• The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
• 2Pac - All Eyez on Me
• Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire
• The Wallflowers - Bringing Down the Horse
• Sublime - Sublime
• Cake - Fashion Nugget

If I had to pick one that defined that time of my life it would have to be Oasis' - (What's The Story?) Morning Glory. Such an incredible album. I wish the Gallagher brothers could have a Shawn and Cory relationship. 

Your Dad's Music

When I was in 7th grade, I can remember three events shaping my awareness and fondness for classic rock.

1. The death of Jerry Garcia
2. Woodstock '94
3. Forrest Gump soundtrack

1. Jerry Garcia's death made me aware that the Grateful Dead actually existed. To that point, the only way I was able to associate the band with its music was the drug references on the song Casey Jones. We had a little record store in town named Sound Cellar. It was a store way ahead of its time. It sold records, incense, hacky-sacks, paraphernalia and most importantly - Grateful Dead shirts. It was a bit like a haunted house - you did not want to go in it because you weren't sure what was in there (or that you'd come out), but you had to see for yourself. It seemed like every kid had a Grateful Dead shirt. Every kid had one because they were cool. The artwork on those shirts still mesmerizes me. I wish I could have the same graphic designer do all of my school stuff. Anyway - I just remember Jerry Garcia's death set off a domino effect of tie-dye shirts and hemp necklaces. There was one rule - you had to know some Grateful Dead songs to actually wear the shirt to school. Being a poser was not tolerated or allowed socially. It wasn't so much about the Dead's music as it was looking the part. It was like my school had turned into Dazed and Confused (obligatory Alright, Alright).  

2. Woodstock '94 was huge (obviously not as huge as the original), but what made it huge was radio and MTV. It was everywhere. I have talked in previous posts about the rise in popularity of alternative rock and this was very evident at Woodstock '94. The larger point is that it brought into my existence the performers at the original Woodstock. I was curious. I was suddenly asking my mom to let me buy Led Zeppelin's IV and Jimi Hendrix CDs. I remember that we had a comprehensive social studies unit on the Vietnam War, but it was the music that got all the attention. I have always said that popular trends usually hit public schools a year or two after they have actually been trendy - well, this one happened to be 25 years in the making. 

3. The Forrest Gump soundtrack. A great movie with an even better soundtrack. It has sold over 6 million copies. It wasn't all heavy classic rock, but a nice mixture. It had Elvis, it had The Doors, it had The Beach Boys, it had Fleetwood Mac. Bands that I had not heard of, but began to explore. I'm sure there was a major resurgence in the soundtrack's featured artists’ album sales in 1994/1995 purely due to this soundtrack alone. A mini music-Renaissance. This soundtrack had me asking questions about the artists - namely from my dad. When I was in middle school, I rode to school with my dad every morning. It was not a long drive, but long enough for me to remember. We used to listen to Bob and Tom every morning on 92.3 out of Fort Wayne (when it would come in). Back then, Bob and Tom seemed to play more music - namely classic rock. Bob and Tom know their music. Whenever there was a segment that was inappropriate on Bob and Tom, my dad would jokingly ask me to cover my ears (I went through the motions). It then lead me to ask him questions about the songs and the artists - did you like them growing up and so on. 

I still listen to Bob and Tom every morning. 

An Ode to 1994

I was in 6th grade in 1994. Middle School. I remember this time as a time when everyone was trying to fit in with some group in some fashion. It was a very typical middle school experience. Everyone wanted to be popular and accepted by a peer group. If I visually transport myself back to that time I see JNCO jeans, wallet chains, pants sagging (been around for awhile), Starter jackets, the latest Nike shoes and clothes, Silvertab jeans, etc. - clothes communicated a lot about you in middle school and still do. It was really the first time that I remember commercialism. It is also the first time I remember alternative rock music. My previous posts have been predominantly about rap/hip-hop, but in 1994 I quickly realized that the music scene was branching out in many, many different paths and doing it in a commercially successful way. I remember going to basketball practice and wanting to have the latest Nike shoes and gear, but then going home, throwing on my rollerblades and wanting to be like the skaters I saw on the X Games. There was something for everyone, and the music was no different. I remember this as being a time that radio stations started to rotate the music of the 90s heavily. Fort Wayne had an alternative station at the time (102.3?) and it was always on in my room. I would often try to make mixtapes on a blank Maxell if I caught songs at the right time.

I have said this often, but 1994 needs its on SiriusXM station, Pandora station, whatever streaming service exists - you need a 1994 station. I've always had an inkling that it was a huge year, but when I did the research - it truly was. I will list some of those albums below, but the list could go on much longer. I simply picked the albums that I listened to and STILL DO. I want you to pay attention to a keyword in there - ALBUM. If you remember my CD investment rule - the disc had to have at least three songs that I liked in order for me to drop some hard-earned coin on it.

Personal favorite 1994 releases:

• Green Day - Dookie
• Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
• Soundgarden - Superunknown
• Offspring - Smash
• Nas - Illmatic
• Live - Throwing Copper
• Weezer - Weezer
• Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
• Warren G - Regulate...G Funk Era
• Hootie and the Blowfish - Cracked Rearview 
• Coolio - It Takes a Thief
• Jeff Buckley - Grace
• Rusted Root - When I Woke
• Blues Traveler - Four
• Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die
• Dave Matthews Band - Under the Table and Dreaming 
• Korn - Korn
• Tom Petty - Wildflowers
• TLC - Crazy/Sexy/Cool
• Bush - Sixteen Stone

The list could really go on and on. It's amazing how commercially successful and diverse the small selection I posted above was and continues to be. I can also remember the artwork of these albums - you will be able to as well. Just do a simple Google search and you'll definitely have some "aha" moments. These are classics. It proves that there really was something for everyone in 1994. This is when I remember the tree of music really growing its branches. It was also the same for the kids in my school. 

Extra treat: How many people remember that Microsoft sent out Weezer's Buddy Holly music video as part of their Windows 95 package. I remember watching that video all the time on the Gateway 2000s at my school 😁. 

Parental Advisory

In the span of about a year, two albums were released that I still know every lyric to every song. They were two albums that I should have had no idea about at the time. The albums that I speak of are seminal classics - Dr. Dre's The Chronic and Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggystyle. One of my friends, when I was in 5th grade, had a purchased a copy of Snoop's work at a garage sale. We would sit in his room and listen to the album over and over again. I know I heard words and innuendos I shouldn't have at the time, but I never remember repeating them or understanding exactly what they meant. This was also the time that I realized there was such a thing as parental advisory labels. The parental advisory label was introduced in 1990. With its inception, it was only reserved for very explicit albums, but by 1992 there were 225 albums with the parental advisory label. It took me a while to realize that the albums I was purchasing at Walmart and Kmart were very different content-wise than the ones purchased at record stores and in the mall. Do you remember that they sold edited versions?

I remember those two albums not necessarily because of their music, but because of the videos that accompanied many of the albums' songs. The low riders, the White Sox hats, the Carhartt shirts (buttoned at the top button), the Chuck Taylors, the Ray-Ban Wayfarers - ALL.OF.IT. Sure there were gangster rap albums that preceded these two, but I remember these as the first commercially successful ones. Even our local, yokel radio station played What's My Name (they quickly changed the station's format and content). We would often call the station and request songs like What's My Name just to have the DJ become annoyed :). It seemed so real and it was a glimpse into a world that I had no idea existed. When I think of L.A., I think of the glitz and glam of Hollywood. I had no idea that the world that Dre and Snoop portrayed actually existed. Sure these two albums were popular, but one particular album during this time was actually bigger than both with the majority of my friends and it all had to do with one song. Warren G's - Regulate. I remember hearing this song for the first time via MTV and on the Above The Rim soundtrack. We simply could not get enough of that song (the album actually had several hits). I remember even certain teachers would let us listen to the edited version as a reward in class. It's a song that has definitely stood the test of time.


The West Coast scene was very popular in the early 90s and would only get bigger. These three albums also opened the doors for me to George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. I'm 35 and still listen to these albums on occasion. No matter the content of the albums, they're still classics and will always be. They're a glimpse into a different time and era. For me, it was the time I realized that there was such a thing as Parental Advisory Explicit Content.

Fresh Prince and a Satellite Dish

I grew up middle class during a time when being middle class offered you a pretty comfortable lifestyle. My family was by no means rich, but we never wanted for much. This is probably a similar story to many people growing up in the 80s and 90s. One luxury that my family always had was...satellite tv. It was a non-negotiable with my dad. I knew about HBO way before any elementary school kid should. My dad was a satellite savant. We are not talking about the small dish that we are accustomed to nowadays, but a beast that looked like you were trying to contact life on another planet. I remember having some kind of paper guide for the box that came with the dish, but you essentially had to know the right "galaxy" code to pick up any kind of programming. ESPN may be on channel 24 on Galaxy G4. You'd punch in this information and then the satellite dish would actually rotate to the correct position. The only way to fix the dish was to get parts from Radio Shack - back when Radio Shack was predominately for ham radio nerds :). I remember moving houses when I was 7 and my dad actually brought the satellite dish and the equipment with us to the new house. I think he actually installed it himself. I caught on to the navigation of this system this pretty quickly. My parents did not have a ton of rules on TV, but there were programs that my mom was not a fan of and would make me turn off immediately. Some of the programs I remember were - Dinosaurs (not the momma!) and The Simpsons. One program that my parents were not quite hip to was MTV - which was surprising given my dad's position as a school administrator. 

MTV was obviously huge in the 80s and 90s. This is no secret. The majority of the reason that the network was so popular during this time was that they actually showed music videos. As a young, impressionable white kid growing up in a small town - it was a window into the world I had not previously been exposed to. You could gain access to all types of genres, clothing styles, and regional cultures. It was absolutely fascinating. I remember the early 90s as being the time that I fell in love with two things (primarily because they were becoming increasingly popular) - the NBA and rap music. One TV show that bridged these two for me was The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Will Smith was talented. I had read somewhere that he had achieved a perfect score on his SAT. Once I had saved up enough money to buy my first CD, it was up to my parent's consent to actually let me make that purchase. I'm pretty sure the CD cost $16 back then. I remember it like it was yesterday - my parents had taken me to the local KMart and had allowed me to use some birthday money to purchase this bad boy - in all of its over the top, cardboard induced, packaging glory....

Hear's to you Will Smith - I've been supporting you since 1991. Maybe you can give me some test prep tips if I ever see you. I also want to thank you for being wholesome enough for my parents to allow me to purchase you and Jeff's work :). 

I leave you with a couple of my questionable, early purchases - probably around 3rd to 5th grade. Due to the early cost of CDs, my rule was I had to like more than 3 songs if I was going to make the investment. I'm glad to know that these guys went on to bigger successes :). Shoutout to Teddy Riley. 

    

Middle School Dances and Milking Parlors

I mentioned in my first post that I am an elementary school principal. My dad has been a school administrator for almost 30 years. I had some on the job training from an early age. I grew up in a family of educators and dairy farmers. My earliest recollections of any kind can be traced back to two places - a school or a farm. When I wasn't tagging along with my dad for various events, I was hanging out at the farm with my grandparents and uncles. I remember that my dad would actually take me to middle school dances in the 80s when he would have supervision duty. I also remember that I was completely unsupervised. I wonder how many parents would take their kids to a middle school dance today and just let their 5 or 6 year old just wander around 😃? These dances were held in the 80s, long before R. Kelly had released Bump-N-Grind, so looking back on it - what was going on with students probably was fairly innocent. I remember this being the time of hair bands and somewhat hard rock. Rap/Hip-Hop was still emerging and did not have heavy rotation in a rural setting (mostly just Tone Loc and Young MC). Bon Jovi, AC/DC, Michael Jackson and George Michael seemed to be in heavy rotation. So was stonewash and hairspray. I remember looking forward to these dances immensely as a child. They are something that I will never forget. If you went to Prairie Heights Middle School in the 80s, you may remember me busting a move to "You Shook Me All Night Long".

As for the milk parlor portion of this post - if you've ever been to a farm of any kind, a radio is always playing. It must be an unwritten rule somewhere in the annals of farming. The music usually comes from an old radio secured to a nail via a loop of binder twine. You never really change the station - ever. I remember the radio always being on WRKR - 107.7 out of Kalamazoo, MI. They've always been a classic rock station that you could barely reach in Northeast Indiana unless you had the antenna bent just right. Our old radio was in the milking parlor hung up next to boxes of Mt. Dew (another family love). I'm pretty sure our radio had cow manure on it. This is one of the first times that I can recall falling in love with Bob Seger. I'm not sure if its true, but my uncle used to play keyboard in a band in the 70s (I apologize for vagueness) and they would open for Seger before he was big via regional shows. That certainly added to my love of Seger. My family always jokes that Bob Seger is our family artist/band. I think part of it is that my aunts and uncles all grew up when he was huge (still is huge) and he's from Michigan. In a day and age when we upgrade everything all the time - you reflect upon all of the things you remember as a child that stood the test of time. I'm pretty sure that radio is somewhere still playing WRKR.

Who is your family's Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band?

I'm grateful for those memories growing up in the town of Orland, IN. I'll share in later posts about how growing up in a farming family in small-town Indiana left me at a crossroads in certain situations.

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been is the title of a compilation album by the Grateful Dead. You can simply find that out from an easy Google search. Duh!

More importantly, it also is a statement that many of us can agree upon when reflecting on the journey that we call life. I use it ALL.THE.TIME. It's only appropriate that I title my first post in this journey that I will call a "blog". It truly has been a long strange trip. I also remember the title of the Grateful Dead's album because Bill Bradley mentioned it during his unsuccessful 2000 Presidential campaign. I remember thinking to myself that a 50 something politician likes the Grateful Dead?!?! Side note - didn't every kid in the 90s have a Grateful Dead shirt? Looking back on that memory, I appreciate Mr. Bradley staying true to himself and what he personally enjoyed. It's also something that I was fond of in President Obama. These gentlemen shared the music that they love with the world as a reflection of themselves. Being an elementary principal, I share my love of music as often as I can. It's something I've even started with my staff every morning in our daily email.

I've debated on how to start this blog for quite some time and the first post is always the hardest. We've all had the same thoughts when writing - Is the title catchy enough? Do I have the right graphics? Will people actually read this? My idea in starting this collection of thoughts is simple - I am going to be highlighting the songs, albums, and genres that have shaped my life and memories. Who knows where it will all lead. I personally owe a lot this to my ability to remember really random "things". My hope is that it will make you laugh, maybe cry, or reconnect to a time in your life. I must include a disclaimer in this first post in that I was born in the early 80s. This will definitely play a large role in subsequent posts. I am what some may classify as a xennial. My xennial journey will take you from my analog childhood to living in a digital adulthood 

Ride along with me on this strange trip!