Eighties hair-metal rockers Motley Crue scored a minor hit with a song called Kickstart My Heart. It begins with an electric guitar simulating a gear box – first to second, accelerating, accelerating. A driving rhythm guitar kicks in at the top of third gear, followed by a pounding drum beat.
What a cascade of memories: howling down the highway with the radio cranked, or playing air guitar in a smoke-filled rec room, or cranking up the volume on my new Walkman cassette player.
So imagine my indignity when I last heard the song.
As expected, I was thrilled to hear the distinctive opening, booming from an expensive sound system. The same system that had been blasting Top 40 pop for the previous three hours.
Every staff member at the elementary school where I teach Grade 8 language arts must chaperone during a school dance: Keep all hands above the waist, discourage roughhousing and listen to a cacophony of terrible music that all sounds the same.
After announcing the last song (a slow one that ushered in the awkward preteen two-step) and flooding the gym with lights, the DJ (the music teacher) was having difficulty clearing the room. The boys, hoping for one last chance to impress, and jacked up on soda and testosterone, were wrestling and chasing each other around the gym. Three tired teachers stood no chance of restoring order.
That was when I heard it.
The memory cascade continued: back at my school dance, a debilitating shyness and a profound lack of dexterity kept me off the dance floor (friends called me Wallpaper because I was glued to the wall). Nothing could extract me. Nothing except Kickstart My Heart or You Shook Me All Night Long – the two songs that lowered my inhibitions enough to lure me to the dance floor. Not that I actually danced; I just flailed and banged my head (a move that required frequent and furious head and hair bobbing).
The grinding first gear invoked involuntary toe tapping. My imaginary drumsticks were poised for the approaching air drum solo. I was about to start banging my head.
Then I noticed that the students were leaving. Where once the gym floor was a beehive of pubescent hijinks, it now resembled a scramble of rats on a sinking ship. Any incentive these teens had to remain in the gym – a final laugh, a quick embrace, a stolen kiss – had vanished.
Fighting shock and shame, I realized it was because they hated this song.
One minute later, only the music teacher and I were left. And the wail of Motley Crue.
He must have seen it in my eyes. He turned down the volume as I approached.
I knew he listened to hard rock music; Black Sabbath blared from his room after the last students left the building each day. I wondered how he survived the sappy selection of bubblegum hits he was forced to play as DJ.
“I love that song,” I gushed. “That was my favourite song in high school.”
“Yeah, one of mine too.”
“Why did you wait until the end to play it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Starting my car in the parking lot, rock music engulfed me. I had arrived at school that morning blaring a new retro rock ’n’ roll station. Embarrassed, I remembered waving to a group of my Grade 8 students: car door open, Van Halen shrieking, purposefully delaying shutting off the ignition. How had I hoped they would perceive me?
Posturing, pandering, I would suggest – now. Pathetic poser, they had probably thought.
Speeding away from the school parking lot (but careful to make a full stop at the stop sign while waving to the crossing guard), the realization began to settle.
Before I attached a name to it, I switched the radio station to one that used to play new music: indie and alternative rock, college bands, new wave, ska, a little bit of punk and the cool British stuff that John Hughes didn’t dare put in The Breakfast Club. When had I stopped listening to it?
Four utterly unknown songs later, I flipped to a Top 40 station that once played songs I recognized and liked. Its most recent incarnation was … and then it hit me – it was still a Top 40 station. I just didn’t recognize any of the hits. What was more (and maybe what was worse), I had never heard of the artists – any of them.
Before I retreated to the comfort of the classic-rock station, a familiar song began to play. Remember, in the scene in the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High when Rat is taking Stacy on a date, there was that driving guitar riff on the car radio? It’s Kashmir by Led Zeppelin, and this station was playing it.
No such luck. Ten seconds in, it turned into a pop song, with some creativity-deprived rapper talking over the music. When the song mercifully ended, I discover it was by Puff Daddy (now known as P. Diddy, the DJ helpfully pointed out) featuring Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin.
Featuring? One of the greatest guitar players in history playing second fiddle to a multiple self-named guy named Puff?
That was enough radio for the day.
Forty minutes later, by habit, with my six-year-old safely strapped in the back seat, I turned on the radio. Flicking the stations, I stopped on a classic rock one. Absentmindedly, I began to sing along to an April Wine song.
“Daddy,” Hannah said. “You know the words to every song!”
“I know darling. I’ve been listening to these songs for …”
“I know, Daddy. Forever. Can you find a Lady Gaga song?”
Geoff Thomas lives in Oakville, Ont.
