I have the habit of not changing the station, or the tape, or the CD, or the playlist that I listen to and I end up listening to the same album for months on end. Whether it be auto search, or song skip or whatever, I burn a song in my head until I get sick of it. As of late, I find that if I come across any of these songs, I’ll “feel” the time it was burned in my chemistry. It’s not always good. But it’s always interesting.

1980? We got cable, and HBO. Before MTV, the Music Breaks provided my first exposure to music videos

1982-83 Tuning the radio away from my parents’ stations

There was this time we got an FM antenna and I heard this song in stereo on the old console:

1984 Summer-school biology, with the Oz

1986 Wasting time in high school

1988 Second semester at Texas Tech, and the CD is blaring at the end of the summer

1987 First days in college and realizing that even the pop charts were limited back home

1995 The blank days of my life, and the sudden reminder (thanks to the Columbia Records and Club) that Bruce Springsteen recorded several albums in the 80s

2018 I hesitated for a moment — indeed, a lifetime, to share this new rendition of a 1980s song with a friend that only had days to live

1987 Walking the cold sidewalks to chemistry class