Mornings between 7.30 (roughly the time I get out of bed most mornings. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later…like this morning) and about 9.45 are mine. In terms of setting myself up for a study day … well … any day, really.
I’ll take a glance around social media, see what’s what. Check out if Jim has posted (yes! That happening seems forever ingrained now…as much as I try not to give it that much emphasis anymore, or be so…chained to it….enslaved by it). Drink my coffee(s), eat my banana. Then maybe, time allowing, do some colouring in (yes! My current addiction is a “colour by numbers” app) OR …. write a blog post.
This morning when I checked out Facebook I saw that Billy Sloan had put out his latest posts about the week’s show coming up. The topic for this week? About specific periods or time referenced in songs. I added my choices.
The first has been an earworm for the past day or two. It is one of my all-time favourite Bowie tracks and I have probably posted it here once or twice before. It’s just so beautifully melodically melancholy. I love the drum breaks on this too. And David’s vocal performance on it is sublime. Those lines that work as the song’s chorus “we never talk anymore / forever I will adore only you” – beautiful. Just beautiful.
Jim doesn’t know what he’s missing with Bowie’s Heathen album, he honestly doesn’t…
My other choice and it came to be incredibly quickly, given I haven’t listened to it in I don’t know how long …. U2’s 11 O’Clock Tick Tock – the Red Rocks version. Sad teenage fangirl confession time! I genuinely have no idea how many times I watched that Under A Blood Red Sky Red Rocks gig. I’ve still never been to a U2 gig – I probably never will go to one now – unless they decide on a special run of nostalgic intimate gigs….the stadium spectacle is not something that attracts me.
But Red Rocks? Well, I’ve seen it so many times, I could convince myself I was there. I borrowed the video as often as I could from the local video store – I think I had it out on near permanent loan for about 12 months, until I could afford to actually buy my own copy. Commercially produced VHS tapes like that were bloody expensive when they were sold in the early 80s! Mega bucks for teenage kids.
11 O’Clock Tick Tock was a bane for many years – esp. during my teens. Many times I would skip that song and that bit of video because I was INCANDESCENTLY JEALOUS of that girl that gets pulled up on stage to dance with Bono. Never mind that he was already married! (Perhaps I didn’t know it at the time, but I’m sure I must have done…) And never mind the sky being blood red…my face would be watching that footage. As I say, sometimes it would be more than I could bear and I would fast forward through it.
But even just hearing the song on the album, I could visualise it all in my mind. I wanted to be her more than I can even express! She was beautiful…slim…she could dance, not be self-conscious…and Bono hugs her and swings her around in his arms – I’d have died! And he’d have had a hernia trying to lift me! Lol (I was probably not anywhere near as big as I thought I was then…I don’t know. It’s not as if I was beating guys off with a stick or anything. I have enough digits on my body to count the number of times a guy came up to ask me out. I was usually the instigator of these things as I feared my Miss Havisham future too much to wait for any guy to do it.)
Now I don’t view it with any of that envy. Not as me now…but I can still feel it all bubbling away inside the teenage me. That longing. For ANY guy to want to … feel that way with me, want to dance with me, hold me… just for those few fleeting minutes. Even if I was never ever an afterthought to him. Meh! What does it matter, eh?
Off I go to study. The mention of Miss Havisham? I am about to finish off my week of study on Dickens and A Christmas Carol.