Debi's records...

Drive: The Cars
1984

Everything else by the Cars is, in my opinion, meh. They are boring, soulless soft pop, and at this time they were trying to ride to Coolsville by flogging a “Band geek makes good, marries supermodel” horse. (They never even made it out of County Blah.)
I’m pretty sure that the radio stations in Baltimore took until early 1985 to get “Drive” into heavy rotation. (At that time, it was illegal for Maryland radio stations to possess more than 5 CDs at a time, and they could only play one or two songs from each CD. DJs valiantly programmed the entire 3PM to 10PM slot with 7 songs played repeatedly, then 6 songs, then 5 songs, until one day it was nothing but the Alan Parsons Project’s “Eye in the Sky” interspersed with commercials for the Today™ Sponge.)

Obviously this is another of the Cars’ lackluster hits, but for me, it was a case of being unavoidable at the right time. My first year of high school included my first suicide attempt, and a 24-year old first-year English teacher finding out about and talking me out of said suicide attempt. By this time, I had been forced to go to therapy, and had hatched a few Pinky-and-the-Brain-esque schemes to escape continued high school. I was spending a lot of time with my older sister, who was in the process of divorcing her first husband, whom she loved dearly but could not create a functional relationship with.

I don’t remember us talking much. We were Pooh and Piglet to each other, side-by-side, each going through our own life experiences alone, but sure of the other one even when we weren’t sure of anything else. (Well, she was there for me, but I don’t know what assurance I could have been to her.)

Ric Ocasek blandly urged us out of comfortable spots that were slowly killing us—me, high school; her, a first marriage—and even if we couldn’t find another song on the radio, we found our ways to go.*

* Second Husband: Bob. Two thumbs up.

Friend or Foe: Adam Ant
1982

One of my earliest memories of music is hearing “Something” from Abbey Road on the radio and liking it. I think I was about six years old. That auspicious start drained away when a friend who had both a color TV and cable (an incredible luxury) invited me over to watch MTV. Music? On Television?!

After laying eyes on Mr. Goddard, androgynous wafer-thin sex fiend whack-jobs suddenly became my idea of manly perfection. I begged my parents for a while, and finally they took me to BEST to buy Friend or Foe on vinyl.

Repo Man Soundtrack
1984

At 14, my parents sent me, a fairly normal girl (if you excuse the Adam Ant) to a summer camp in Pennsylvania for gifted and talented students. I came home from camp with a huge crush on a punk named Matt and a fever for blue berets, green fatigues, ripped Goodwill hippie skirts, shapeless shaker sweaters, fishnet stockings, and chucks—Chuck Taylor high top sneakers, worn with everything but not as a set if possible—one red and one blue checked would have been best, but I only had one lavender pair. I also had a suitcase full of Matt’s punk music copied to cassettes—Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, The Exploited, Suicidal Tendencies, etc. I kept the style for a year or two, but quickly ditched the music, except for the soundtrack to Repo Man.

Suzanne Vega: Suzanne Vega
1985

This was the CD that my (at the time) new boyfriend’s Sean’s ex-girlfriend Julee played all the time. She especially liked “Marlene on the Wall.” I had already managed to hang onto a guy that she couldn’t hang on to, so it was no big thing for me to make this album mine also. Big changes were going on in my life—I was a college student, a man-stealer, and amazingly self-centered. I needed a soundtrack.

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got: Sinead O’Connor
1990

The music of divorce. Good times.

Nevermind: Nirvana
199-??

Yeah, I know—me and everybody else…

Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks
1996

I really dig this.

Hey, peeps. Send mail to mail@tiny-dog.com.