Wait

I have always been a fan of music. I love all kinds. I appreciate artists and their uniqueness. I guess I have always been that way. I can listen to Waylon Jennings "Ramblin' Man" one minute, "Kashmir" by Led Zepplin another, and then find myself dialed into XM Radio listening to The Highway all day long.

I was a music fanatic growing up. Listening to Casey Kasem was an every Sunday ritual. I clung to every word Casey said, and I even enjoyed the "Long Distance Dedications". I studied every person who was in the "Top 40" at the time. I knew every one hit wonder from the 80's. I was obsessed. I had a tack board where I would clip out the top 40 singles that were published in the Austin American Statesman and I would tack them neatly in order. I had every poster from Whitesnake to Guns N' Roses to a picture of a new Mustang GT 5.0.

I loved tapes. Oh, man were they great! I had hundreds. I would get my allowance every week and go to Waterloo Records and would gladly spend $6.99 on a tape. This may sound silly, but I loved opening the tapes and I was so excited when the tapes were clear with a black strip across them with white lettering. The smell of the tapes got me excited.

Then came CD's. Oh- the lovely CD. I remember buying my first CD player like it was yesterday. The sales person said, "hey man, you can't ruin a CD- it is much more durable than a tape. Look at me.." He then proceeded to stomp on the CD. My Dad turned to me and said, I probably wouldn't do that and winked at me. It was so cool. $300 seemed like a ton of money, but I WANTED it!

Do you remember your first CD? I sure do. I actually bought 3 and looking back at it it made no sense. I bought White Lion "Pride", "Cocktail" the Soundtrack, and Led Zeppelin IV. C'mon Will!! Kokomo??!! I could have done better than that.

Well, I still have those CD's. I have hundreds of them also. I rarely listen to them anymore. I was 15 when "Wait" by White Lion came out. I listened to it again tonight and now I am now 40.

We were having a dance party at the Thomson household, a 2 year old, a 5 year old and an awesome wife were jamming out! My kids were saying, "Dad this is horrible" and I had my air guitar out and found myself sticking out my tounge and going crazy.

My kids will never know much about CD's, or TV where you can't pause live TV. How did we survive without cell phones? Hell, truthfully I don't know. I guess every generation will have some story to tell. I didn't grow up in the record era, but I know that the nostalgia of a record is something that can't be repicated by some. You can't even find an 8-Track anymore. How awful were those?

Life is awesome. We all have different experiences. Now a days we are blogging, tweeting, checking our facebook and posting status updates all of the time. I can't tell you what tomorrows "MUST HAVE" is. An Iphone is something we can't live without now.

I am just thankful for the experiences and enjoying all that life has to offer. I hope when I am 70, I can pull out White Lion and jam to "Wait" again. White Lion, you will have to "wait" until next time, but I will pull you back out. My kids will be my age now and talking about Taylor Swift and Blake Shelton. Whie Lion, I won't forget. Thanks for the memories. Can you relate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrPJgnOXjy8

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Comment by Amber on April 3, 2013 at 11:01am: My older brother STILL has tons of notebooks where he recorded every Top 40 list, and then would make his own yearly predictions based on them!

We ordered from BMG Music Service, which I think stopped doing the mail order stuff in 2009.

My first car - a lovely 1975 Comet (bright yellow, hole in exhaust) had an 8-track player. I managed to scrounge up Queen's Jazz album and 1 other that I can't remember. I improvised and put a HUGE boombox w/cassette player in the back seat. People fought over who got to be the D.J., my car was the party car! I still have about 100 cassettes, 100's of CD's, but we have not gone to MP 3 yet in any real way. I do play some "cloud" music on my Kindle Fire. But I really don't listen much to music on a regular basis any more, although our car trips to FL and GA are full of singalongs to a wide variety of music - mostly classic rock/pop.

Thanks for the memories, Will!

Comment by Will Thomson on April 3, 2013 at 11:14am: Oh yea! BMG Music Service. I forgot all about that! I am all about the XM Radio now and of course MP3's. It was a trip down memory lane pulling out old CD's. I wish I had all of my tapes. I still have all of my 45's. I remember playing them on the record player and taking a cassete recorder and putting it right next to the record player. I shut the door so no other noise would record on the tape. Good times! Thanks for the comments, Amber. Sometimes I feel like talking about recruiting, others I don't.

I never was much of a Queen fan, but like I said in the begining. I admire artists and what they bring. Very different from most.

Comment by KKenner on April 3, 2013 at 11:38am: Wow! Will, thank you for the walk down memory lane! I am just a tad older, so I started with records, and I too remember trying to record them on to blank casettes and the song's from the radio. Now our Iphones have this cool app where when you hear a song, it will find it so you can purchase it right away to your phone or other cloud storage. One crazy day, I took all my CD's out, and uploaded to my PC, then downloaded to my Ipod...I think I just got lost. There is one radio station here in LA, that still plays vinyl records, and I look forward to the few hours every week.There are just some songs that will never sound as good as their vinyl recording. My daughter does know what a record looks and sounds like, but she was brought up with an Ipod. She still plays CD's so she can pick the songs. For me.... As long as the music plays, however it reaches my ears, I will be listening.

Comment by Will Thomson on April 3, 2013 at 11:53am: Thank you!

I thought I would get a few smiles from this post. Viynl is different than any other sound. The Waterloo Records here in Austin still to this day sells them because of that. Really cool. http://waterloorecords.com/Home Since Austin is the Live Music Capital of the World, it is amazing how many well known Artists will come into that store when they are on tour here.

I did the same thing and put all my CD's on my Ipod. It is really cool to have your whole music library on your phone. I agree, "As long as the music plays, however it reaches my ears, I will be listening". Happy Wednesday!

Comment by Tim Spagnola on April 4, 2013 at 7:25am: Here I thought I was the only one that had hundreds of tapes. I recall on the weekends meeting my friends and walking laps around the mall. We would spend hours in the music stores and on average I would by 2 to 3 tapes a week. You're brave Will in playing White Lion to your kids. I can only imagine what my 3 and 5 year old would say about some of the music I loved back in the day.

Comment by Will Thomson on April 4, 2013 at 9:44am: Tim- I thought you would be someone who could relate. I was probably right there with you. 2-3 was about right. Do you remember the yellow sony walkman? Oh I thought that was the coolest thing in the world! Yea- I was the kid who wore the "Los Angeles" Rams hat, flat. Jim Everett- remember him- the QB for the Rams? You know, not "cool" and curved. I thought I was pretty cool in my tanktop, Los Angeles Rams hat and Walkman playing Def Leppard "Pour Some Sugar on Me". Every generation has something to relate to, but that was me.

I was watching "This is 40" this past weekend and I was "that Dad" when I played "Wait". Gotta love it though. Pretty brave for sure. Kids hated it.

Comment by Jennifer Tabachnick on April 4, 2013 at 1:02pm: I owned the yellow walkman you're talking about - stole it from my brother and retired it maybe 5 years ago (it still worked!!). I remember taping songs off the TV with my tape recorder when MTV's Headbanger's Ball was on.

**sigh** Thanks for the memories!!

Comment by Will Thomson on April 4, 2013 at 2:59pm: Thanks for the comments Jennifer. I think my TV was always on MTV in the 80's (when I had an opportunity). My parents were against cable growing up. Can you imagine living life without Cable now a days? FOX, CBS, NBC, and CBS just don't cut it any more! My favorite shows are on Showtime, Discovery, & AMC now.

Comment by Amber on April 4, 2013 at 3:20pm: I am a year or two (or more) older then you, Will. When we had a friend telling us about this MTV channel he watched at a friend's house in another state, we thought he was just BS'ing us. Then our cable company got it! Wow, we spent hours and hours watching a loop of the initial few videos they had:Video Killed the Radio Star, Abracadabra are what I can remember right now. Such innovation was astounding, and on its heels came the Tandy home computer my mom got for us - people came over to see it and we impressed them with the Dancing Man we "made" using BASIC. ( I need to go add programming skills to my resume and LI profile!)

Comment by Will Thomson on April 4, 2013 at 3:34pm: Ha! BASIC. Yea, I had a Pac-Man watch. Now that was cool!! I also had a minature "Frogger" game. It looked like a hand held arcade game. Remember those? Yea- MTV was something else. Money For Nothing, Sledgehammer, Like A Virgin, & of course Devo :)

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