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What Music Meant- When It Mean Everything

4/12/2017

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The radio serenaded us as we drove along Rt 41 in the darkness of a crisp autumn night. The light from the dashboard glowed golden yellow, as the songs washed over me.  I go back to this soft rock memory over and over. I.G.Y by Donald Fagen played along side Gypsy by Fleetwood Mac and Joe Jackson’s, Stepping Out- these songs were perfect soundtrack for our weekly trek to Stained Glass lesson’s, heat on low as we made our way to class.

I could finally wear my monogrammed periwinkle blue sweater that had been tucked inside my dresser drawer where it had sat since August when it was still too warm to wear- and summer was still so fresh in my heart.  Now I looked forward to pumpkins and sleepovers on the weekends…impending Halloween festivities set excited butterflies fluttering in my stomach. New school folders were getting broken in, I’d been decorating them with all my favorite latest bands. Promises of better grades and a new diet, cooler clothes and romance…anything seemed possible. 

What did my step mom and I talk about all the way to Stained Glass class? I was more of a listener, like a therapist. It was hard for me to pay attention as we took our seats and Sherri, my brother’s best friends mom, explained our assignment, she was a good teacher.  I wanted to do the really complicated stuff like she did on her “Wizard with Swirling Tree’s” door, but I could barely cut squares and triangles without lots of slow patience, on my part. My step mom wanted to be creative but her heart wasn’t in it- she preferred to just buy the art.

Such a complicated relationship I had with my step mother…I lived with her, my step…I never called her step mom back then. She explained if she was gonna do the work we should address her as mom, since that would be her role. That seemed fair to a five year old me.  She did the heavy lifting, so to speak…the doctors visits, the grocery shopping, picking up medicine at Ribordy Drugs when we were sick, talks with teachers…tutoring, family vacations, clothes for each season, making dinner and…stained glass lessons this week, until the session ended. 

We drove, on the way, passing A-framed homes some looked like ski chalets, they looked very cozy and posh at the same time, they were very Vail and in fashion.  Sometimes we shopped after our class at some near by interior design stores, the smell of oriental rugs, surrounded by Teak furniture displayed grandly next to bright yellow fireplaces that were made of metal and attached to a wall they looked like a cone,we had one of those.  Art in bamboo frames, wicker fan chairs that seemed tropical and exotic but were uncomfortable to sit in, we had them at home too. Things seemed glamorous, exciting, vast possibilities for the future. Travel, adventure and maybe castles in France or Yacht’s in some East Coast destination. I was reading the Preppy Handbook, Izod, Polo, Oxford…important named brands. Country clubs, sail boats, snow skiing and tennis. 

My folks would go out and my step mom wore a metallic, sequined beret and Halston type clothes, they brought home lobster leftovers that tasted good even cold. 

My brother and I ate cereal on Saturday morning watching Scooby- Doo and eating Cookie Crisp cereal. I remember after cartoons one morning, I was listening to my parents albums on the record player, it was on a jiggly metal rolling cart, where the player was housed  and you could put three or four albums on at a time and they would drop after each side would play, we had another record player that would flip the albums too. I don't know how old I was but pretty little, and I put on Three Dog Night, One Is The Loneliest Number, and I played it over and over…haunted, intrigued…I felt like the singer knew me. I was so touched and I cried, how could he know how lonely and cast out I felt at school with my “special classes”, surrounded by all boys, meeting with a tutor because I couldn’t read or tell time and had dyslexia. But in stained glass class, I was just another student. My project seemed to delight Sherrie, she liked my creativity.

They put me in a different school and all the kids knew each other but I didn’t know a soul. I learned to read and I loved it passionately and my dad let me buy tons of books from Scholastic Book Club. Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary and so many other authors became my favorite.

My teachers Miss Honeycutt and Miss Chizmar were just wonderful and I just loved them. They heard me sing and entered me in a talent show and I sang tomorrow accapella- and I could tell they thought I was really good and not just faking it. Miss Chizmar got transferred after my second grade year and Miss Honeycutt, my main teacher,  got married and quit teaching. I went back to my old school…I was “integrated” now. 

Again I knew no one at the school, two years away makes you a stranger. But I got reacquainted and kids were kind of mean. I thought about these things silently while my step mom talked on our way to Stained Glass. 

We had a lake home in White Pigeon, Michigan, when I went there I was popular with the kids my age and we had fun snowmobiling and water skiing. Bay City Roller’s, “ S.A.T.U.R-D.A.Y, hey!” 

Fast forward, our last stained class lesson, “do you want to re-up for next session,” my step mom asked on the way to Valparaiso where Sherri had her “studio.”
“No I think I want to take piano or voice lessons”, I replied, knowing that was where my future fame would be directed. 
My step moms Farrah Faucett, feathered blond hair nodded in agreement, her face forward, driving into the midwestern darkness, past fields of faded yellow, prickly grass and trees so huge, and dense they were like a wall to another world of distant factories, hidden by highways that made things I didn’t understand, in dreary looking plants. Until we hit city lights, like an escape from the dark vortex…pulling into the parking lot for class.

The only thing I missed about our stained glass classes was that drive, I just love the glow of the dashboard the soothing music and the idea I was going somewhere to create something. My quiet thought time with my step mom. Why that memory stands out so vividly, over and over in my mind 38 years later is beyond me. But I really enjoy recalling it every time I hear I.G.Y…Stepping Out and Gypsy.

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Don’t You Forget About Me...and My Summer’s of John Hugh’s

9/16/2016

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By Cally Raduenzel 2016

In case you don’t know who John Hughes is...well, have you seen: Vacation, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty In Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Uncle Buck, Home Alone1&2?

Before you were a jaded, workaholic, aggressive, frustrated adult you were a teenager, and you probably saw most if not all of these movies if you are in your 40’s. These movies and soundtracks defined our 'puberty-years' and gave being a teenager some credit for something more then zit cream, eye rolls and weak upper lip mustaches.

The 80’s were kind of fucked up. There was a lot of money due to free flowing banks and credit cards- the bubble hadn’t burst yet, to remind us all that you did have to pay back those credit cards at some point. When you are a teenager, bills aren’t your problem, your heart, soul and loins are!

Driving in the backseat of my best friends mother’s silver Cadillac Cimarron, heading to godforsaken hicksville Georgia from the cultural armpit of Indiana in the summer of 1986 my soundtrack was all John Hughes inspired. I felt “Left of Center,” and my high school days were going “Round,Round,”...everyday walking down the hallowed halls of Munster High School, constantly nervous about my developing bod, my “look”, my stature in the halls, I was in a state of “Shell Shock”- my pillow knew tears. These were all songs collected for the soundtrack of "Pretty in Pink" by John Hughes.

John Hughes wrote our words, picked the perfect music and gave us a good laugh at ourselves when we so desperately needed one, (ever try to make a teenager laugh, it ain’t easy)!

Fast forward to...my early 20’s.

The 90’s have come and they weren’t all we thought they were gonna be in the 80’s. I’m in the formerly flooded, basement of my pianists apartment trying to put music “act” together. His day job is teaching karate to rich kids and he comes home all depressed because he was at singer Richard Marx’s house and he’s jealous. Richard has the hot wife from "Flash Dance" / "Stayin Alive" Cynthia Rhodes and a great career and he, Ron Blade (stage name) is playing piano for a nobody like me in his moldy hole of a home.
​
“We gotta find a way to make it Cal, seriously, I can’t keep living like this,” he power chugs a gatorade with a splash of vodka, “ I guess I could become a solider of fortune?” He said wistfully, he always forgets...he was never in the military, he only went to military school.

Ron went on to explain; the sun was setting, and he saw a man in his bathrobe with what looked to be a cocktail, standing at the edge of his back terrace staring out at the lavish north shore neighborhood he lived in, there was something sad about him. Ron said, “he looked how I felt.”

Next week Ron and I meet up to practice our set for a gig at poetry slam (it was a new trend in Chicago in 2009, and they wanted music to break up the poets...incase folks were falling asleep into their drinks).

After our practice, we were finishing off a bottle of tequila, the basement still smelled like a cave of old cheese, “remember that neighbor of Richard Marx I told you about?”

“Yes Ron, who looked like you felt,” I nodded pouring myself another shot. “It was fuckin John Hughes! The director! Ya, know Molly Ringwald- Judd Nelson...Breakfast Club, St Elmo’s Fire... He just fuckin died!”

I was so in shock, I took another shot and chased it was some flat diet Dr. Pepper. “St. Elmo’s wasn’t his.” I replied in a daze.
Every generation has their stars...for me it was Princes Diana, Jackie Kennedy Onasis, Harold Ramis, people who define an era...and John Hughes was one of these luminaries.

He really was his characters because that’s what happens when you write...you create a person out of thin air and make them real, and some how they are a part of you.

I was such a gaping wound of a teenager...and John Hughes was like a therapist, big brother... or more aptly my Oz. He said, “I listen to kids. I respect them. I don’t discount anything they have to say just because they are only 16 years old.”

I had heard that he didn’t feel his films or his writing was appreciated in the way he thought that they should be and was disgusted at the baby boomer hypocrisy that was culminating from his generation.

He left a legacy that will transcend the pettiness of the 90’s and 2000’s... We all long for our teenage summer, the Say Anything, Shyest Time, I Go Crazy- days and nights of sleepovers, big dreams, long walks across town with no destination but to hope and dream that someday we will be as loved and revered for what we are...what we leave behind...our thumb print on this big blue marble of the world.

The song that John named his movie after- ...”Don’t You Forget About Me,” will live in our forever teenage summer memory of him.



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A Series of 6 Short Stories (based on album covers)

8/19/2015

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Click on the story located below each album cover - enjoy!

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"Can't Wait To See The Movie"
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"The Allnighter"

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"Pied de Poule"

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"Indiana Mississippi Seeds"
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"Everywhere At Once"
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"Disco Party"

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Psssst:  YOU MUST LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW FOR ME TO FINISH THE STORY...
AND I MUST GET AT LEAST 10 COMMENTS PER STORY!

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