Playing House

Do you ever realize how out of touch you are when you see what's "trending" on the internet?

I was glad to see last week that the trending "Kim" wasn't a Kardashian, but a N. Korean. I'm still in the dark on the whole Kardashian thing and plan to remain that way.

I grew up in an age when the only music you heard was whatever your older brothers played on the turntable. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Doors. And whatever was played on the radio. FM102. I was fine with that. I was more than fine with that.

If you wanted to own music you bought the album. The vinyl album. We have a few kilos of vinyl currently warping in our attic in Jefferson. I could never bring myself to throw out Rumours, Abbey Road, or Hotel California.

Then we graduated to the 8-track tape. Our cars were equipped or retro-fitted with the 8-track player. I hope we don't have any of these in our attic. I had no problem throwing these things out.

Finally the cassette tape came along and took up way less space. No doubt we still have some of these laying around for old times sake.

But it wasn't until way after our high school graduation and after we were married that the CD was introduced - 1982.

I still like to listen to the music for which I own the album or that I listened to on FM102. I rarely know the title or the artist (Jim knows them all), but I usually know every single word.

So, in our Flemish class, in an effort to get to know the other students better, we went through a series of questions like . . . have you ever been to France? do you play a sport? what kind of music do you like?

My "partner" on that day was a 40 year old guy from Algeria . . .

I digress for a moment.

FYI - Algeria is a huge country, 3.5 times the size of Texas, in North Africa (the continent).

So anyway, my Algerian "partner" said his favorite music was "house". I asked him how that was spelled.

Guess that was a dead giveaway that I was over 40 and had no idea what he was talking about.

I mentioned this to Jim and he said he remembered someone he worked with in Emerson who liked this music. That was in the 90's!

Okay, I decided it was time I "youtubed" this phenomenon that I had obviously missed out on my whole life and that FM102 had kept from me.

So I go to YouTube and immediately find a video that has 53.5 million views. Really? I know that's less than 8% of the world's population, but only ~30% of the world uses the internet!

After listening for about 10 seconds, I know why "clubbing", just like eel has never appealed to me despite never having tried it.  I was pretty sure either my head would explode or I'd gouge my eyes out.  

According to Bill board magazine, Chubby Checker's The Twist is the #1 song of all time and Santana's Smooth is the #2 song of all time.  

Now that's more like it.