I Melt With You

This week's show continues a tradition that began in the first year of Self Help Radio: on the week of my birthday, I play my favorite songs that were released during one year of my life.  The year isn't random - in 2002, I played music from 1968, the year of my birth.  & since the show is now fifteen years old, this year I'll play music from... 1982?  Oh yeah, I didn't do this birthday thing one year.

But, yeah, the tradition continues this year, & we're getting now to the point where the music I love that came out that year is actually music I was listening to at the time.  This is because, while I was an avid listener of radio since I was a child, the music that I would come to love was suddenly showing up on radio.

There's a theory about that, & that theory isn't mine.  It's because of the increasing influence of MTV. In those days, there were very few places to see music videos, & also few artists made them.  But the ones that did got heavy play on MTV, which caused people to call radio stations & request those artists.  So suddenly on the radio we were hearing Psychedelic Furs, Adam Ant, Madness, ABC, Joe Jackson - people who weren't really breaking through to American audiences because they weren't getting airplay on classic rock radio - but people who were making cool music videos that MTV needed to play.

One song that was played way too much was "I Melt With You" by Modern English.  It's a great song, & probably did more to interest me in jangly indie music than I can measure.  But in 1982, with me spending any extra money I had on comic books, it never occurred to me to seek out music beyond the radio or beyond tapes people made me or records I borrowed from my older brothers.  & my older brothers were certainly not listening to post-punk from across the ocean.

This story isn't really about 1982, but about that song.  Years later, when I had the money to buy records & comics, I searched my brain for music from the past that I loved back then.  (It's hard to imagine me in 1986 thinking 1982 was so far away, but it was.)  My friend Russell one time took me & my friend Joe somewhere in his car, & he played the Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way" (released in 1982), & we both said to him, "We love this song!"

My experience with "I Melt With You" was more bittersweet.

In my twelfth grade year, I fell in love for real for the first time.  It was with a girl named Laura Anderson who was smart & beautiful & who had a wonderful laugh.  It was lucky that I was occasionally the one making her laugh.  I'm sure she knew how I felt though there was never any profession of feelings - how could there be?  But one time she talked to me about how much she liked "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" & I discovered there was a stage performance of it in Dallas & I
bought tickets & asked her to come to see it with me.

Then as now I had no idea what constituted a "date," how one made one's feelings known, what would happen if there were any kind of reciprocation of feelings - all the songs I listened to gave me nothing but vague clues.  I had planned to take Laura to the play & then we could get some food or something, maybe end up talking in my car, who knows?

But as we drove home - I think she liked the show - she told me she didn't want to go eat, that she was done & had stuff to do at her house.  I had the radio on, & what should suddenly be playing but - as if my life were a comically maudlin teen movie - "I Melt With You."  What's worse, she loved the song, too, & she & I sang along to it as I turned off the highway & headed to her part of town.

Just imagine that.  The perfect new wave love song, the sort of feelings I wished I could express to her as melodically, & I am singing it out loud, as if to her, & she is singing along, too.  & yet, there wasn't a chance she felt the same way.  In fact, there was always a chance she regretted going with me & perhaps leading me on.

It's funny, I don't think the two of us ever talked about that day again.  After I took her home, I went to the Mobil gas station where my friend Joe was working & I slept in my car until he was off work.

Laura & I stayed briefly in touch after high school but she & I were never quite friends.  Eventually I tired of writing letters & paying for phone calls.  A few years later, she came to Austin for grad school, & I guess we ran into each other then. I even shared a ride with her around that time back to Garland, but I was kind of dickish for no reason & we never spoke again.  & with a name like Laura Anderson, she's probably not easy to find.

Anyway, this isn't really about 1982.  & there's much to talk about this week when I talk about 1982!  My fourteenth year on the planet.  & my god one of the best years of music ever.