Sampling

As a rule, I'm not a big fan of sampling. Sampling is the taking of a part or parts of someone else's song and making into a new song. Run DMC made a hit by using Aerosmith's "Walk This Way", Chris Classic used "Hair of the Dog" (I kinda like that one), anyway you get the idea. While we're on the topic of music, I'm generally not into remaking classic rock songs either.

I'm not sure where Kid Rock falls in my list of non-talents. I don't care for a lot of his work. "Amen" sucks and only the most confused and clouded mind could find some sort of rational meaning in the song. I suppose "Cowboy" is ok. This summer I've found myself listening to a Kid Rock song whenever it comes on the radio and even singing along. "All Summer Long" is a total rip off of Skynard's "Sweet Home Alabama" guitar lick. Normally this kind of sampling is a deal killer for me, but not this time.

"It was 1989 my thoughts were short my hair was long
Caught somewhere between a boy and man,
She was 17 and she was far from in-between
It was summer-time in Northern Michigan"

This song just takes me back. 1989 was a great year for yours truly. I spent spring break kicking around France, making out on the tour bus and posing in pics with girls under the Eiffel Tower. The picture thing might not seem so exciting. A bunch of these girls had bet some other girls back in the states they could get a picture of a French guy "frenching" them in Paris. I was young, I had little pride, and somewhere someone thinks I'm a French guy sucking face with a bus load of American co-eds. I can live with that.

I can't seem to find my photo album, (Mrs Ipsa might have something to do with that) or I'd post some pics of the girls. Back in 89 you had to have a visa to enter France, this is mine.

My mothers family is from northern MI and when the summer rolled around I found myself making my usual trips up north. 1989 was a good year for me and the fairer sex. I was young, had all my hair and was benching around 275.

"Splashing through the sand-bar, talking by the camp fire,
It's the simple things in life like when and where
We didn't have no internet but man I never will forget
The way the moon light shined upon her hair"

"Now nothing seems as strange as when the leaves begin to change"

That fall found me taking out a different girl almost every night, at least on the weekends. Sometimes I'd work in two girls on the same night (at different times, I wasn't that big of a stud). I'd drop off one girl and head up to State and spend the rest of the evening with someone else. That worked too, until the sophomore I was dating there came down to surprise me after work and found me at the park with this red head. That worked out somewhat well as she "discovered" how much she REALLY loved me after she saw me with another girl.

I was doing my normal drop one off, go meet the next one routine one night, when the blond I was with let it be known that there was a great place to park (so we could "talk", mostly about baseball) on the way back to her house and that she wanted me to take her home. I had my second date (a new girl I had just met a week or so before) for the night lined up so I gave new girl a call to let her know I had to work late. When I did there was something about the disappointment in her voice over not seeing me that night and the way she let me off with such grace, that I went back and dumped the blond on the spot. Then I called her back and told her someone else would cover my shift and did she want to get together?

In a weeks time I quite seeing anyone else. I never fell in love so hard. The next spring I took her for a month to kick around Europe together. When she dumped me for a guy she met at U of M, I nearly drank myself out of college. In fact I flunked most of my exams that I showed up for that semester.
Here's the video:



With the exception of catching walleye off the doc, (fishing for eyes was better off the dam) and the party barge full of girls bouncing around, that's pretty much the way it was. That and the "smoking funny things", I was never into that.

The girl? We kept in touch for several years and remained friends, after she had graduated grad school, we even thought about getting back together. It didn't happen. I felt like she thought she would be settling and I couldn't bear the thought of being better than nothing. She finally got married last fall. My folks went to the wedding. I didn't. They said he seems like a good guy. I'm happy for her.

"Or how we thought those days would never end
Sometimes I hear that song and I start to sing along
And think, Man I'd love to see that girl again"

That's not necessary, sometimes its enough to catch a song on the radio and reminisce.