Third Grade Soundtrack. Urgent.
Posted on September 28, 2007
Filed Under kids, milestones, parenting, snark, suburban joys | 16 Comments
O’s teacher gave us parents a little homework the other night at Open House. He asked that we jot down some of our own memories about being 8 years old, a third grader. His suggestions to get us started were: favorite song, best friend, teacher, favorite sport. This proved harder for me than I would have liked. I have a rather shoddy long term memory, probably because I’m using so much brain capacity remembering that we need toilet paper and that G’s soccer practice is on Tuesdays at 5:15 while O’s is on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. There’s not much left upstairs to devote to ancient history, but, when I began to brainstorm the favorite song assignment, I got excited. All kinds of beats began coursing through the old noggin. Owner of the Lonely Heart by Yes; Purple Rain and Thriller and all songs Synchronicity and Phil Collins’ No jacket Required. This soundtrack to my younger years conjuring afternoons of wiffle ball and kick the can and choreographing dance moves in the front yard.
But, upon arriving home and doing a little Google research, I discovered that all that memorable music I had recalled in class was part of my childhood, but post third grade.
Purple Rain was released in 1984 and I wasn’t old enough to see the movie until, like, last year. MJ’s Thriller was 1982; Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf from Rio, also 1982; Synchronicity wasn’t released until 1983 and No Jacket Required wasn’t on the scene until 1985. Having been unable to conjure 1981 myself, I bopped on over to the American Top 40 website and re familiarized myself with my third grade year and, it turns out I was right on with the dancing-in-the-front-yard memory. Me and my two best friends were certainly doing forward rolls and cart wheels and keeping great time to the Go Go’s who had a hit single with We Got the Beat, followed by Our Lips Are Sealed.
But there’s one Top Forty result from 1981 that has great resonance with me – Foreigner’s Urgent. This was more my brothers’ favorite than my own but I can distinctly remember the tune and have recall for most of the words since there are only a few. I think it went something along the lines of Urgent, so urgent. Emergency/ Urgent, Urgent, urgent, urgenttttt. Emergency. You remember, right? This was the brilliant follow up to their previous Top-Forty hit, Cold as Ice which was also lyrically challenged, as I recall.
Anyway, sifting through the old reviews of Foreigner 4, I stumbled across Timothy White’s Rolling Stone write up calling Urgent a “metallic, predatory confessional about sexual obsession, steeped in steamy nocturnal craving.” Somehow, at eight year’s old I missed all that implication and innuendo. I’m not sure what I thought they were feeling so pressed but I probably thought it had something to do with my brother driving Mom crazy by playing the song over and over from his “boom box”, volume dial cranked to 10. It was guaranteed that her response to such Urgency was, in itself, quite immediate.
I’m betting that when O thinks back on the music of his third grade year he will remember the lyric “I’m telling you to loosen up my buttons, babe/ But you keep fronting me/Saying what you’re gonna do to me/But I ain’t seen nothing yet…” as some sort of reference to removing winter clothing or that dress shirt he had to wear to his grandmother’s wedding last year.
I’ll share a few other gems that were playing from my clock radio, covered in those little fuzzy, round creatures with the googly eyes and big sticky feet, on Saturdays in 1981. Casey Kasem was ticking off the Top Forty with Blondie’s Tide is High, Kool and the Gang’s Celebration, REO Speedwagon’s Keep on Loving You, Kim Carnes and Bette Davis Eyes(whatever happened to Kim Carnes?), J. Geils Band with Centerfold, I Love Rock n’ Roll by Joan Jett, Eye of the Tiger by God Knows Who and Physical by Olivia Newton John. Good times, people. Good times.
What was playing on your clock radio in third grade?
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